Politics Round-up; Changes, Childcare Costs and Boobs.

I will start with something I missed last month. Jax at Live Otherwise added her post on the concept of basic income, and her follow up on the same theme to last months linky, and I found it such a fascinating and different idea that I wanted to include them this month. They also inspired me down a train of thought where I wondered whether the end result of evolution is the survival of the richest, and whether we can change that. Certainly something needs to change, and Queen Boudica has some of her own suggestions in parts one and two of what I sense are the beginnings of a great manifesto.

It was announced earlier this month that families are on average spending more on childcare than on their mortgage. Chelsea Mamma writes from the perspective of a childminder, reminding us that those who care for our children are often working for less than minimum wage already. Laura Perrins writing for Conservative Woman looks at the wider  costs of childcare for the very young. Single Mum Ahoy looks at the effect Universal Credit cuts to childcare support for the low paid may have. Donna from Mummy Central collected views from a variety of bloggers for her post on the The Childcare Money Trap for Only Kids Marketing. Birth, Baby and Beyond looks at the dichotomy of a system that requires us to go back to work when our babies are small, but doesn’t offer any support.

Are there lines a charity shouldn’t cross in order to gain publicity for the cause they champion? While I think we can all agree that CoppaFeel are raising important awareness of the need to regularly check your boobs, their link up with The Sun’s Page Three was a contentious decision. Scarlet Red was not the only one to suggest that it was a sly move by the newspaper to defend itself in some way against the prominence of the No More Page Three campaign.  Kraken Wakes has her own inimitable take on the same issue. While Gaby Hinsliff writes for The Guardian on how she hates Page 3, but feels this initiative may save lives.

Elsewhere:-

Chocolate Is Not The Only Fruit tells us why her friend Penny wishes she has breast cancer. A moving and important post on that controversial statement and the horror of pancreatic cancer.

UleyGirl highlights a petition asking Jeremy Hunt to consider making the meningitis B vaccine available to all on the NHS.

A Dad Called Spen looks at the increase in prescription charges in his post ‘It’s enough to make you sick.‘

And finally, it was International Women’s Day on Saturday, and there were a plethora of fabulous posts celebrating inspirational women. Team Honk sent postcards from Tanzania for bloggers to share – remarkable tales of #LastingChange brought about by your donations and you can find those posts on a link up here.  Lulastic hosted a blog link up in celebration of women, and Kate Takes 5 asked bloggers for their Top 5 Inspirational Women as part of her Listography series.

That’s it for the politics round-up this month, apologies if I missed you, do link up below. And please do send me your links for future round-ups, you can find my details in the box below.