You Go Jo!

Its no secret to anyone who knows me at all that I love all things Harry Potter and that includes his talented creator, JK Rowling.

I came across something today that she wrote in April this year and had published in a newspaper: The Single Mother's Manifesto

Now, I won't begin to know the first thing about British politics (I don't even know much about US politics to be honest as the subject always seems to just greatly depress me when I start to really try to get into it) but I'm really impressed by the things Jo has to say in this article. I may have to do some more research on the subject, but it seems that someone running for political office is pushing a sort of "family values" platform and suggesting that single mothers are a serious problem. To give an "incentive", this man is proposing that young low-income married couples be given a 150 pound tax break (which I believe translates to less than $300 American...actually the calculator I just used online put it at $214 American). The bottom-line in seems: This guy is suggesting that single mothers run out and get married or that mothers stay in bad relationships for $214 a year. Lovely.

JK Rowling was of course a single mother when she was first writing the Harry Potter books and she lived greatly on government income. Since her success as an author, she could have moved to another country where she would not be so greatly taxed as she is now (it was stated on one Harry Potter podcast that she is taxed in a 50% tax bracket over there...I don't know if that is accurate, but honestly, can you imagine giving 50% of your income to taxes??) She states in this article that one of the reasons she has not done that is because she feels its her duty to her country to give back to the system that helped her when she was at rock bottom. I'm a huge supporter of family values and I certainly have an opinion of some single parents who do abuse the system, but I also know that many people can not help the situations they find themselves in and many things are out of their control. There are many single moms in this world who have left abusive relationships or been abandoned by their husbands. Many single mothers are struggling by their fingernails to balance parenting and trying to make a living and are barely scraping by and they are in need of government assistance to get them through a tough time. I really admire Jo for getting through her tough times and making an amazing life for her and her daughter and I admire her for standing up for what she feel is right.

You Go Jo!

Here are a few of the bits from the article that I really liked and I'll post the link to the full article below.

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From The Times April 14, 2010

The single mother's manifesto
J.K. Rowling

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

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Yesterday’s Conservative manifesto makes it clear that the Tories aim for less governmental support for the needy, and more input from the “third sector”: charity. It also reiterates the flagship policy so proudly defended by David Cameron last weekend, that of “sticking up for marriage”. To this end, they promise a half-a-billion pound tax break for lower-income married couples, working out at £150 per annum.

I accept that my friends and I might be atypical. Maybe you know people who would legally bind themselves to another human being, for life, for an extra £150 a year? Perhaps you were contemplating leaving a loveless or abusive marriage, but underwent a change of heart on hearing about a possible £150 tax break? Anything is possible; but somehow, I doubt it. Even Mr Cameron seems to admit that he is offering nothing more than a token gesture when he tells us “it’s not the money, it’s the message”.

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say “it’s not the money, it’s the message”. When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron’s only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is “get married, and we’ll give you £150”, he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation.

How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life’s necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message — would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?

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I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. On the available evidence, I suspect that it is Lord Ashcroft’s idea of being a mug.

Child poverty remains a shameful problem in this country, but it will never be solved by throwing millions of pounds of tax breaks at couples who have no children at all. David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new. I’ve never voted Tory before ... and they keep on reminding me why.

© J. K. Rowling, 2010

Link To Full Article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7096786.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1