Not all right on the night

We moved house on Saturday last week. It started out hilarious and moved to slightly insane, wrapping up in a CAT team and tears.

So how did this come about?

My brother is a Store-man for Yakka, a big company with lots of workers, he is a staunch believer in OHandS and takes physical lifting seriously. Our wonderful volunteers are actors, film makers, photographers and writers, and not so experienced with the heavy lifting, and icing on the cake is Hamish's kind hearted but suspected autistic dad. You can guess where this is leading but my brother became frustrated pretty quickly as my friends failed to form even basic rudimentary lines (which is why I love them).

But my dearest friend on earth, whom I love so very much has been through hell and back, in a series of personal events from a dark place. My friend lost their shit and their calm in a way that was terrifying and unexpected. And I mention this because I want to talk about the pressures on single mums in our society.

My dearest friend is a single mum and in the same week that Julia Gillard inspired the world with a speech about womyns equality in politics she fist-fucked single mothers and removed their support mechanisms, which were already paltry and replaced them with the Newstart allowance. Essentially dropping their financial support a few hundred dollars and pressuring them to work around the hours that children can attend school. All of the single womyn I know do not own houses. All of their exes do.

All of the single womyn I know struggle to find or maintain work that does not damage or leave their children vulnerable. And after having a teen, I am convinced that teenagers need just as much attention as toddlers to help them overcome their emotional stuff.

Just say a womyn came out of a relationship, onto Newstart dealing with heart break and loss of income and job and she worked with him in his business so her career had to be reassessed and realigned and immediately she receives notification from Newstart to seek employment or lose benefits. Just up and do as you're told or the government will smack you for not being good enough to hold on to your partner. NOT FAIR, NOT ON!

So watching my friends go through this has been heart breaking, struggling to get by, kids who are in the early years of highschool with no childcare options just looking after themselves! Depressing state of affairs, as we again, take from the vulnerable, and this leads to health problems, including mental health and then the burden in on services which in some cases have been underfunded themselves.

These attacks on the vulnerable need to end!

And as for my part. I am not moving house again!