| Thatcher era created culture of benefit dependency, says study
THE legacy of unemployment during the Thatcher era has left Britain overly dependent on benefits, a right-leaning think tank warned yesterday. Civitas says that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have dealt with the problem since the height of unemployment in the 1980s. One in three households across Britain depends on state benefits for at least half its income, according to the report. Civitas says the figure is far higher for single-parent homes, with 61% relying on state support compared with 9% of two-parent households. The report, in the current issue of Civitas Review, states that the level of households dependent on benefits was as low as 5% in the 1960s but rose during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly because of the mass unemployment of the Thatcher era.
A Life Changing Purim
I couldn't believe it. Not again. There I was, eight weeks pregnant, and I was spotting. It was light, but it was definitely blood, and it was the last thing I wanted to see. I called my husband and told him I needed to go to the emergency room for an ultrasound. It was late at night but I just didn't want to wait until the morning. We managed to find a babysitter and once again headed to the familiar corridor at the Bikur Cholim hospital in Jerusalem. The very same corridor where I had been told previously on two occasions that my pregnancies hadn't made it. So there I was, again. This time however, I had two healthy children at home which gave me the strength of knowing that maybe, just maybe, there would be good news. I saw her straining her eyes to determine what she was seeing, or worse, maybe what she wasn't seeing After what seemed like an unbearably long wait, the nurse called me in and did the routine questioning.
Number of female FTSE 350 senior managers plu
The number of female senior managers employed by companies in the FTSE 350 index has dropped by 40 per cent within just five years, a new report claims.According to Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), just 22 per cent of senior management posts in FTSE 350 firms are currently occupied by women, down from 38 per cent in 2002.Although there has been a rise in the number of female chairmen and chief executives in Britain over the past five years, the study suggests that leading companies are still failing to provide women with adequate recruitment and retention policies.The report claims that the slump in the number of top female managers needs to be counteracted with better retention policies for women and the introduction of flexible working practices for senior managers and better provision of childcare.Sarah Churchman, PricewaterhouseCoopers head of diversity, said: "At the top, things are moving slowly in the right direction but our middle management data paints a very different picture.
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