The traditional 9am to 3pm school day does not always fit the demands of working parents, and not enough schools offer before- and after-school activities that meet childcare requirements, according to a new Government report. Childcare is a “major concern” for families, with parents often finding it difficult to arrange the right care at the right price, it says.

It’s convenient with employers because it helps to expand the workforce and maintain a pool of cheap labour. It sends a message to consumers that it’s fine to spend rather than save – goodbye deferred gratification, hello I want it now. Above all it binds families closer to the state and undermines the spirit of independence, the sheer awkward bloody mindedness that made our forefathers suspicious of government.

It’s a poisoned chalice – but do we have the will to dash it from our lips?

Working mothers will be given thousands of pounds-worth of support for child care to help them to return to work, under plans being considered by David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

Stay at home mums will be given an additional tax allowance to help pay someone else to look after their kids to get them back to work. But if they decide to remain at home to look after their kids themselves they will get zilch – even though they are creating the most stable, family friendly environment for those key formative years.

In effect Cameron is saying to those mums who want to stay at home that they are of less significance than those mothers who get back into the workforce as soon as possible. He is essentially devaluing motherhood and the concept of the traditional family – a strange move for the leader of a so called “conservative” party.

Time was that parents of young children accepted the fact that they had to downsize their own expenditure because there was now just a single earner….usually dad. So you made do with the same car for a few more years, you had the odd family day out rather than an expensive foreign holiday, restaurants and pubs became a fond memory, you kept the old black & white TV when everyone else had colour.

School hours and term dates were geared for education not for child minding. You were expected to keep your children with you rather than dump them in a crèche. Nobody complained because that was just the way things were.

But many of today’s parents don’t seem willing to make those sacrifices. They want to maintain their childless lifestyle. So both of them need to be earning as soon as possible – then they can pay someone else to look after their kids.

Now Cameron is saying that dumping your young children so that you can have the plasma TV, the expensive foreign holiday and the new car(s) is not only OK but you’ll pay less tax to make it even easier – so the rest of us will have to pay more to make up for it.

And he thinks it’s UKIP members who are odd?

WTF…..