“If you talk to any mother, of course, they want to spend time with their children... And if you're spending all your time at work and you don't have enough time with your kids, I think that's a travesty.”
“The ideal would be to have a parent that is there available when children need them… I think what children desperately need is someone at home, and they need someone to be there and support them during their education.”
“[as a school child], when you come home at night, you want to be able to offload what's been going on at school, and you need someone at home to be able to do that. And if we can incentivise that through tax breaks or whatever it is, that has to be a good thing.”
Reform UK’s Deputy co-leader Dr Bull speaking earlier this week about the party’s July 4th General Election ‘contract with the people’, June 2024
In the future stretching ahead, I see no reason to ever retire professionally. Ever. While I’m sure things will change as I age and I’ll doubtless lose some of my youthful (ahem) vim, I cannot imagine a time when my work doesn’t fulfil me. If I won the lottery, I’d still write this newsletter. If I married a billionaire, I’d still be banging the drum for Katherine Ormerod Ltd. There isn’t going to be this magic moment when some version of a white knight finally swoops in and I turn around and say, ‘Ta da! Finally, I can quit my job and thrive!’ Sure, I could imagine stepping back from some projects. But my life as a working woman? The public life that I’ve been building and earning from since I was 15? C’mon.
Like every ambitious and professionally satisfied female parent who has fought long and hard to monetise their passion, this week’s election talk of ‘all mothers’ wanting to spend more time nurturing their children was disquieting.
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