mothers on the verge

The media has been wheezing this week at the revelation that a single British person needs to earn at least £13,400 per year - £158 each week - to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living (not including tax, housing or childcare costs). This Minimum Income Standard, as they call it ( MIS for short), goes up to £370 per week for a couple with two children, while a single parent with one child needs £210. What is particularly interesting about the report, apart from making us all panic a bit more about the credit crunch, is that it's findings are based on The Thoughts of The People via a vaguely impressive-sounding consultation process rather than a bunch of crusty academics busily crunching numbers in their ivory towers. But are we as a nation being a bit greedy in coming up with these amounts? We have to bear in mind that a couple with kids would have to earn double the UK minimum wage to get to the MIS level- certainly not achievable for everyone. As one half of a couple