One of those days for staying inside. Heating on. Welcome again to the Yorkshire summer.

No excuse then to avoid baking. So here’s my honey and sunflower bread. Dairy and gluten free.

I don’t know what happened to the sunflower seeds but it tastes not too bad at all. Will go well with my completely plant based Cream of Tomato soup when I get round to finding where I put the pesky red things. How can things go missing in such a small kitchen.

Talking about going missing. While I was getting stuck into the bread dough I was listening to the local radio station. I caught the back end of a phone in about people living on government benefits. It wasn’t the must sympathetic range of callers. Out of the 5 callers I endured, 4 came up with the same opinion. Single parents are living the life of luxury, they get shed loads of taxpayers money, do no work and spend the benefits all on, wait for it. Designer clothes, cigarettes, booze, nights out, restaurants and holidays.

I did try to phone in to get on air but the lines were closed. Shame as this single parent wanted to point out a few things….

a) I get pennies in handouts from the Government and I work…

b) I have never bought designer clothes in my life,

c) I have never smoked a cigarette in my life,

d) I have been tea total in over 5 years now,

e) I haven’t had a holiday since 2015. In fact since I have been a single parent I have not spent one night apart from my son. Strangely 2015 was also the last time I ventured into a restaurant.

PLUS some people should wind their necks in and stop prying into other peoples life’s. These people phoning in don’t have the faintest idea what it’s like for the vast majority of single parents out there. Just how tough a slog it is to keep paying the bills while trying to be the best possible parent they can be. Just how little support there is and just how isolating a life it can be. But you hardly ever hear that side of the story. Like too many things, it’s gone missing.

32 thoughts on “Missing”

  4. I’m so glad I didn’t hear this radio programme!!!

    What makes people think they are entitled to have an opinion on something they haven’t experienced – I doubt they can have been single parents, going on the fact that it is unusual to publicly shame yourself.

    Perhaps it would be worth contacting the station and asking if they could do a programme to show the single parent’s side of the story. That said, my hunch is that even the best journalism is looking for sensationalism to draw the audience in (based on my own experience with the presenter of a BBC Radio 4 programme).

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  5. Omg!!! That is so bloody infuriating. Some people are just plain stupid. Believe what they want to believe and spend their lives feeling resentful. You are a wonderful Dad and should be proud ❤️❤️

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  9. We have people with the exact same attitude down under. I actually unfriended someone because they were complaining about how people just want to get “Starbucks Coffee” on the Government pay, they don’t want to work, they just want to get Starbuck coffee. I’m just sitting there thinking, that one cup of Starbucks coffee might be that persons only treat for the whole week. They might have just had a job interview, and that’s a treat.

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  10. As a single person, I have always felt this way too. Trying to survive on a single salary while paying full taxes, no rebates for a single person, paying school tax even though you have no children….and so on. No one has it easy and people should mind their own business! Like you said. Grrrr.

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  12. I am a very tolerant person but it can bring me to a boil when people are so arrogant to think they know how others are living their lives. No one can judge another one or another one’s situation before they are standing in their shoes. I can only imagine how you must have felt listening to those callers.
    But hey, that bread looks awesome! And… we seem to share your Yorkshire summer this year.

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      1. I am definitely not the only one thinking that way. The problem is that those others are often louder.
        Oh, yes, you would not even notice you are not in Yorkshire since the cloud walls hide the mountains completely😂

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  13. Of course we’re annoyed, but views expressed say more about what the person saying it is going through (living under the rules of the eton mess). As for the media. they all thrive on airing the views of those who know nowt about each subject and for show they’ll allow 1 in 5 truths through. Advice: Patience with those who think they know.

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