Am currently working on my CV and putting together a portfolio/demo website. In other words, needs must etc.

Blogging. It’s great, but it doesn’t pay the bills. Sadly.

Meh

Poor Tories. I really get the sense that they’ve really tried with this one: Saving the country one billion pounds (ish) the Government will stop paying Child Benefit to higher rate taxpayers.

It’s pumping the rich for more cash, which apparently everyone’s in favour of so this news should have welcomed. Except… of course it’s not. Let us deconstruct.

First, when people say “the rich” what they mean is, “those people richer than me.” People who aren’t bankers, for example, want people who are bankers to pay more tax. People with children want people without children to pay more tax.

People want every social problem in the world fixed by the Government, and they love – absolutely love – their free money that comes from some mystical, magical source. But – and this is an important but – they want someone else to pay. I mean, what’s the point of demanding the Government fixes something if they then go and make you pay for it? Doesn’t that defeat the point (the point being you want the Government to fix it and the Government to pay for it. I mean, it’s obvious isn’t it?)

Tax is crap. Paying tax is crap. That’s the truth. The gap between what people would like to pay versus what they actually pay is huge, and in that gap are thousands and thousands of public services, including “free” schools, “free” healthcare, and “free” money. That ‘gap’ is the bit that other people are supposed to pay.

Hmm. So, okay, let me declare an interest. I don’t have children. Now, now, I understand – as long as I’ve got a box to live in and occasional bread and water that’s all I strictly need. In fact, to be honest, that box starts to look like a bit of a luxury with the country’s budget deficit being as it is. My job in this world is to be ‘other people’ because, politically, I don’t have a leg to stand on. I’m healthy. I’m capable of earning a living. I don’t have anyone to look after so I’m in real danger of living a life of decadent, hedonistic pleasure while others have bravely sacrificed their adult lives to raise the next generation like all good citizens should.

Isn’t child benefit a God Given Right? People with children have to buy more presents at Christmas! People with children need to pay more to go on holiday! It’s not fair that they should have to shoulder this burden alone! I mean, not while there’s childless people with boxes that look suspiciously spacious for their needs.

The Tories mistake today has been failing to understand this. Perhaps they actually believe they’re allowed to make some of the richer people with children, in effect, pay more tax. I’m sure someone will explain where they’ve gone wrong and, no doubt, they’ll put things right soon.

One specific way they’ve gone wrong is that a couple could earn £87k and still claim child benefit because, technically, both people fall into the basic rate band, not the higher rate band. In other words, here’s “richer people than us” getting away with it built into it from the beginning. Presumably this is about avoiding the mind-boggling costs of turning Child Benefit into a proper means tested benefit, which is the main reason Child Benefit has been a universal freebie until now. That projected saving of £1 billion begins to look a lot less juicy.

At the core of this problem is the fact that the people affected already pay a huge pile of tax. They consider child benefit a sort of rebate. I don’t have a problem with people complaining about having to pay more money to the Government, but unless they’re also complaining about Government spending and how much tax they pay then really they’ve only got themselves to blame.