Woman's Hour - Georgina Ballantine - record-breaking fisherwoman, Dame Rachel de Souza, Dianne McKay, Rising cost of living, Rachel Krantz

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

The Raise the Roof project in Perth in Scotland, is gathering the lesser-known histories of a number of influential and fearless women to feature in the new Perth City Hall Museum when it opens in early 2024. A list of over 50 women who have lived in Perth over the centuries – from a witch to a pioneering photographer and the first female MP has been drawn up. But it is down to a number of different community groups to decide which women will be celebrated. They will work with an artist to help tell their stories and a wire statue of each of those women will be displayed around the city. Chloe Tilley is joined by Anna Day the Cultural Public Programme Manager at Perth & Kinross Council and the artist Vanessa Lawrence. The Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has warned that thousands of children have "fallen off the radar" of schools. She is launching an inquiry to find young people who are not attending school in the wake of lockdown. On the programme Dame Rachel de Souza told BBC Woman’s Hour that between 80,000 and 100,000 children were not on any school rolls at all. This was inaccurate. The Office of the Children's Commissioner for England subsequently confirmed that Dame Rachel misspoke and that this figure actually relates to the number of children who were persistently absent from school in Autumn 2020, following the first Covid-19 lockdown. They also confirmed that the number of children not on school rolls is unknown. In 1969 Muriel McKay was kidnapped after being mistaken for Rupert Murdoch’s wife. The story dominated front pages for weeks, and hundreds of police worked the case. After 40 days Arthur and Nizamodeen Hosein were arrested, and later jailed, but Muriel was never found. The brothers never confessed to their crimes, or revealed the whereabouts of Mrs McKay’s body. Until now. Dianne McKay is Muriel’s daughter and joins Chloe.With inflation at a 10 year high, energy bills on the increase, and average pay rises failing to keep up with the rise of the cost of living, and not forgetting an increase in national insurance coming this way, millions of people will find themselves worse off in 2022. The number of households spending at least 10 per cent of their family budgets on energy bills – is set to treble overnight to 6.3 million households when the new energy price cap comes into effect on April, that’s according to research by the Resolution Foundation, who’ve dubbed 2022 the year of the squeeze. And new analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that low income families could spend on average 18 percent of their income after housing costs on energy bills. How would you respond to starting a relationship and being told by your new partner he was looking for a committed partnership—just one that did not include exclusivity? Author and journalist, Rachel Krantz had to address just this and embrace it with her ex partner Adam. She was nervous, yet intrigued and so Rachel decided to give it a go. Seeing whether she could cope with, and enjoy, both of them dating other people. In her debut memoir, ‘Open, An Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation & Non-Monogamy’ Rachel candidly shares with the reader her experiences of exploring Brooklyn sex parties and being part of the swinger community.Presenter: Chloe Tilley Producer: Kirsty StarkeyInterviewed Guest: Dame Rachel de Souza Interviewed Guest: Dianne McKay Interviewed Guest: Helen Barnard Interviewed Guest: Victoria Benson Interviewed Guest: Anna Day Interviewed Guest: Vanessa Lawrence Interviewed Guest: Rachel Krantz

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to the programme. Now, estimates suggest that up to 100,000 children have fallen off the radar and not returned to the classroom after schools were shut due to the Covid pandemic. The Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel D'Sououza has started an inquiry to find these young people. We're going to speak to her shortly. We're also going to be talking to a woman who has spent more than 50 years trying to find answers about her mother's kidnap and murder. We'll hear how close she is

to finding the information that she needs. We're also today going to be talking about the cost of living. Figures released in the last couple of hours show that inflation has grown at its fastest rate for 30 years. And this morning, I wanted to hear the impact it's having on yours and your family's budget. We know that food and fuel prices are rising. We also know the looming energy bill hikes in April of this year. So are you worried? Are you cutting back? Or is there nothing left for you to cut back on? Do getikes in April of this year. So are you worried?

Are you cutting back? Or is there nothing left for you to cut back on? Do get in touch with us this morning. You can text us on 84844. Texts will be charged at your standard message rate. You can also get in touch on social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Or, of course, you can email us through our website.

And if you're on a set income, are you able to absorb these price rises or are you fearful of the months ahead? We're going to hear how women are being disproportionately affected by these squeeze on household finances. The author Rachel Krantz talks candidly about entering a polyamorous relationship in a debut memoir. She tells us the pitfalls and the benefits of loving more than one person at a time and how she struggled with extreme jealousy and anxiety at the start of her relationship. Plus the uncovering of the hidden histories of influential women in Perth who will feature in a sculpture trail across the city.

But let's begin by speaking to the Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel D'Souza. She has warned this morning that thousands of children have effectively fallen off the radar of schools. She's launching an inquiry to find young people who are not attending school in the wake of the lockdown. I'm delighted to say that she's with us now. Good morning. Good morning, Chloe. It's great to be here on Woman's Hour. When people say find young people, it's worrying, isn't it?

How many are we talking about? Right, let me explain. When I came into role, I did a survey of England's children and got over half a million responses. And the interesting thing is that children told us their biggest ambition was to get a great education and have a great job and a great career and future. That's 74% of responses from all around the country, every background. And yet, I'm looking at the statistics. And at this time of the year, normally, there'd be about 94, 95% of children in school. There's only 87% of children in school. Now, there are two, so it's low. Now, some of that's COVID, some of that's illness. But there are two particular groups I'm concerned about.

One is the children we know about that are on school roles who have not come back. And what they're telling me is that's often because of anxiety, mental health, bullying, a range of issues. We can do something about that and everyone's trying. But there's another group. And I think that's the group we're worried about, that are not even on any school roll. And we estimate that's between about 80 and 100,000. And to give you an example, you know, I went to one county to talk to their police authority who are looking at criminal exploitation. And they said, we have a list of children who are not on anybody's books. You know, they are not on any school role. Nobody knows about them. Now, I have made it my mission to actually find those children, because let's go back to that big S. They're telling us they want a great education. They want a great future. They

want to be in school. As a former head teacher and educator for 31 years, I know in school, I can keep children safe. Think of the Arthur Labino Jones issue. I sit there thinking, had he been in school, we could have heard his voice and he could have been in school. So for me, to keep children safe, to actually help them achieve their goals, school's where they need to be. And out there, they are at terrible risk of falling into gangs, criminality, and just not getting the care and support they need. Let's break that down. You mentioned Arthur Labino-Hughes. People will remember he was that six-year-old boy. He was tortured. He was poisoned. He was beaten to death. Authorities missed a string of

opportunities to help him to save him. And he died during the first national lockdown. It's just a real stark reminder of how many vulnerable children are out there. What I find amazing is you say that this police force had a list of children that aren't on a school roll, effectively don't exist anywhere. How does that happen? Kids need to go to school. So if they don't attend, aren't the schools alerting the local authorities? Just explain how that works. So this is exactly where I'm starting, Chloe. And you've asked the most important question. So today, I'm running a roundtable with 10 local authorities. And I have powers to collect data. And they have to give me that data. That's one of my statutory powers, but they're working with me willingly. Now, local authorities have a statutory duty to make sure all the children in their area are in education. Schools then have the job of making sure that on

a day-to-day basis, children come in. Now, when I asked the 10 local authorities to send me very simple data, how many children have you got in your area? You know, how many children are not on roll? How many children are waiting for school places? They could not all give me that answer. Now, what I've done is written to all 141 local authorities. I've written to safeguarding boards and said, we have to sort this out. And I met Nadeem Zahawi yesterday, the Education Secretary of State, who is as passionate as I am and committed to actually finding solutions to this. And there are solutions. But I think the first thing is, let's get the size of the problem. I mean, there are some very practical things we can do. One of the

problems is we don't have a single identifier for children. So if we, so a school has, gives a child a number, the NHS gives a child a number, you have an NHS number. The first thing we need to do, I think, is have one identifier for children so that whenever and wherever they're picked up, whether it's medical, whether it's're picked up, whether it's medical, whether it's through the police, whether it's at school, we know we're engaged with them and we can do something about it. But also, it's 2022. We have the technology now to be able to make sure we have live attendance data and live data from L.A.'s about where children are. And that's what I've been challenging the DfE with. And that's what I've got a commitment from Nadine

Zahawi that we're going to do. So schools have MIS systems to record data and they're all different. What we need is one national system, one national database that we can see live. At the moment, I know how and the DfE know how many, what percentage of children are in school on a day to day basis, morning and afternoon session. We don't know nationally if it's the same children as yesterday. Right. So, yeah. And there will be some people, of course, who will have done online learning, home learning during the pandemic and decided actually that suits their children better. And they are now being educated at home. But clearly there are the vulnerable children and the children who might be being dragged into gangs and all sorts of things. How do you reach those people? So we have. So first, firstly, I'm going to find out if out if actually the local authorities have the information they need.

But we have very, very good contacts with charities and with young people's groups. And literally, I am going to go out and find them. I'm going to use the police or the local safeguarding boards. We are going to find the children because I want to talk to them, to ask them what's going on and get them in. My job as children's commissioner is to speak to children whatever way round we have to do it. So I cannot believe that we can't actually manage to actually find every child in this country. But even if you find them, if they are vulnerable, if they come from a home that is maybe chaotic and they are not in the habit of going to school and they've been dragged into a gang lifestyle and they're very vulnerable? How do

you rein that back and actually get them back into school? Yeah, great question. And there's a range, there are a range of ways we can do that once we know who they are. So sometimes issues are like mental health problems. So I remember having one young girl who had been at the Ariana Grande bombing and had never gone back to school again. So what we did was work with her to give her work at home and then gently sort of bring her back into school. She'll never be full time. And it's the same with children with chaotic lives. Sometimes it's someone needs to help with picking them up and getting them in. Sometimes it's very practical. You know, it's about sending out, you know, actually getting them into the habit of it or getting some family help in to support mum or whoever with whatever. I mean, sometimes it's about finding different educational settings. I mean, the very, I was in Feltham's youth prison recently, talking to boys with very

long 15 year sentences. And they were saying to me, the only future for us is education. And I said, when were you last happy? And when were you last in school? And these were 15, 16 year old boys with 15 year old sentences. And they said, when we were 11, you know, something's gone very wrong. So we have to intervene early at those points and do something. And we can do it. But first, let's find them. We should know where these children are. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about that this morning. That is the Children's Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel D'Souza.

And as we speak, this tweet has just come in from Samantha saying, no mention of the vast cuts in school budgets. I've been a governor since 2004. The cuts schools are being forced to make to essential staff means they no longer have the resources or the time to chase these vulnerable children like they used to be able to.

Thank you for getting in touch. Do keep those messages coming, 84844 on the text this morning to Woman's Hour. Now, on the 29th of December 1969, 55-year-old housewife Muriel Mackay disappeared from her home in Wimbledon in South London. Now, it quickly became clear that she'd been mistaken for the wife of the newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch by kidnappers. Muriel was in fact married to Murdoch's right-hand man, fellow Australian Alec Mackay. Now the story was all over the front pages for weeks on end,

reporters camped outside the house and hundreds of police working the case. After 40 days of threatening calls to her frantic family, ransom demands and botched money drops, brothers Arthur and Nizamuddin Hussain were arrested. Muriel wasn't found and was presumed dead. The two men were convicted on all charges and given life sentences. However, they never confessed to their crimes or revealed the whereabouts of Mrs Mackay's body until now. Well, I'm pleased to say that Diane is Muriel's daughter

and she is with us now. Good morning, Diane. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. And I'm so sorry to go through what is such an incredibly painful and raw part of your life. And it must have been incredibly difficult when this was reopened last year. Just explain to us how that came about.

Well, in fact, we reopened it. We saw on the film that had been made and shown on Sky, we saw that this man was still alive, the youngest brother. And we had imagined, or had obviously killed him off in our memories, but we'd imagined by now he'd be gone, but he wasn't. He was there and he was talking. So we had a chat and said, why don't we go and talk to him he's still alive he's speaking so we decided to do it very quickly because he perhaps wasn't in the best of health

so we employed a lawyer who knew Trinidad very well and is married to a Trinidadian but he commutes between Europe and there and he's been wonderful he went and he made a friend out of him a friend I mean you know he made a relationship and he got him start to speak and memory and remember things from 51 years ago and it's the most extraordinary thing but he has come up with in detail with conversations he had with my mother. I mean, after 51 years of denial and serving a prison sentence, and he was still denying when we first met him. But gradually we've worked on him by this lawyer,

and we've made many Zoom calls and spoken with him. That was difficult. But we have our aim, and it's a mission, is to find my mother's burial place and to hear what happened to her. What was it about? What happened? And it had haunted me all my life that she had probably been tied up, thrown in a boot of a car and driven miles in the dark by these strange people.

And I knew her so well, I wouldn't know exactly how she suffered because I suffered with her. And it was almost a relief for him to tell me, no, there was no violence. She came with us. We had a conversation in the car. She told me various things. He spoke in great detail about what he'd spoken to her about, or she'd spoken to him, really. She tried to draw him out. And it's just incredible what's come out. I mean, it was amazing. And gradually, obviously, his memory was opening up. And he was delivering us what we needed, because what I needed was to know, how did my mother die? Where was she buried? And what was that terrible journey like for her?

Of course, you still need those answers. course, and you still need those answers. Of course you still need those answers. I wonder if I can just take you back to the time when your mum did disappear because you've talked about the awful anxiety that you obviously had. I understand that your mum actually heard a television appeal that you made when she was being held he told us that she saw us on television and my brother had then arrived from Australia so it was the whole family my father me and we were on the tv news I think about six o'clock in the

evening and he'd taken her by the fire to sit by the fire I mean he didn't keep her in the shed he kept it gave her a bedroom in the house and um he he said she she was terribly upset she had a real panic attack and she stood up and collapsed on the ground having seen that program now that was about the third day she was there and he said she died and so we said why didn't you call an ambulance? Why didn't you get a doctor? But we know there was a nurse who was a girlfriend and we know that they made about many calls to her. She was working in a hospital and she obviously came. But he said, I panicked. I dug a hole. The easiest place I could find. I dug a hole. He said, I stood in it to make sure it was deep. And he said, I placed her body in her coat. I wrapped her in her coat and I carried her myself.

And we asked him, did you have help? No, he said. And he said, I did it alone. How difficult was it for you to hear that? Well, you know, I was relieved to hear that she hadn't suffered violence. You know, I don't know how she died. You know, your mind can run riot. But I was relieved in a way.

No, it's horrific. It's horrific. And she would never have died at 55 if she'd been left in that comfort of her own home. So, yes, she's guilty. But the thing is that to think that she didn't last too long in that dreadful situation, I mean, just think she might have been there for weeks. That was appalling to us. And we never knew when she died. We know they went very quiet after a certain day. And we always suspected something had happened. But we had no idea what. We didn't know if they'd killed her. You know, that was it so to hear that and the and and the whole episode of the kidnapping and how it went um was actually a relief to me because it's haunted me all my life of course and just give us a sense of how it has affected your whole life you're i'm sure you won't mind me saying you're you're in your 80s now it's been over 50 years i I'm in my 82nd year um I'd like to see this

I'd like to get her before I'm gone too I don't know what happens at this stage you're on the downhill run so the thing is I want for my sister and myself and my brother I want to find her and I feel very determined about this I'm so determined I've even paid visits to that farm now and did I ever want to go to that farm? No, no, no. But I had an offer from a wonderful woman who has a business where they find, and she offered for free to come. And people have been so lovely. They're so involved with this real personal story. And we went there with a machine to try.

It's a geoscanner. And we have now got pictures of the place where he told us she was. He told us. He told me where she is, and I can picture it. I now have been there twice, much to the disgust of the owner of the property who says I should be writing him letters requesting appointments. I'm sorry.

It's an emotional issue for me. I needed to go there, and I know now where she is, and we have amazing underground photography radar, which has shown us that the earth has been dug in certain places. I mean, of course, the landowner that you're talking about, I mean, he has the right, of course, to say no. And it may well be that he's waiting until the police inquiry has been concluded. And it is important to say that the Met Police have reopened their investigation, haven't they? Let me tell you, let me read you a statement which they sent us. The Met were contacted in December 2021 by the family of Muriel Mackay regarding information they had obtained in relation to her murder.

Officers from the Met's Specialist Crime Command have met with the family and are in the process of reviewing all material. I know that you actually had a meeting with the police yesterday, didn't you? Just tell us how that went. Well, I think we've made a relationship. They were not very, I don't know, they seemed very uncomfortable at the whole thing. But anyway, we had gave them all the evidence we have and all the investigations we've done which are incredible and i'm sorry but we have done a much better job than the police and sadly the police have their own protocol and you know they have their own way of doing things which can be very very ponderous especially as we have given them literally the whole case in great detail and we had our lawyer there from Trinidad.

We had and the people who did the scan and, you know, the experts were there. And I think maybe we're getting through to the police at last. But, you know, they have got a lot more important things to do. This is a cold case. And I imagine this is not a vergence, really. But to us, it is. And quite frankly, I think if they don't help us soon, we would go ahead on our own. That's it. We feel very strongly about this. I mean, how could you not feel strongly when you've thought about your mother for 51 years or two years and worried? And, you know, it affected my whole life.

It broke up my marriage. My sister's marriage broke up. My brother's marriage broke up. We all had happy lives. You know, we all lived normal lives and we all had children. And it's just, it was tragedy for everybody. And, of course, people never spoke about it and we never spoke about it.

We just internalised everything because, well, you just try to forget. But there you are. That's my voice. When you started the communications with the man convicted of your mother's murder, it must have been very difficult because of who he is. How do you feel towards him now? Because he obviously has started speaking, has given you some of the information that you need. Well, he's not my friend. I mean, he is information.

That's really what he is. I cannot forgive. I do not forgive. I mean, to me, he's got more information to give us, and that's what we're going to get. We will get more information out of him. Now he's opened the door of his memory and admitted to the crime. He admitted to it. He never admitted to it before.

He denied it. He's been in denial for all his life, for 50 years. He was only 22 or 21 at the time. So it has really been quite traumatic for him. You can see it takes it lot of him remembering this. And he has moments of saying, I'm not talking about this anymore. Go away. But it has been a really big job. I mean, it's not just a quick visit to him.

It's taken months and many, many hours of our lawyer there to communicate with him, to draw it out. And we recorded every conversation, we recorded with him, with his agreement. You know, I don't know what else to say. We just have so much proof that we should go and dig there. That's what we have and that's my desperate need. And what would it mean to you to get the answers that you've been looking for for so very long? Well, the answers, I've got looking for for so very long well the answers

I've got the answer but to find your mum to find her I mean I'm not going to find her she's not she's not there anymore she's she's been buried underground 51 years in a most horrible place and I just like to get her out of there and and respect her memory in my own way. Thank you ever so much for speaking to us this morning and do stay in touch with us here on Woman's Hour and best of luck with your efforts to move this investigation forward. That is Diane Mackay, who is Muriel's daughter, speaking to us about that harrowing, harrowing case. Now, with inflation at a 10-year high, energy bills on the increase and average pay rises failing to keep up with the rise of

the cost of living, and not forgetting an increase in national insurance coming this way, millions of people will find themselves worse off in 2022. In the last few hours, the Office for National Statistics has announced that the cost of living has risen by 5.4% in the 12 months to December. It's the highest rate of increase for 30 years, well above the Bank of England's 2% inflation target. Well, the number of households spending at least 10% of their family budgets on energy bills is set to treble overnight to 6.3 million households when the new energy price cap comes into effect on April. That's according to research by the Resolution Foundation, who have dubbed 2022 the year of the squeeze. There's also new analysis by the Joseph Roundtree

Foundation, which says that low-income families could spend on average 18% of their income after housing costs on energy bills. Well, to discuss the effect that this is having on women and families and indeed what needs to be done, I'm joined by Helen Bernard, who is Associate Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who worked towards social change through research, policy and practice. And also with us is Victoria Benson, Chief Executive of Gingerbread, a charity that gives advice and practical support to lone parents.

Good morning to you both. Good morning. Helen, we often get this discussion, don't we, about the country facing a cost of living crisis. Is that a fair assessment of the situation or is it very much that specific groups are going to really feel this much more than others? I think that's absolutely right. So we're all going to face higher costs. But the people for whom it is a real crisis are those whose incomes are too low to let them absorb that without real hardship. And what I think is very striking is that the groups that are going to be particularly exposed are disproportionately made up of women. So single parents are obviously primarily still women, and they have some of the

highest poverty levels of any group in the country. And actually, so we've said that low-income families, about 20% of their income is going to go on energy. For single parents, that's a quarter. And the other group is carers. So almost six in 10 carers are women. Carers have far higher poverty rates than non-carers. And of course, for both those groups, your ability to get a job or get more work is really constrained because you're the person who is juggling all the caring. So actually people find themselves trapped facing higher costs on low incomes and with no way out. Talk to us about your annual poverty stats which were released this week. You've looked at the extent to which households will be affected by the increase

in energy prices. Just outline for us what you discovered. Yeah so I think the most striking finding from our research was when you look at child poverty. Child poverty has been rising for several years, but particularly worrying the number of children in deep poverty. So with incomes that just won't cover the kind of the basics, that proportion has been growing and growing. So we've now got 1.8 million children growing up in this situation. And for many, it's not fleeting. This is a big chunk of your childhood that's overshadowed. You know, children who are cold but don't want to ask to have the heating on because they know their parents can't afford it. Children who are hungry

but are not going to ask for a snack because there's no spare food in the cupboards. And of course, parents, you know, one mother we've been talking to, she's seeing people asking their neighbours for extra duvets to try and keep her and her kids warm seeing people who are saying that I just can't turn the heating on so the kids are waking up shivering and I feel ashamed of that and they feel ashamed of having to live like that but they are just stuck in this situation. Victoria tell us what people are sharing with you, the experiences they're going through, particularly the lone parents you're speaking to on the helpline. So we work with lone parents. Over 90% are women. And we've seen a massive increase in calls to our

helpline about financial issues. People are really, really concerned about how they're going to afford all of the increased costs, because this isn't a new thing for single parents. We've seen costs increasing over the past year since the pandemic and we've and we've seen incomes reducing. So but, you know, people are so concerned. I was reading our social media, our Facebook page, and people are giving each other tips. Like Helen was describing about putting extra duvets on beds, only heating one room. And it's a really stark choice between food or heat. And it's as clear as that. Single parents simply don't have the buffer.

They don't have any spare income to pay for these costs. There are support packages in place, of course. There's the Warm Home Discount Scheme, there's the Household Support Grant. The government is making efforts to try and ease the burden on these families that are particularly affected. One proposal, which is reportedly being discussed between the government and Ofgem,

is where there would be some kind of subsidy payment paid to the energy companies. So the idea would be it would essentially plug some of the gap. It would stop them going bust and it would also stop them passing all of the extended costs onto people. Victoria, do you think that's a sensible approach to tackling this? It's a start. We really want to see additional support targeting low income families through social security. So universal credit.

When the government took away the £20 uplift, that had a real impact on low-income families. They really struggled because they were using that money to feed their children. It wasn't about luxuries. And so we'd like to see a reinstatement of that or similar and urgent support given to single parents, not just a one-off payment, but support that will help them every month with their costs, which aren't luxuries, they're just basics. Let me read you a statement from the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, about the rise in CPI inflation. He says, I understand the pressures people are facing

with the cost of living and we will continue to listen to people's concerns as we have done throughout the pandemic. We're providing support worth around £12 billion this financial year and next to help families with the cost of living. We're cutting the universal credit taper to make sure work pays. We're freezing alcohol and fuel duties to keep costs down and providing targeted support to help households with their energy bills. Helen, what do you make of the government's attempts to try and plug this gap, particularly what Rishi Sunak is saying there, but also this idea of this sort of subsidy payment

to energy companies? So in terms of what's been done with universal credit, so last autumn in the budget, the Chancellor did put money into universal credit, but only for people who are able to work and work quite a lot of hours. And what that did was basically pull away the rug from all the people who actually can't work and within the system are not expected to work. So disabled people, people who are caring for high hours for people, parents of young children. There's been nothing done to help those people who are in some of the deepest,

most persistent poverty cope with this. Now, I think that working with the suppliers to smooth costs, spreading the cost of supplier failure over a longer period of time, those are all good ideas. But as Victoria said, for those people who are facing, you know, this incredibly high level of hardship, those things are not going to touch the sides. If your bills have gone up by £600, doing something with supplier costs, that will potentially take it down by £100. But if you are already skipping meals, if you are already not able to heat your home, this is not going to be enough. They have to put targeted support through the system that's designed for it. You know, the benefit system is literally designed to find the people who need help and get money to them. So they need to put money through that system and they need to do it quickly.

I think we keep hearing that they're listening. We actually need action, not just listening, because people are living in fear of this. The dread people are telling us about, the dread of having to turn your heating off because you can only have it on half an hour a day, and the dread that this is going to get worse. You know, all this is before the big heating bill rises come. So we need the government to step in now with targeted help. And they've got the tools to do that. They just need to move on them. And we talked about, you talked about earlier about how children, many children, there's increasing number of children in deep poverty and the fact that people are having to

skip meals, they're too cold. How are children, I'm thinking about the life opportunities for these children, when the government is talking about wanting to improve life opportunities for children, if children are going to school hungry and cold, it's very difficult for them to get the same opportunities as other children. Absolutely. And I think what you find is that growing up in that kind of poverty, it touches every bit of a child's life. So at home, they're cold. They often don't have anywhere good to do homework.

Parents are doing their best, but there's not enough food to go around for everybody. But also children are not passive in this. Children are incredibly aware of what's going on with their parents. So when you're hearing, you know, children in primary school saying, I'm really worried about my mum because I can see she's really down because she can't pay the bills and I don't know what I can do to help. I don't think any of us want children going through their childhood feeling like that.

And of course, it cuts you off from opportunities. You know, people, mother was saying, I can't take the kids swimming anymore because we can't afford the bus fare. My son can't join a football team because even if we got that for free, I can't afford boots and to get him there. Children will lose the letters from school that say there is a non-uniform day if you can bring a pound in. They will lose the letters which invite you to do activities because they don't want their parents to have to face

higher bills. And children shouldn't spend their childhoods managing things like that. They should spend their childhoods enjoying things and learning and growing. But for too many, that is just being crushed by this weight of poverty. Thank you both for joining us. Let me read you a statement from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy regarding energy. We recognise people are facing pressures with the cost of living, which is why we are taking action worth more than £4.2 billion and supporting vulnerable households through initiatives such as the £500 million Household Support Fund and Warm Home Discount. The energy price cap is currently insulating millions of customers from high global gas prices. We will continue to listen to consumers and businesses on how to manage the

costs of energy. Thank you both to Helen Bernard, Associate Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, also Victoria Benson, Chief Executive of Gingerbread. Now, let's talk about something completely different to Perth in Scotland, where the hidden histories of a number of fascinating and influential women are to feature in a sculpture trail across the city. A list of over 50 women

who've lived in Perth over the centuries, from a witch to a pioneering photographer and the first female MP, has been drawn up as part of the Raise the Roof project. But it's down to a number of different community groups to decide which women will be chosen to be celebrated and featured when the new Perth City Hall Museum opens in 2024. Let's speak to Anna Day, who is Cultural Public Programme Manager at Perth and Kinross Council. Anna, so why initially did you feel that it was so important to uncover these stories and highlight them? Hi there. Thanks for having us on. So as a combination of circumstances, this is Scotland's Year of Stories 2022, which encourages us all to tell stories old and new. And at the same time, my job is to build excitement in Perth about a new museum we're building. And that means taking the stories

of the objects outside into the communities and getting them excited about the museum that's coming. And when I started to look around, there are streets and there are buildings everywhere in Perth named after men, as are in many towns and cities across the UK. But those stories about women, they weren't obvious to see. When I started searching under nooks and crannies, they are there. They're everywhere. They're amazing women throughout the history of Perth and Kinross. But what we want to do with this project is bring them to the fore and mean that people don't have to go searching, that they're right in front of you.

So tell us about some of the women who are on the list. Anna, can you hear me? Oh no, I think Anna's line might have dropped off. We'll try and reconnect with her. In the meantime, I'm pleased to say that we are also joined by Vanessa Lawrence, who is an artist, who is making... Well, you make incredible wire sculptures, don't you?

I was looking at some pictures earlier on, and you're involved in this project because you're going to make sculptures of the women who are selected. So just tell us a little bit about that. Well, for me, the processes that have been approached for this is fascinating. First of all, I think to take on a project where learning... You know, I've been reading through, looking at these women women and just to discover them and find out, you know, about them and their history and everything.

For me, that's fascinating. So it's the whole part of beginning to create these sculptures. It'll be about representing, you know, they won't be wearing anything specific or anything. It'd be more about trying to create something within the pose that they're sitting in or standing in that will, for me, you know, gives a representation of them. There won't be anything obvious, but a sort of subtle suggestion of that might incorporate something with their history and um about them so um so there's a long list of these women 50 women who are named but the community groups are going to choose which women they they want to be well brought to life effectively through your sculptures and you're going to work with them so tell us a little bit about how you make the sculptures they're from are they from chicken wire? That's what it looks like.

No, I just have one. I have a big reel of wire. Right. So I just cut off lengths of wire as I go. So it's just with my pliers and hands and just twist each bit. So they're all made up of, you know, single individual pieces of wire. And I just gradually build them up and build them up and create the form. So they'll be life-size. Right. They'll be life-size. And they're going to be placed across the city, aren't they? And effectively in a trail? Yes. Yes.

So people will be able to follow it round. How difficult is it to bring them to life when you don't have clothes or features that you might normally have in a sculpture? When you're working with chicken wire, how do you differentiate between the different characters, the different women, the different personalities that they have? This will be the sort of this is the challenge of it and this exciting part of it but um i mean when i've made one when i've made sculptures in

the past of figures um where they haven't necessarily meant to you know represent anybody as i as i'm building them up and as and they all end up creating a having a character of some form you know even I last year made a whole series of them and they're all the same measurement same everything but different poses but each one seemed whether it was within the pose they each seem to have their own individual character so that's what I'm hoping to sort of bring across whether like I said sort of a pose that they'll have or a particular angle they'll be at or that that'll be the sort of challenge to try and bring bring an element of of that person within the sculpture. Do stay with us Anna Day is back with us and Anna just before your line dropped out you were going to explain to us some of the the women

who are on this lift list of 50 just give us some of the examples of the women that you've you found more found out more about there's an amazing array of women so we've got people like marjorie kennedy fraser who was a songwriter and composer but she was also a big suffrage fan and really battled for suffrage for women. Victoria Drummond, who was the first woman in the Institute of Marine Engineers, and Isabel Moncrief, who her husband ran a factory and she was watching the shards of glass that weren't used in the factory and created Monart with an Italian designer, which is held, her pieces are held in the V&A and they're collectible and known around the world, but her name is not known anywhere. So we are telling her story and bringing her to the fore. We've got a couple of examples here

and some clips to listen to as well to talk about some of the women. The first Scottish female MP, tell us more. You're talking about Kitty Stewart-Murray, who was the first woman to sit in Westminster as a Scottish MP. And she was a big fighter against oppression and she resigned from Chamberlain's government in 1938. But she was also anti-suffrage. So she's an interesting and controversial character. Now, as well as being an MP, she was also the chairman of the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief for Victims of the Spanish Civil War. So let's have a listen to this clip.

She's talking about preparations being made for a camp to house 4,000 children coming from Bilbao to Southampton. We've had wonderful gifts of food and clothing also. We've had a whole lot of shoes, for instance, given us by the Boot and Shoe Trades Operatives Union, a most valuable gift. We've had two tons of onions given to us, and 40,000 oranges. And perhaps what the children will appreciate most of all, because of course Spanish children know all about oranges, we've been given enough chocolate to enable each child to have a bit of chocolate daily for the fortnight it will spend in the camp.

So that's one of the women on the list. Another one on the list, Anna, is Miss Georgina Ballantyne. Now, she is famous for an incredible thing. And the picture I saw earlier of this was just awesome. Explain. So she's famous for catching what is still the biggest fish ever to be caught on a line in the UK. It's nearly as big as her, isn't it?

It's enormous. It's 64 pounds. And she battled through the night to capture it. But she was also a nurse and she had her legs amputated but continued to work. So although she's known for this incredible feat of catching this fish, it's about the stories that are underneath and the stories that are not so well known about some of these women as well.

Let's have a listen to this clip here. It's Georgina's memories of landing that fish back in October 1922 It has been voiced up by an actor I wound the reel steadily until only the cast was left One awful moment of suspense followed

Then the gaff went in successfully which brought him to the side of the boat A second lift no small weight, over half a hundred weight brought him over the end, into the floor A second lift, no small weight, over half a hundredweight, brought him over the end, into the floor of the boat, farther out of puff, half sitting on top of him. We were met at the bridge by my mother, who was considerably relieved to see us back.

God sakes, I thought you were bathed in the water. Thus ended a red-letter day in the annals of the famous Glen Delvin beat of the River Tay. So Anna, I guess this is about making these women visible when they've been hidden for so long. Absolutely. And how we're doing that is a number of ways. But what we've asked communities to do, 22 community groups across Perth and Kinross, is to choose which woman's story they want to tell. So they're going away and they've got a couple of lines of information from me,

but they're going away and they are researching them. They are going above and beyond what I thought they would really do. They're visiting archives, they're visiting libraries, and actually in some cases contacting family members and finding out more about the woman. And then each community group will work with an artist to tell the story of the woman. So we're working with all sorts of artists from glassblowers, poets, printmakers. So the community groups are learning a new skill.

They're telling the story quite often from someone from their community. And all the work will be brought together as well. And it's interesting and all the work will be brought together as well and and it's interesting isn't it because um you know we were hearing from anna earlier on about how she's going to bring the personalities to life of these women listen thank you both so much for speaking with us this morning anna day there from perth and kinross council also heard earlier on from the artist vanessa lawrence now how would you respond to starting a relationship and being told by your new partner he was looking for a committed partnership, just one that did not include exclusivity? Author and journalist Rachel Krantz had to address just this and embrace it with her ex-partner, Adam.

She was nervous, yet intrigued. And so Rachel decided to give it a go, seeing whether she could cope with and even enjoy both of them dating other people. Well, in her debut memoir, Open, an uncensored memoir of love, liberation and non-monogamy, Rachel candidly shares with the reader her experiences of exploring Brooklyn sex parties in New York and being part of the swinger community. Well, Rachel Krantz spoke to me earlier on from California, and I asked her to explain the conversation she'd had with her partner and how the new relationship came about. Yeah, well, he told me on our second date before we'd even kissed, he said, there's something you should know about me. And I embraced myself because it's, you know, something is going to come after that and might not be good. And he said, if you were with me, I would never restrict you. I am looking for someone to share my life with, a primary partner.

But if you were to be that person for me, you could still date other people, fall in love with other people. I would just need to know that I'm privileged in some way and that you are being honest and safe. And when he told me that, I thought, oh, no, that sounds scary, but also a sense of exciting possibility because I'd heard of non-monogamy and I'd been a serial monogamist up to that point. I was 27. He was older. And I thought maybe this is a chance to do things a different way. I felt the pressure to find my soulmate, but I also didn't really feel any

genuine desire to settle down. So he kind of seemed like he was offering me to have the cake and eat the pie too, I guess. It's interesting as well that you said the conversation was you were allowed to fall in love with other people, because I think many people would think that in the sort of relationship that you had, it would be you love each other, but you kind of fool around with other people. But the idea of loving someone else was within the realms of this relationship. It was. And that's, you know, polyamory. I would say the difference between that and traditional swingers or couples who might have more don't ask, don't tell policies where they do tend to

relegate it more to this is about sexual novelty and not about feelings. Whereas the difference is polyamorous people will say, yes, it's about love primarily, and that you can love more than one person or love in different forms. In your book, you talk about jealousy as one of the prevailing emotions that you felt during this time. And I'm sure lots of people can identify with that. How did you cope with that jealousy whilst living this life? Well, not very well at first. It was an extremely intense physiological response that was quite humbling. Your body kind of, or mine, went into fight or flight mode a lot of the times. My stomach hurt. I felt achy. But it is kind of like an exposure therapy where over time, through seeing repeatedly that the world didn't end or that he

came back home, I would start to get less and less jealous over things that had made me jealous before. But I definitely found that jealousy was the most difficult aspect of non-monogamy for me, as it is for many other people. And I think that when we talk about jealousy, it actually encompasses a wide array of emotions. It's kind of, we think of like, oh, the green-eyed monster and envy, but it's also really intense feelings of abandonment and loss, shame. So there's just, it's a perfect cocktail of all your childhood wounds potentially so what would you say are to build on what you've just said what would you say are the benefits of being in this kind of relationship what do you get out of it now well for different people it's different

of course but for me personally um i in the relationship I'm giving up all possibility in the future of novel romantic or sexual experiences, which have always been, you know, one of the most vibrant things about life to me. So I think that I get to enjoy the stability of a long-term partnership, but also the perks of having butterflies with new people and just exploring different aspects of myself and not expecting one person to fulfill my every need, which is a lot of pressure that I think we see is not working for a lot of people. You've mentioned some of the pitfalls. And I just wonder in what ways these kind of open relationships can be quite controlling. Well, it really depends, right? You have people in monogamous relationships who are obviously very controlling. So I think anytime you have multiple people coming together, two or more, you're going to have power dynamics and you're going to have beautiful outcomes and

you're going to have people who abuse those structures for control. So in monogamy, that might look like, for example, that over 50% of the women who are murdered in the United States are murdered by a romantic partner and an estimated 12% of those cases are associated with jealousy. And we have kind of the, you know, one of the key warning signs of an abusive relationship will be extreme jealous behavior of why are you wearing that? Men are going to stare at you or why were you talking to him or looking at him that way um and then in non-monogamy it might express itself uh in different ways where it's about you know why are you feeling jealous like don't you love me can't you just like be okay with whatever i'm doing, basically, because this is the more evolved way to be and jealousy is immature. So you might see people kind of wielding or coercing in that way. But I

think it's not, you know, it just expresses itself differently in different relationship models, but there's always going to be people who are abusive. If you look at the power dynamics in open relationships, does there's always going to be people who are abusive. If you look at the power dynamics in open relationships, does the power always lie with the person who suggests it? No, I don't think so. I mean, well, I think power dynamics are so complicated, right? I think that at different points in a relationship or different aspects of a relationship, one person might hold more power or another. But I do think, you know, there in the case of my relationship with Adam in the book, it was also my first kind of dumb sub dynamic, but a largely uncommunicated one. So he

was very dominant in pretty much every aspect of our lives. And I was more the submissive one. And so I think that power dynamic very much carried through into non-monogamy. And non-monogamy was sort of an extension of that dynamic because it was another area that he had all the experience in. So you've mentioned that you're in a new relationship, which is also open. Yes. And so how was that conversation approached?

Was that something that your current partner had experienced before, or was it something that you suggested? It was something I suggested from the beginning. And, you know, probably kind of to surprise of some of the people reading the book, although maybe not. I think they'll understand by the time I get there how that couldity, how I'm exploring all these different sides of myself, how in some ways I really am feeling increasingly liberated and like I'm shedding the script of what I thought I had to do as a woman in order to arrive at my adult life.

And so when I started dating my current partner, I was already like sort of seeing someone else. And I said, you know, that's not a super serious relationship, but I'm still interested in dating them. And, you know, that went through different phases. It didn't last that much longer. And we've gone through phases together where it's been monogamous, certainly over the pandemic. But I was just kind of clear from the beginning of this is what I want, but also learning from being on the other end of that, saying to him, what do you need to feel safe? You know, what are your boundaries? How can I make this something that would work for you? And making it very much a conversation, which is, I think, how it should be either way. Ideally, is that there's nothing wrong with choosing monogamy. I think that's a great choice for

many people. But I think the problem comes when it's just the default and it's not even allowed to be a conversation and people aren't choosing it consciously. It's just something they feel forced into. And then you see these very high rates of cheating and divorce. So it's about the conversation. You're essentially talking about continually making sure that both parties are happy within the relationship. And that's why this current relationship works for you. I just wonder, is it exhausting? It sounds really tiring to keep one relationship going. Many people would say it is time consuming and requires energy and emotion to be holding

that relationship down and also seeking others, it does sound exhausting. Yeah, I think it depends on the people and their situation and also how they express their non-monogamy in their relationship. Because, you know, there's people profiled in the book who are more like traditional swingers and they pretty much stick to lifestyle resorts and parties. So it's a pretty compartmentalized aspect of their life and they seem to get a lot of benefit from it. You're still young now. I just wonder if this is something you see that you will do forever or if there will be a time when you'll return to a monogamous relationship? I think that I will likely want some degree of this freedom for my life,

but I think that things come up, of course, where it's not appropriate. Like a pandemic for me, that was an example of like, nope, not worth it to me to risk this. Whereas I did see some other non-monogamous people I knew who were willing to risk that. Has it changed your view of love? Yeah, it has. I think that I view love more now as something that can take many different forms and that

can sometimes be more fluid. So whereas before, I think I was trying to fit anyone I was dating into that role of potential life partner. And it was very confusing because a lot of the times we were not compatible in that way, but I would still fall in love with them. And then we would try to work it through. Now I've had some experiences with people where I can love them deeply and have meaningful relationships, but we maybe only see each other once a month. And while we're together, it's very intimate, but it's also clear that we would be incompatible in the long term as partners. And that's in terms of as life partners, right? And so there's a certain acceptance of potential impermanence,

but it's also quite poignant and beautiful to be able to still have deep experiences with people without trying to force it into just one specific mold. And that was the author and journalist Rachel Krantz speaking to me about her debut memoir Open, an uncensored memoir of love, liberation and non-monogamy. Thanks for your company here this morning on Woman's Hour. All right, here we go Oti. Five, six, seven, eight. Dance. It has the power to connect and to entertain. And in a new series for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, I explore the iconic dancers who have been doing just that. Dance,

it really, I think, saved my life. Join me, Oti Mabuse, as I delve into the lives of the innovators and the mall breakers who have changed dance forever. Gene Kelly was this working class guy that I just really connected with that. Oti Mabuse's Dancing Legends on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.