SusanGaszczak

Last months tax £49.65

This months tax £65.60

This is my main income individually and WOW does it hurt! At least my self employed work will not give me that pain until next year!

I just hope people voting next week will look closely at their payslips!

Speaking as a parent this is always a difficult subject. You want your children to be safe on the internet, allow them to learn, get them to avoid Facebook, My Space, Bebo and a host of other social Networking sites until we as parents, and it is a very individual thing, feel they are old enough.

Regardless of begging I have not allowed my elder children on any of the named sites; I feel that at 12 and almost 11 they are not old enough. They are well ‘trained' on most occasions and tell me which sites they are joining. Only on one occasion so far have I discovered that they have joined a site that was not appropriate.

When they came to me and explained they wanted to join a site recently I was happy. This site allowed them to create an ‘avatar', have a guest book and chat with friends. The site has a policy of registering a parent's email address if you are under 13. They both registered me and I was given a link to disable their accounts. I was happy, they were chatting with their step sister and each other.

Being a vigilant parent I know their email addresses and often log in as them to check their status and make sure they are safe. So far, so good. Then, my children decided to upgrade their accounts - it was during the holidays, we had rain, we had snow and they were bored. The cost was a fiver each for the month; for this they could get the chance of an extra room, to set up clubs and have regular weekly spending .money' to buy things for their room.

I checked the advice of the site concerned and it put the responsibility on the parents to ensure they were safe.

It was only when I got the receipt that I discovered my credit card would be charged every 30 days until I cancelled. I had said they could have one month only, only now I need to remember to cancel it in about 10 days time.

My eldest also started telling me about the strangers that were asking to be their friends. I then started to look closer at the site and realised that actually it was no different than Facebook. It is just a register of children. It says it is monitored, part of kidsafe and children under 13 can only communicate with friends, but anyone can add a friend and accept.

This requires parental supervision. However I would only be able to supervise if my children communicate their password. I know my children's but how many other parents do?

Whilst there is a need for safe networking for children, and this site has given extreme pleasure on rainy days to mine, there is also maybe a need for children under 13 to have their parents activate their accounts, be given their passwords and be notified of the friends their children are adding.

I have not named the site as I know they are not the only site to use practises such as this, barely scraping through the guidelines.