I listened to the weather forecast yesterday evening and was pretty much convinced that I was going to wake up to rain this morning. I usually cycle to the market in Uppermill on a Wednesday morning but I like to check the weather before I set off. I don’t mind so much walking in the rain but cycling in the rain is miserable. If it’s doing more than a light drizzle the bike stays at home and I walk, usually catching a bus back with my purchases. So it was quite a pleasant surprise to find that it wasn’t raining at all and off I pedalled.
One of the stallholders told me she had heard that the rain had been “postponed” until later in the day, which struck me as an odd expression. Checking on my BBC weather app on my iPad I found that the percentage chance of rain does in fact increase as the day goes on. We shall see!
I am listening to The World at One on the radio - by the time I get back from the market, get changed and organise a late breakfast on a Wednesday, most of the morning has gone and it would be lunchtime if I did lunch - and they have just announced King Charles’ state visit to Germany. A German friend of mine has been commenting on social media that she’ll watch his speech on German TV but that she’ll have to put subtitles on as she can’t understand his pronunciation of German. As a retired languages teacher I am quite used to people who have a marked accent in their own language having difficulties with pronunciation of foreign languages. In fact it’s more intonation than accent.
When I was teaching A-Level French I used to advise my students to fool around speaking English with a mock French accent before going in to do their French spoken exam. In that way their mouths were set to French patterns and it made their spoke French more authentic. It really works, except for the case of the student with a lovely lilting Scots accent, whose spoken French was delightfully tinged with that accent. She was, however, perfectly comprehensible and achieved a very high grade in her exam!
Reading the papers online over breakfast I found an article with this headline: “Inequality starts before birth – so child benefits should too”. It recommended financial assistance for pregnant women as a way of ensuring that all mothers-to-be could eat properly and so avoid a low birth-weight or premature baby. It told us that, babies in low-income families are more likely to have a medically low birth weight and be born prematurely. This has long-term consequences. Premature babies effectively start nursery and school weeks or months younger than their peers, putting them at an educational disadvantage from the start.
Some countries are beginning to consider this. In 2022, Italy introduced a new, universal child allowance that starts in the seventh month of pregnancy. In the US, the Mitt Romney campaign has called for the child tax credit to be paid to pregnant women. (Maybe his campaign should also include providing good, free health care as giving birth in the USA is very expensive, but that’s a different matter.) It has been done here in the UK too. “The last Labour government, shortly before the end of its term in office, introduced the health in pregnancy grant: a universal cash transfer equivalent to three months of child benefit. A lump sum of £190 was given to all pregnant women who visited their GP or midwife in the third trimester of pregnancy.
My research shows that this relatively small sum led to significant improvements in babies’ health. Average birth weight increased, while the proportion of babies born prematurely fell. The biggest winners were low-income, young mums.”
Well, it seems Tory austerity put an end to that, perhaps on the grounds that the recipients would spend the money on cigarettes and alcohol!!
But it’s not a new idea. Here’s a link to a poster from 1946 about maternity benefit. So, not a new idea at all!
And I found myself thinking back to my own experience of a maternity grant, which began some weeks before the baby’s due date and continued for about 11 weeks after delivery. More by good luck than actual concrete planning our two babies were born close enough together (about 21 months apart) I managed to qualify for two lots of maternity grant! Of course, it was dependent on your having made National Insurance payments. In other words you needed to be in employment beforehand. And a friend of mine did not qualify as she had been paying a “married woman’s”rate National Insurance because it was cheaper. So it probably didn’t help the most needy. And then I think it disappeared anyway.
But it’s now the 21st century, a good two decades in, and we need to deal with the problem.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment