Getting the Middle-Classes Off Welfare
The Mumsnet crowd are livid. It must be doubly annoying for them after they had nice Nick and dishy Dave over for biscuits during the election without any webchat about child benefit cuts. Nevertheless, was it ever sensible to tax people nearly half their income and then give them little welfare transfers back?
Frankly welfare universalism is a political con, it makes no sense economically and the logic of it is entirely cynical. The left wants to get the middle-classes to buy in to the welfare state, to do that they have to bind the middle-classes in. The left argues – quite openly – that if the middle-classes don’t see any benefits from the welfare state they’ll vote against it. It would be far more efficient to tax people less rather than hand them a little back after their taxes have passed through the hands of bureaucrats.
And while were at it
Why ask the councils to provide schools, care homes, bins, swimming pools etc. Most of these are sub-contracted out to private companies which we could buy direct – without all those layers in between.
…or would politicians be out of a job too.
How many Mums are fortunate enough to earn over 44K anyway?
Never mind that. If the French can put a banker in jail and demand he pays the billions he gambled back, why can’t we do the same with our Politicians?
Gordon, hand yourself in NOW
Small State.
Low taxes.
The Lab / Lib / Con cabal of crooks will never allow the above.
pray do enlighten us what system would ?
I happened to see that on French telly last night. He is having to pay back 2,300 euros a month… for a total of 170,000 years. A la vache!
Msr Defarge and I had this same conversation last night when we werepolishing the tumbrils. How have any of them avoided charges, starting with Bliar and through to Scorched Earth Broon?
It’s weird, if you read HG Wells ‘the new world order’, it actually calls for precisely what Brown did.
No pension funds, but pensions raised from tax. (something about not encouraging large pots of money and paying people to manage it)
All gold should be sold, presumably at low value and with extreme opposition. As gold is described as a useless commodity (i think)
Given Brown loves to quote NWO, but I was still a bit surprised to see Wells influencing Browns theory.
First try to get the £55,000 from Osborn, this is how much tax he avoided when he sold his second home.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318028/As-families-face-benefits-cuts-Kelly-Marshall-spent-4-500-BOOB-JOB.html
I thought that too OH.
Halal chickens coming home to roost
Call me Miss Picky if you like, but I bet if you grabbed a chicken, slit its throat and held the terrified creature until it had bled to death, it wouldn’t come home. Not to roost, not for anything. I bet it would stay well away from you. It wouldn’t like you at all.
But it would run around.
Go to youtube, type in halal butcher lamb, then, if you can stomach it, watch the whole wretched, ritualistic process. Then ask yourself if you want to go for a curry ever again. I did and I can’t.
This is what they do to humans as well and post it on the net.
And a husband who earns more than that can always be dumped.
Almost all the one’s who work in the Public Sector??
Cameron says sorry to stay-at-home mothers (… but he isn’t backing down): Backlash grows over child benefit cut
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318034/Backlash-child-benefit-cut-grows-David-Cameron-says-sorry.html#ixzz11ZUXuRQ1
Backlash? What backlash? A spoiled and selfish bunch of middle-class benefit spongers? Please spare me the irony.
This child benefit cut has an 83% approval rating according to the latest poll. That, by any standards, is an overwhelming approval rating for any controversial government policy change and the tories have increased their position in the polls by 5 points.
It seems that it is a tiny, selfish and irresponsible minority, who happen to have a very prominent media representation, who are utterly out of touch with the feelings of most people in this country.
The BBC, of course, did not report on how popular this cut is with the public. They are still trying to kill it. I guess there are many in the media bubble who will have to forego a third holiday paid for by their grotesque claiming of welfare by those who do not need it.
Welfare should ONLY be available to those in greatest need.
I am on about half as much income as is required to pay the higher rate of income tax. I can get by on this amount, and therefore I am not in need of any state handouts.
I am overwhelmingly FURIOUS at these spoiled whining middle class and wealthy welfare parasites in the media who dare to bleat on about losing a state benefit that even I do not need, and they have double or more than my income. It is truly sickening.
I object in the strongest term to my taxes being used by middle-class welfare parasites. They are as bad as benefits cheats who work and still claim other benefits to which they are not entitled.
‘It seems that it is a tiny, selfish and irresponsible minority, who happen to have a very prominent media representation, who are utterly out of touch with the feelings of most people in this country.’
And the Telegraph and the BBC and Channel four news and the Mirror and the Guardian etc…..
Indeed MrNed, The BBC’s Laura Koonsburger has spent the week to date asking the same questions about worra-bhaat-the-poor-middle-classes that are losing their benefits, FFS the BBC have zero proximity to this real world.
Useless token-bint
Please don’t confuse class with salary ‘earned.’ Middle class, pah!
These people have very little class, as they are demonstrating with hysterical venom.
It would appear that the cuts are fine as long as they only apply to someone else, such as the little people.
This whinging minority ought to be ashamed.
Couldn’t agree more. As a single person with a first class honours degree, head of dept in the prep section of a public school, I never got near the salary that that would attract the higher rate. I have paid the maximum tax throughout my career, and not had any benefits whatsoever. And yet these talentless mums bleat that they will have to go skiing in Austria now rather than Colorado. They make me puke. Selfish, selfish, selfish breeders.
That’s the problem with the Welfare State- once people get used to the handouts, they scream and whine if they are taken away- even 3 years from now. Even if they don’t need them.
Average BBC salary? £53,226pa. Nuff sed.
Yes it’s the death of the Yummy Mummy — and not before time.
I’m sick of them cluttering up cafes with their push chairs and screaming brats while I’m trying to have a quiet break/lunch hour. I’m sick of their double-parked 4x4s cluttering up every school gate while they gossip about which gym has the hunkiest trainer or who’s having botox this week.
We pay for this… we work for them to idle through life consuming their cup cakes and cappucinos — it must stop.
Here here Susie. I could not agree more.
Over 80% in an opinion poll think this child benefit idea is great. It;s just a few TV interviewers and Journalists who are trying their best to whip up a storm over it. Lets face these same tossers have been trying every day to find a way to split up the coalition just to get a story.
Meanwhile our taxes go to pay for the benefits of this classy lady.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318028/As-families-face-benefits-cuts-Kelly-Marshall-spent-4-500-BOOB-JOB.html
I rasie you:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3166938/Breadline-mum-got-60-inch-telly-on-benefits.html
I vote for you.
Fine, lets then have a flat rate of income tax so that we don’t unfairly penalise people who work harder than everyone else and create other people’s jobs.
I agree with all you say on this subject. However it is blatantly ridiculous that an £80k income household retains it.
Unless of course it costs more in bureaucracy to dock it from these people as well than it would actually save – sometimes life isnt fair. And I say that as a high earner with 3 kids and a layabout wife
Bin the layabout Wife. You won’t regret it.
Not if she’s NORWICH
Nockers
Out
Ready
When
I
Come
Home
That Norwich you mean?
Ned, when I grew up it was nickers off ready etc
Yeah that would be better.
It’s been that long, I can hardly remember…
Tough Titty. Who said that life was fair?
Any one person earning more than £44,000 can’t possibly justify a state handout for his/her Sprogs.
Noone should be getting a ransom paid for their sprogs.
they should get to be king of retard Presidents and have fuckwits like you worship them
It is the wealthy and spoiled media luvvies who are complaining. I guess that annual third holiday in the South of France will have to go… We are all in this together don’t you know.
The fact is, this is an overwhelmingly popular policy. Not that you can get that impression from the mainstream media.
I guess that it falls to the blogosphere to get the truth out to the public (again) where the mainstream media willfully fail to do so.
As George Osborne argued, couples on 43k each, or a combined income of 86k stay under the higher rate of tax, yet a single woman next door on 45k will pay the higher rate of tax, why has nobody ever complained about this?
The real reason for the complaints are that the press and MSM is full of people with kids on the higher rate tax band and they are simply greedy cretins having a whinge.
CORRECT.
+1
In addition to this, isn’t obvious that 44k+ earners aren’t middle England? It represents only 15% of tax payers.
Very disappointed the Tories are wobbly already. Message should be: tough titties, we’re doing this for a better tomorrow so we can eventually reduce the higher rate tax band.
The polls out last night should steady the nerves. This is an overwhelmingly popular change.
When can you last point out a significant (with the media) controversial policy change by government, which was also widely attacked constantly in the media, which also had an approval rating of 83%???
The mainstream broadcast and dead-tree media are WILDLY out of touch.
Come on Guido, Kick some mainstream media arse with that!
nearly three-quarters of electors view the conflict as “unwinnable” and more than half say they do not understand why British troops are still in Afghanistan
so why are we still there?
This is their core voters, now Osborn told them not to vote Tory again. If I am Dave, I would have kicked this fool on his nuts and thrown him out.
We are there because we are defending our country and spreading freedom and democracy….
…and protecting the opium harvest…
…and protecting the oil pipelines…
…and building bases surrounding Iran…
…and projecting our military force up to the borders of the old Soviet Union and approaching Russia herself…
and…
No, surely it’s about promoting female literacy and keeping large and iconic statuary (which in many cases is on a UNESCO World Heritage list) from being dynamited by those awful Telybansmen.
It’s really weird – where I live every couple seems to earn £43k each and every single mum earns £45k
spooky
I do wonder why people who earn 45k don’t have the sense to reduce their wages to 43k so they will walk out with about 8k more after tax + family allowance!
Are people who earn 45k really so dim?
Quite. Would be interesting to see the stats as to how many people earn just above and below the threshold. Guess some people on a basic plus commission may not be able to manoeuvre themselves below, especially if they have targets.
It’s called ‘salary sacrifice’. If just over the higher rate limit, get your employer to put that amount into your pension fund BEFORE you receive it. You never received the money, you still cop the child allowance.
Very true.
Higher rate 40% comes in at 44,000 Taxable income, that’s the gross less the tax-free allowance, so their actual salary could actually be quite a bit more (or less if their tax code is negative!)
would that be the single woman who experienced an immaculate conception? Ok, I know that there are some widows but, let’s face it, very lttle of the epidemic of single mothers in this country is due to mortality among fathers.
Oldrightie you must be thick.
the one on 44k puts in less money to the system than the ones on 80k
why should the one on 44k get more than the dual income dual tax payers.
the torygraph and ALL other commentators havent done the maths on this correctly.
Why should we susidise someone who has made the lifestyle choice to stay at home with their kids. from age 3 the frigging kids arent even at home themselves as they have freee bloody nursery places that the family of 2 workers on 80k are paying for.
The MSM mail and beeb and co need to stop being so shrill and do the math. trouble is they were all educated under the labour system and they cant manage it
They are all so shrill because they will have to lose the third holiday in the south of France that my bloody taxes are subsidising.
Child Benefit isn’t welfare, d’uh.
Everyone in the country should be allowed to claim £100 a week then we should scrap all other benefits and welfares and replace all tax with a flat rate.
In fact income tax is just wrong.. scrap it.
The Daily Wail reading twittering Middle Classes will have to get used to paying for the trips to the villa in Tuscany out of their wages instead of Child Benefit. Benefits for for people who need them, not a universal right.
Who gives a shit about “Mumsnet” anyway.
Mums?
Was it not mums who put Tony Blair in office as well? They did not appear concerned at the time that he would give free range to his chancellor to bankrupt the country with handouts to buy votes. And those mums still voted in their droves for Blair AFTER the Iraq war. How can one square the total logic of the headline here with this sort of thinking? I gave up and left, it was over my head then and still is now.
Men and women alike tend to agree that making sacrifices and acting for the common good is entirely worthy provided it isn’t them that has to make the sacrifice.
I can’t imagine that anybody will be thrown into penuary by this proposal; some may continue to benefit slightly unfairly, but hey – life ain’t fair. Somebody else gets a few quid more than you – well so what. If you can’t cover the bills on a family income of £44,000 you are doing something seriously wrong.
Agree completely, Engineer. My faith is restored.
Well said, as always.
The publicity arm of the labour party (aka BBC) even asked the head of Joe’s if their profits will be hit by the removal of CB from higher earners. Talk about milking it for all it’s worth and then some.
The mainstream media is failing massively (again) this time to show what the public mood really is on this measure. People are overwhelmingly in favour of it.
It also smacks of true, responsible conservatism. It is NOT right that I earn half as much as these people and my taxes help to subsidise their holidays, 3D-TVs, new car or whatever it may be.
Engineer is correct. Any family on 44,000 pounds a year must be made to be self sufficient.
How the hell are the winging middle classes (and especially the tories) who are complaining about this, expecting to get the lazy, unemployed chav who insists on treating living on benefits as a positive lifestyle choice to become self-sufficient if these wealthy, middle and upper class parasites cry like a six year old bitch with a scraped knee for losing a benefit that they clearly DO NOT NEED!
FFS!
What’s wrong with having the situation where each person has a tax allowance transferable to a legally married partner for both personal allowance and higher rate threshold?
At the moment of Daddy earns £100K and Mum £10K, mum pays £700 tax over the year and Daddy pays £29,930 in tax. Using the transferable allowance system and transferring all of Mum’s allowance to Daddy, Mum would pay £2,000 and Daddy £19,860. Provided both agree, then the family saves around £9,000 in tax. It is a means of being fair to families where there is only one breadwinner, but it will cost too much so don’;t expect to see boy George endorsing it.
probably grannies too.
HardWorkingFamilies?
Digital Low Carbon Hard Working Families?
Quite seriously Akvavitix i’ve just received a flyer in the mail this morning asking “Are you digitally excluded?”
It would have been much better if that came in an email.
Ha Ha LOL! #4
Apparently politicians do give a shit about mumsnet, it gives them that touchy-feely quality without the touching and feeling.
Rumours are starting to persist that many of the women that post there are bonkers – so i’m told….
They would probably be happier in Russia, betonski.
Bonkers as in mad or bonkers as in sexually liberated?
It wasnt that long ago that “Mumsnet” and other such gatherings of the middle classes would have been full of talk about how much their home was now worth and how easy it was to get “interest free” credit and “balance transfers” yada yada yada. Stupid and thick every one of them.
Vote Labour, comrade! Labour will destroy your enemy.
Bigoted women and (ahem..) the squeezed middle.
Mumsnet strikes me as a platform for interfering self-important busybodies who (a) think they represent all other mums in the country and (b) think that everyone should listen to them because they have children.
And it’s about time mums were prosecuted for their dangerous parking, maneuvering and driving outside schools.
And for using pushchairs in a public place, and having screaming children in supermarkets.
Yes please, oh the joy of peace and quiet.
Dunno, I used to like going to the supermarket and seeing a mother lose it and beat the shit out of her kid.
Sadly, political correctness has vastly reduced this free entertainment!
Yes yes yes to all the above.
During a tube strike I was once shoved out of my place in a massive bus by one of them with her push chair, when I objected, she said “But I’ve got a CHILD!”.
I bided my time, but when I got off at my stop, I (childishly) gave her hair a sharp yank.
The sense of entitlement is disgusting, Andrew Neil said on Tuesdays DP that there was a sense of outrage in the BBC news room (all those “yummy mummies”).
Fuck the special interests! Mumsnet is the new Coal Miners Union, somebody order a police baton charge.
LMAO!!!!
I guess that there will be less foreign holidays, less botox and less cleavage enhancement cream being bought from the proceeds of my taxes then.
GOOD!
Most of this spending was on imported goods, damaging our balance of payments, so Double GOOD!
Dave, Nick and Red Ed?
Bloody fat breeding bitches – sterilise the lot of them after brat number 2 has dropped!
This is fun, what must lefties and Guardianistas make of us attacking middle class moaners?
It pisses me off to hear Tories complaining about the removal of what is simply revenue churn i.e. tax a lot and give back a little. We’re supposed to believe in the small state, and that means for everyone. It seems some Tories definition of a small state is simply an excuse to kick the poor.
Agreed, I have been educating tories about what favouring a small state and lower taxes actually means. And sometimes that means leading by example and practising what you preach.
If you do not NEED it, Do not claim it!
Benefits should not be entitlements. They should be appropriate levels of help only available to those who genuinely NEED them and who qualify.
Treating benefits as “entitlements” has created a system where wealthy middle classes feel no guilt in claiming welfare. A situation which would have been unheard of some decades ago when self-reliance was a virtue.
It’s all Sue’s fault.
Getting anyone off Social payments is always a political bummer, once you get used to a regular cheque from the state it becomes seen as a right not as a luxury that’s being paid for by someone else. I’m a Liberal and I’m fully behind this voslition and these cuts are an unavoidable because of Labours complete failure to end “boom and bust”.
Come on now, be fair, I did end boom.
Nurse!
Oi! Gordon! What happened to that 10p tax rebate you promised to sort out. That was three years ago. Where’s my 10p ?
I call upon my friend and Mentor ‘Big’ Al Greenspan to help me on that one!
Al?
I am a conservative libertarian and I agree with this measure. In fact people across the whole political spectrum tends to agree that this is a good policy change. Left wing and right wing alike. Why? Because it is simply the just and right thing to do.
Removing state aid from people who clearly have no NEED of it is wholly justified.
It is only a small, spoiled, selfish tiny minority who are opposed. many of those happen to work in the mainstream media.
“Removing state aid from people who clearly have no NEED of it is wholly justified.”
The vast majority seem to agree with this view, so why is the removal of this benefit being delayed for 3 years? Political cowardice? If we are in the mire we should start in the next tax year – there’s an extra £2bn saved already!
Probably to be extra kind and to give those same middle classes time to adjust their expenditure to absorb this relatively small loss.
Yes but! – which party will reduce taxes ?
Dave has been totally unmasked by his latest sop to the Libdems.
Nulab has been replaced by Nucon with the emphasis on the second syllable.
Thanks to the car-crash economy left behind by the labour party, the first and most pressing priority is to pay off the deficit. If we can have tax-cuts which promote business and get the economy moving again fine, but we cannot afford large tax cuts yet. We need to perform the surgery on the victim of the car crash to save the patient first.
A victim of a car crash might wish to have cosmetic surgery to enhance her boobs, but fixing her broken leg would be a better idea. If that means that an amputation to prevent necratic loss and blood poisoning, then so be it, if it is necessary.
In such cases it is wrong to attack the surgeon for the cuts, but one should attack the drunk diver that hit her car head on who caused the crash.
You clearly don’t understand the game here. The surgeon is likely to have malpractice insurance or NHS indemnity which we can hope to milk for a pay-out even if he isn’t remotely culpable as its cheaper for him and his insurer or the NHS than a protracted court battle. The drunk driver won’t be covered by his insurer so the pay-out will probably be meagre and will depend on us bankrupting him.
A good analogy there Ned. Thank you.
Proof if proof was needed that the “middle classes” are just as thick and stupid as the shameless generation. Truth be told our present predicament is a consequence of the potemkin credit and debt economy fueled by said middle Englanders trying to keep up with the joneses. Stupid fuckers !!!
I watched enough war films.
I’ve got a volvo estate, a sherman tank, and a hawker hurricane in the drive, They’re all just made of cardboard.
OK. I park them on the pavement.
10% flat tax. First 10k tax-free.
LVT, no punishments for working, employing, spending, saving, investing.
Citzens dividend instead of rewards for not-working, not thinking, not saving and not helping.
Untill this country leaves the EUSSR VAT will never be lowered to 10%, then at that time we can dump the pages of elf n sfty and other stupid rules. Sunny times ahead.
Caption:
DC – Have you seen this! Its great. “two girls and a cup”
Hmm that phrase seems familiar…
I shall immediately google the phrase ‘two girls one cup’
I wouldn’t if you have not had breakfast yet – nor for a good time after, either.
You really wouldn’t like my ping-pong ball trick.
But you might like mine!
Guido has hit the nail on the head over this farce of taxing people in order to give their money back to them (in a diminished sum after the State’s “admin fee”).
I agree completely, Liable. This government has a golden opportunity to rationalise the whole tax, welfare and benefits system.
Child benefit is a chimera that morphed out of a tax allowance for families to encourage them to breed. It is now an anachronism and should be scrapped entirely.
It became, in the early 70s, a benefit to be paid directly to mothers (feminist inspired) without going through the sight or hands of bastard men. Sadly, it resulted in extra layers of administration and costs – as does just about every damn thing that is instigated by left wing government.
Stop bloody punishing us for earning! Stop rewarding idleness and apathy. Start encouraging enterprise, resourcefulness and independence. It’s not going to happen though, because we would need fewer politicians!
Hopefully IDS welfare reforms will make it a simple, joined up system. One payment if you need it, better off working, look after the vulnerable,stop the scroungers.
In order to make that work, politicians would have to delegate authority to civil servants to make judgements on individual cases. Can you see any of them having the moral courage to do that?
Rhetorical ? !!!
The trouble with one payment if you “need” it, is that this reward for being “needy” creates more “needy” people.
If government wants to do an insurance scheme, then it has to have premiums that adjust for risk on an individual basis.
Genuine sick, disabled etc deserve help. The current system rewards layabouts to have a comfortable lifestyle with fags, booze, holidays plasma’s playstations etc without contributing a penny to society.
It’s always intrigued me that National Insurance – what you pay into the insurance scheme – is based on your salary, not your risk.
Imagine phoning an insurance broker and asking for a quote on a ’08 Golf. “That depends on what you earn. If you earn nothing, it’ll be free and we’ll even give you the car, but if you earn a lot, oooh, you’re stuffed, mate.”
“The current system rewards layabouts to have a comfortable lifestyle with fags, booze, holidays plasma’s playstations etc without contributing a penny to society.”
And until 2013 it also rewards the middle classes who have no real need of welfare sponging.
How are we going to get the layabouts to become productive, self-sufficient members of society, if those middle-class welfare spongers cannot be weaned of the state’s teat?
At gunpoint in labour camps, Mr Ned.
That just about sums it up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318028/As-families-face-benefits-cuts-Kelly-Marshall-spent-4-500-BOOB-JOB.html
All this talk of child benefit is making me broody.
Stan Why did they spend so much on the enhancement.
If the poor girl had wiped her cleavage with loo paper for 5 years her nockers would have become enormous. It worked on Mrs Kettle Ass that way
I must agree with you, Mr Holiday.
Especially the last bit!
But what about the Bureaucrats? The state has to employ these people, doesn’t it?
Maximum limit: one per 1k head of population. Maximum pay 5 x minimum wage. Pension: based on average commercial pension benifits.
I prefer bureaucats.
Yes, tax those few souls left that still have a work ethic a little bit more and cut their benefits so that some workshy chav can have £26k tax free. You know it makes sense.
We work so they dont have too. Its fair, its right, its thanks to Labour.
Churchill insurance
“Never before, in the housing estates of Britain, has so much, been given by so few, to so many..”
Hi!!!!!
Recognise me??
Yes, – that’s right, – the clone of Phoney Tone! You’re ‘Right On!!’ as He would say.
But, you know, things aren’t always as we want them. Or indeed, the truth like wot I say it is!
And if I change or distort the truth, or fudge over what I’m going to do, then hey! That’s what I do!!!
But trust me!! I’mastraightkindaguy!
And smarmy with it!!
And I’m very rich!!!
but still not as rich as me Tony even if you are my hero
Gordon Brown bombed my post office and my pub.
he turned me into a newt
Clearly you got better Ron lol
I presume twas you that did the nose and the hat
Whilst agreeing in principle re universal benefits Boy George has made a right cods of this. The anomalies appear not to be thought, it feels like policy on the hoof. If you are a single working parent and you can afford it then you can side step it by reducing your taxable salary by paying more into your pension.
Capping benefits to £26,000 which is supposedly the national average. Does anybody know if this average figure is net of tax? What part of the benefit to be capped is taxable? If the two don’t match then you have another anomaly.
Sorry that should be national average wage!
Its a dangerous dog’s breakfast!
Why the f**k should a benefit claimant get the ‘average wage’? Minimum wage is more the mark if not below – after all, 40 hours a week at £6 an hour means your paying tax and NI on practically half your wages.
Why should someone sitting on their a**e doing F all get the ‘average wage’?
Agreed, the cap is not good enough and should be brought in at a much lower level.
However, it is a start and is a damn site better than allowing “someone sitting on their a**e doing F all” to get 50K in benefits, is it not?
Getting the country weaned off unreasonable levels of benefits will be a very long process.
The last 13 years of labour misrule has infantalised this country to such an extent that even wealthy middle classes are balking at the idea of being wholly free of welfare.
It will take time to reverse this abuse and free people from the state dependency that labour ensnared so many people in.
and the cap will not stimulate any desire to return to work. You could still get 26K a year,more than any the value of any ‘skills’ you may have. Plus the absence of any work ethic ,sense of responsibility,or motivation.
I recommend a year in Afghanistan.
Good idea, if we could instill the same lazy lack of work ethic in the taliban, then we would have a much easier job out there.
Quite right. The cap should be at the level of slightly less than the minimum wage AFTER deductions. The worker should receive more than the benefits recipient.
There’s a lot of bleating in the Guardian today about the zoning that will occur when Housing Benefitees are priced out of the most expensive areas, i.e. the South of England. Another casualty of the ludicrous accommodation costs that have been allowed to grow unchecked by useless governments, left and right, over the last 30 years.
Of course the big difference with that national average is that the workers who earn £26k actually take home around £20k, as they have to pay tax on it. You’d need to earn around £32k-£33k a year to take home £26,
High time all these baby factory chavs were stopped in their tracks – two kids get benefits, after that, nowt. If that means they can’t afford to support the little brats, then take them them and put them up for adoption childless parents who will give them a far better start in life and stop them from turning out like their biological parents.
Having children is a responsibility – expecting the state to pay for as many as you deem you want to squeeze out shows a complete lack of any sense of responsibility and calls into question the person’s fitness to be a parent to ANY child, let alone half a dozen or more.
Child Benefit fiasco official, it’s the medias fault
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/8045414/George-Osborne-was-rushed-into-child-benefit-announcement-Iain-Duncan-Smith-suggests.html
Heard the equality joke about the Scotsman, the secretary, and the portable phone?!
It’s a scream!!
The wildly incorrect and flawed and massively out of touch media response to it is the media’s fault.
83% of people support cutting child benefit to top rate tax payers. That is an overwhelming level of approval for a massively controversial policy change that has been ferociously attacked continuously in the 24/7 news cycle since it was announced.
The media is wholly out of touch with the public mood on this, and almost unbelievably, Cameron and Osborne are in touch with the public mood.
The government is rather caught between a rock and a hard place. Reforming tax and welfare is long overdue, and almost everyone agrees that both need simplifying. However, as soon as you simplify anything, you find a small group who are either disadvantaged or fed a loophole – which some in the MSM promptly blow up out of all proportion, so you just can’t win.
An answer to the dual-income-child-benefit problem is joint assessment of married couples for tax. Fine – but what about unmarried couples? The feminazis jumped up and down to have seperate assessment not many years ago, so they won’t like it.
Advice to Cameron, Osborne and Co. – bang on regardless and simplify. It will gradually sink in with the majority that simpler is cheaper is fairer – stuff the whingers at the BBC, they are the minority now.
Agreed.
I’ve never been to “Mumsnet” or similar and have no desire to – the very name sounds like a viper’s nest of wimmin. Just the sight of the cocky bint who runs it tipping up *late* to her interview on TV yesterday said it all.
Yes, the change may not – arguably – be totally fair. But bequeathing billions of pounds of debt (with the impact that has to fundamental public services as health, education etc.) *to those very same children* is even less fair.
The choice is indeed “rock” and “hard place”. But instead of Cameron graciously apologising, perhaps one day Labour will have the guts to do the same.
The Coalition needs to get it’s press officers sorted- it desparately needs some robust operators who can counter the sort of storm that has hijacked this week’s conference. Regardless of what happens about the NOTW bugging allegations, Coulson and his team are simply not up to the job.
Agreed. I think the car crash analogy is a very good and apt one which the tories could use to great effect.
Do you attack the paramedics performing triage and treating the victims? OR do you attack the drunk driver that caused the crash?
They also need to scream out about the fact that this measure is overwhelmingly popular. 83% support for a policy that most of the mainstream media have continuously attacked since its announcement is remarkable.
It shows Cameron and Osborn are more in touch with the public mood than the media.
Even better protection is a well- thought-out policy, discussed privately in a critical manner, so that all the flaws are ironed out, and all possible attacks are met with a prepared defence. I cannot believe this happened.
Been asking this for the last 24 hours, still no answer:
Why the fuck should I subsidise someone who earns £900 a week???
Guido is right, Labour have chained the entire middle classes to the benefits merry-go-round. Unfortunately for the ConDems they are well organised and very vocal when it comes to holding onto their ill-gotten gains.
Is there anything worse than a midlle-class self-righteous benefits scrounger?
Me???
Why should you be forced to subsidise anyone?
because we’re doing gods work and you’re a grovelling peon
Fred, you’re not a regulator. You can’t force anyone to do anything, even if you wanted to ruin the economy. Only the state can do that.
Does anyone check the speeches?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/8045140/Conservative-party-Conference-prison-jobs-could-put-law-abiding-workers-on-the-dole.html
“Does anyone check the speeches?”
No the Tories are the new liebour party.
Did anyone imagine that with Cameron as leader, Ken EU Clarke and a whole host of second and third raters, high up in the mix, they would be anything other than ZaNu Mk2?
I back Dave and co on this , The welfare state was meant for the most needy , 44k is nearly double the avarage wage how the left can even try and say this is not fair is barmy .
Also after watching Polly fuckin Toynbee saying she gets winter full allowence even though she is highly paid and has a nice gaff in Tuscany .
Reform is much needed .
Bugger -you have spotted our con!
No one forces her to accept it though.
In Toynbee’s case it is a Winter Fool Allowance.
whilst 22,000 pensioners die of the cold every year -hope her conscience is clear.
You do understand where the majority of that tax comes from to pay those umemployed wastrels , don’t you? It’s from those earning £44k+ ! Once they start cottoning on to the fact that they put more into the pot and get less out or see more of it wasted on undeserving scumbags (all in the name of “fairness”) then sit back and watch the Tories get eviscerated by the middle classes.
Bollocks. Those earning less than £44,000 pay a higher proportion of their earnings back to the Treasury by all manner of taxes – not least VAT. Raising the tax-free allowance will help to reduce this injustice, but won’t eliminate it.
If you can’t cover the household bills on a income exceeding £44,000 per annum, you are doing something seriously wrong. You don’t need benefit handouts. Sure, there may be a few on joint income exceeding £44,000 that continue to be entitled to Child Benefit (if they bother to claim it). So what – life ain’t fair.
Who pays more into the pot fuckwit? Without those earning £44k+ there is no pot to pay out welfare. The marginal tax rates may be more for those on lower incomes but that’s irrelevant – their contribution to the pot is insignificant compared to higher earners especially for VAT where their expenditure on staples such as food and kiddies clothing is zero rated. Ther VAT take is therefore is much greater from those with higher disposable incomes.
In short, high earners prop this country up, without us… you’re fucked!
Are you a state employee? Did you take advantage of cheap credit during the 2002-2007 madness?
If so, shut up as you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I call bollocks – the high rate taxpayers make up only 15% of the population, with the vast majority coming between around 15 and 44K.
If you think that the proportion of the total pot paid by higher rate tax payers is more that that paid by the rest then you’re obviously an innumerate clod, and thus probably a public sector parasite.
Hope your job goes in the first round of cuts, you self-important c’unt.
If you really are a high earner, you should be intelligent enough to understand why YOU DO NOT NEED TO SCROUNGE WELFARE PAYMENTS!!!
You can afford to pay for your own kids.
I strongly object to my taxes going to pay any benefits towards people who:
A) are not prepared to try to get work
and
B) Those who do not need any state aid because they are already wealthy enough to pay their own way, as I do on my meagre 20K pa salary.
You are paying all that tax on your large income to pay for the NHS, Education, Defence, Law and Order and massive interest on debts run up by the last rotting fuckmuppet government.
Oh and so that if you are ever unfortunate enough to NEED welfare, THEN you will find it available and you will have contributed towards that yourself.
HMRC reports that in 2009/2010, 26 500 000 basic rate taxpayers had an average of 2550 taken off them in income tax, while the average for the 3 000 000 higher rate taxpayers was 26 444. The total paid by the 3 mln was obviously higher than that paid by the 26 mln.
The Age of Enlightenment is history. We are now in the Age of Entitlement.
I like it!
Full Marx.
In the last few weeks it was reported one MP earned £280K in 5 months in legal work. Has his MPs BENEFITS been cut back because he was not doing MPs work?
They all have second or third jobs raking it in but still getting all the BENEFITS of been an MP.
Just an example..
New Tory MP Stephen Phillips – a QC – has pocketed £285,150 for legal work in just five months since the election.
Former Tory ministers Nicholas Soames and Sir Malcolm Rifkind each pocketed more than £17,500 a month from a series of directorships.
Ex-ministers Tim Yeo and John Redwood earned more than £10,000 a month, new Tory MP Jonathan Evans is paid £12,500 a month by a pensions firm and Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg gets £10,000 a month from an investment firm.
Not many people know that
It appears that on the basis of their ‘comments’ section being lit up, mumsnet can be wheeled into BBC studios to represent a coherent ‘groundswell’ of opinion and opposition….’outrage amongst single mums’ etc. What was never offered was an analysis of the demographic making the comments. What numbers visit the site? Above all , who was posting?
Selfish Guardian reading women who think that their ‘rights’ are more important than a hard up family who rely on child benefits for the basics.
I know a warning when I see it, does Bob Crow?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/johnmcternan1/100057439/bob-crow-is-turning-into-britains-jimmy-hoffa/
Hope he suffers the same fate.
Bunch of lazy stay at home slags.
why cant they work from home ? Opppssss most do on sex chat lines .
NORWICH women – kNickers Off Ready When I Come Home.
I never say this to my wife.
Lol Eng – knew you were sweet on Nell but never thought you’d go so far as to travel to the flatlands…
This may sound controversial, but why should women have these children and then expect the state to give them money? Why the feck don’t they just have the children they can afford? Years ago, you got nowt from the state for the children you had, and now you’ve got moaning minnies banging on about how hard done to they are. If they didn’t get everything they wanted when little sprogs come on the scene, these selfish buggers would soon think again. Stop child benefit altogether and get these idle sods back to work!
+1
Concur.
I am thinking of buying a Bentley, but need a benefit to pay for it. Is there one I can claim? Surely there is. I only earn £50,000, and am finding it a bit of a struggle.
They should send their Children out to work. Got to be better for them than sitting in front f the puter playing video games, watching porn and bullying their victims on facbook.
When I was a lad my parents borrowed money from me so they could afford to pay my dinner money.
Never did me any harm, in fact I earned quite a few bob from interest payments.
Not at all controversial
I knew that the narcissistic Mumsnet crowd would go ape. Someone earning £45k/year does not need Child Benefit. Look, that nice Tony Blair and cuddly Gordon Brown have mortgaged your children’s future for decades to come, and yet you think that you should not help save your children’s future by giving up less than £2,000/year each?
At an unconscious level, a lot of “mums” seem to feel that Child Benefit is for the child within themselves, hence the visceral over-reaction to losing a sum of money that the family can easily do without. Years ago, when my teenage step-daughter was considering coming to live with her father and me, her mother’s first screaming reaction was – “but I’ll lose benefit!”. At the time, my step-daughter’s mother could afford to run a car and subscribe to Sky tv and buy new clothes, whereas we couldn’t afford even to run a car.
Isn’t Mumsnet run by some dopey bint who’s married to a Grauniad hack?
How can people argue that those earning over £40k can’t manage without state handouts? Even in the South East, if you can’t run a household and look after your kids on that wage, you need to look at your lifestyle.
People need to forget this sense of entitlement and realise that state handouts should be reserved for those genuinely in need.
Mumsnet founded by Justine Roberts, married to Ian Katz Guardian Deputy Editor.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/celebrity/article.html?in_article_id=498249&in_page_id=181
Still she has made some money out of it.
But funny how the nation’s favourite state broadcaster tries hard to keep the link out of the pubic view. Mumsnet, might not be so neutral after all.
Mumnet just the typical labour party islingtonistas, and utter grauniad / polly levels of hypocracy – how many ordinary working women dream of being on 44K ffs ?
A lot dream, but that’s all. Look at the vacancies in any job centre. £12 to £14 K seems to be the norm.
That is why that website gets a shitload of free publicity on the left wing media.
If Child Benefit should only be for the “genuinely in need” then I don’t see why anyone earning over £25k should qualify as the government have decide that is the basic amount a family needs to live on. But somehow I don’t think the 83% who agree with the proposed CB cut would support that because it would affect them.
I’m affected by the cut and I agree with it- I’ve questioned for years why my family was entitled to it. I also can’t understand why all pensioners should be entitled to the winter fuel allowance etc. I’d far rather it went to people who really need it.
People need to get over this idea that benefits are a right to which we’re all entitled-that’s certainly not what the founders of the Welfare State had in mind.
Quite right. So let’s scrap Child Benefit altogether and restrict the child tax credit to families earning less than £25000. Let’s get the top tax rate back to 40%. Then everyone will be paying their “fair share” and the economy might get moving again.
Wrong. Means testing was not fashionable then, except through the tax system — and less income tax was taken then from a household of four including two children too young to look after themselves than was taken from a single person household with the same income.
It’s not only pensioners getting the winter fuel allowance it’s people over 60 even if they are on top rate tax and own their homes outright. These people also get unlimited free bus and tube travel in London which is subsidised by poor buggers on about 15-20 K who have to find £1.5-2K pa out of taxed income to travel to work.
The problem is, people on £44,000 plus pay over 50% of their income in tax; so it is unfair when the small amounts they receive is stopped. What is unfair is to pay £26,000 to people who never worked.
The IFS has a useful link which shows income distribution.
http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/
Most of the lazy journalists don’t bother to look too far down the distribution, they are likely to be in the top 10%….
“The problem is, people on £44,000 plus pay over 50% of their income in tax; so it is unfair when the small amounts they receive is stopped”
Following your logic, billionaires should be receiving the most in welfare handouts.
That is clinically insane.
Taxes should not be wasted paying any benefits to people who DO NOT NEED THEM!
Fuck off Mumsnet, you bunch of slags. so Fuck off back to the kitchen you slags.
very balanced!
Labour may have bankrupted the Country, I’ve never done a stroke of work but I want these benefits. They’re MINE, I tell you MINE !!!
Just to add , The other problem is the fact so many on benifits are unemployable , Crimanal records ( Not Steps or the Spice girls ) , Lack of basic skills and postive discrimanation .
Ok a Genuine Question: How do we get the pissed up, drug addicted lazy wankers back to work ? Bearing in mind the lack of skills etc ?
Retrain them as journalists, they’re half-way there.
But with the dead tree press etc and BBC cuts coming where would they find work ?
Just askin ?
the journalists who gave you the Hague story Guido ?
Leave my name out of this f*ckwit get your own pigging name if you want to abuse guido
Don’t believe everything you read in the Eye.
“Crimanal records..” – criminal spelling more like!
This makes my blood boil too:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318028/As-families-face-benefits-cuts-Kelly-Marshall-spent-4-500-BOOB-JOB.html
She could easily have gone to a 40M cup, but decided to stick with a 36DD, the lazy benefits-scrounging small-breasted chav.
Chavtastic !!
I am hiring the Chuckle Brothers as Comedy Tsars to cheer everyone up about the cuts and to give Ed Balls something to shadow
All these useless tsars created by labour need to be rounded up, frog marched into a cellar and despatched with a bullet from a Naga.
That I would pay to watch.
why doesn’t the state just print more money and give every child £10K per year and every adult £25K per year and the no one who have to work or nothing, problem solved
I’m sure they’re thinking about it!
Didn’t they do something similar in Germany in 1923 ??
The currency meerkats certainly think “they” are.
I believe that’s what happens now.
Well labour just printed 200 Billion to give to bankers. Just after they had doubled the income tax on the poorest workers, don’t forget.
Yes you’re right Guido, we should all be paying less tax rather than paying thousands of clerks to give us our own money back. But this isn’t the system at the moment, and nor do the tories/libs seem minded to change it. They need to save money so they have resorted to the lazy option: squeeze the middle classes even more.
I won’t be lectured about families by out of touch multi millionaire batchellors like Ian Duncan Smith, nor do I subscribe the the baloney that anyone who earns over £43,000 is “well off”. If you add up direct and indirect taxes I reckon the best part of 60% of income is swallowed up by the govt. Getting some of it back in child benefits was a pretty miserly perk…but a welcome one non the less.
Are you saying IDS has a touch of the William Hague’s about him?
Is it me, or does George Osborne have a touch of the IDS about him?
Agreed, they are out of touch, I didn’t know IDS was that wealthy.
Sad to see them all, as out of touch as they all were in the 70′s hence my moniker.
So someone explain how can a bunch of multimillionaires ever claim to represent the people? Or are ‘the people’ the small bunch of wealthy like themselves?
Hey ratsniffer – been eating too much drugged cheese? IDS is not a bachelor (note) wife is Betsy (sadly under treatment for c at the mo.)
43,000 quid is VERY well off you spoiled selfish shithead.
I earn less than half of this currently and have no need of state benefits. There is no moral excuse for people on such massive incomes to feel any entitlement to welfare payments.
Stop claiming money you do not need you benefit scrounger.
£45K has only 91 percentile income groups below it.
It appears that most of the journalists have no idea what a median, mode or mean household income might be.
Harker’s rubbish in the Guardian is a case in point, why should people on half his income see his family receiveing £1,000 per year in Child Benefits?
How much do the likes of Toynbee, Marr, Red Ed, Balls, Cooper, and all the other drones get out of the system.
Child Benefit = Gin Money.
MumsNet trawling the benefits, and taking money away from those most in need. Hunts.
Paxman particularly seems to be in a right lather over this cut.
Perhaps he’s worried he won’t be able to manage raising three kids on his £1million salary without getting child benefit?
I hear he asked Theresa May for a date.
Perhaps he is looking to start another family
GIMME
MYYOUR MONEY !!!!I must have missed the big tax cut for the middle class. This is the equivalent to a 5% tax increase for people earning around £45k. Haven’t they just increased the top rate to 50%? (60% for those earning around £100k with no tax allowance at all.) I think these people are paying their “fair share.” What extra burden is being placed on the basic rate tax payer? Apart from the VAT increase – which affects everyone – they don’t seem to paying anything extra.
Next up they’ll be saying it isn’t fare that top rate tax payers get free schooling and NHS. Let’s force them to go private that’ll save money. Where does it stop?
Yes, well, some of us signed up for cuts when we voted, and cuts we are getting.
Did you really expect just the feckless workshy to be targeted?
I expected everyone to be targeted. The basic rate taxpayer doesn’t seem to be shouldering their “fair share” as far as I can see.
Yes I absolutely need to subsidise people, via benefits, who earn twice what I do. Its only fair, its only right. How can I possibly object to that?
Oh right, Im not a fucking idiot with an inflated sense of entitlement. That’ll be why.
Of all the people in this country who recieve benefits, those who earn more that £44k are amongst the least likely to receive my sympathy. Boo fucking hoo.
Its not the same as an equivelent tax rise as not everyone who earns £44k+ will be affected, i.e. those who dont have kids (or whos kids are too old to qualify their parents to this benefit). Secondly, they will still be paying exactly the same tax, ergo no tax rise. And no is it not ‘equivilent’.
13 years of that shower of shite has simply given everyone the idea that they are ‘entitled’. Where is all the fucking money supposed to come from?
DC + GO~: Keep Calm and Carry On.
Professor, what the fuck are you talking about. Why the fuck should someone on £44k subsidise you? You’re not subsidising them. What a fuckin’ idiot. By all means scrap child benefit for everyone, then we’ll see how many think it’s the equivalent to a huge tax rise. My guess is the 83% that support the proposed cut would soon change their tune.
I shall say this very slowly (well in internet terms anyhoo) to help you understand.
I sub-si-dise them by pay-ing tax.
There, surely thats not too hard to understand is it? My tax, in part, is filtered down as a benefit for people who earn lots more than me.
No one subsidises me, I earn all my fucking money myself by running a small business. Its not making me rich but I truly earn what I receive.
Perhaps thats my problem, I earn every single fucking penny and find it a little hard to stomach giving some of it to people who either a) earn more than me or b) people who cant be arsed working yet still have a better lifestyle than me.
My work takes me into the houses of some of the denizens of britians welfare state so i know of what i speak. It also takes me into the houses of people who will be affected by this policy. What I see doesnt make me think they will be immediately plunged into dire poverty. They might just have to go skiing less.
Take your left wing sense of entitlement and shove it up your arse. Your not getting sympathy from me.
Wank!
There will be plenty of other cuts to come which will hit lower earners and the unemployed, suck it up.
“Why the fuck should someone on £44k subsidise you? You’re not subsidising them.”
So the money they receive in CB is plucked from the branches of the Government’s magical money tree?
Phew that is a relief. I thought the taxes I pay on my modest 20k income paid for them. Subsidising their third holiday, their botox injections or whatever else they choose to waste their money on.
Is all very well whining and complaining about this cut or that but the fact still remains that we Borrowed £15.3bn in August, of which £3.8Bn of that was used to pay the interest on the debt we already owe.
“The aim is right, I am entirely in favour of restricting child benefits for the well off. But the actual practice that is being proposed is unwise. If you’re carrying out a programme of cuts you’ve got to do things that are seen to be fair, and where you have perhaps one family with £80,000 a year getting child benefit and another family on £44,000 a year not getting child benefit that would be seen to be unfair… The aim is fine, the detail needs to be reworked.” – David Davis
Why do these idiots keep on saying that anyone over 43,000 a year is well off? In terms of disposable income they are WORSE off than a family of 6 on benefits, who have their housing paid for, their council tax, their mobility car (if they are on disablity benefits with a “bad back”) their child benefit, etc etc. The tories have swallowed the leftie lib dem line that the lower middle classes are somehow wallowing in money…utter total bollocks.
There isn’t a Tory party any more, just Cameron’s Labour Party. What a choice; Cameron’s Labour, Ed’s Lefter-Labour and then, somewhere out in the nether-regions of political time and space where common sense has never ventured, the doo-da dog band chimps’ tea party that is the LimpDims.
They are a lot better off than me. I don’t need, and so do not claim benefits, so those people on 44,000+ are well off!
Davis needs a Math lesson.
The Family on 80K have paid in way more than the one person on 44k.
the real question is why shouldnt they 80K people get more
Those who pay the most tax should get the most back? Sounds fair to me.
I’m not saying that but I am saying that it is a red herring to shrilly whine about the cut off
The other David should do the sums before spouting crap.
The people in the media who are writing these articles are doing so because they are personally affected by the changes.
What is needed is compulsory declarations of interest and urgent opinion poll findings.
My bet is that the opinion polls will not agree with an isolated cadre of journalists who are personally losing out from the changes.
The task is to reduce the deficit, and having a quick panic and then offering tax changes which negate the savings made by the removal of benefit is not going to do that.
To reduce a massive deficit, everyone has to endure privation.
They have just conduct ed the poll you mentioned:
Poll: 83% Back The Tories’ Child Benefit Cuts
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/YouGov-Poll-Suggest-Public-Backs-Child-Benefit-Reforms-Figures-Are-Boost-For-Conservatives/Article/201010115752925?lpos=Politics_First_Poilitics_Article_Teaser_Regi_0&lid=ARTICLE_15752925_YouGov_Poll_Suggest_Public_Backs_Child_Benefit_Reforms%3A_Figures_Are_Boost_For_Conservatives
The BBC are shitting themselves that they will be next thats why they are all aghast at some middle class knobhead whos spending is more than he /she is earning ( familiar anyone) is getting some state handout removed. Wankers.
Let’s go to button moon,
Hello Mr Spoon, button moon, buttton moon….
Whats the point of Public so called “Servants” paying back some of their salary to pretend they’re taxpayers?
I agree with the previous comment , if some couples cant get by on £44,000 per anum then they deserve all they get, greedy stupid credit junkies !!
The ones I know are sick to the teeth that they will now have to pay the aupair’s wages from their own salary.
You mean like this one? Ten grand in debt on credit cards, takes the kids on hols every year and is spending 4 grand on a boob job. Never worked a day in her life. And we’re paying for it all.
http://tinyurl.com/32ye7h5
If you fall on the street, Dave and Osborne will pretend to help you and pick your pocket. Now they have a new member called Nick.
What is a man to doo with noo child benefit?
I agree Guido we all need to grow up about benefits. I will lose my child benefit (x 2) and am a stay at home Mum that the press say are ‘livid’. However, I don’t need the money – rather the money is paid straight into bank accounts for my children.
I know many Mums who do the same.
Whilst I am furious that my boys will be made to pay for Browns economic dyslexia, I am a bit annoyed that they will lose out child benefit because it’s all a matter of timing – but should people really be working hard to pay tax to me to bank for my sons?
The loophole really annoys me too but if i’m really honest when I had my first child I was surprised that I was entitled to it anyway.
I am not a millionaire but i’m not on the breadline.
Sounds like there’s more pips to be squeaked from you lass.
no not at all but i’ll choose my battles – this is one I couldn’t morally win. Taxing my husband more, making me feel 2nd class for choosing to stay at home and make sure my children have the best start are things that rile me – paying benefits to people who spend it on fags and drugs make my blood boil and come to that people who get child benefit and spend it on themselves make me furious but I can’t complain – would love to keep taking it but have no real grounds to do so.
Very very well put. Thank you for your responsible attitude. It is far too rare.
Honest and well thought out.
Puts into perspective very nicely.
Bully for you. Both me and Mrs R have to work fulltime and can only afford one child. We pay taxes through the nose and the one, tiny bit of payback we got was child benefit. Makes my day seeing the unemplyed 22 years olds in town with 3 or 4 kids and not a worry in the world. We’re paying for ‘em, and will continue to do so because they have been classed as “poor” instead of “idle”.
And if you don’t need the money then you can always give it back to the Government.
I’m agreeing with you – I don’t really need it – I would like it and thats the difference. I can only afford 2 children too and it makes me mad that people who can ill afford to do the right thing by their children continue having more on the basis the state will pay.
We all need to be responsible – I have been honest.
Q: How much Child Benefit will I get?
A: For the eldest child who qualifies £16.50 weekly. For each other child who qualifies £11.05 weekly.
Q: I earn £900 a week. Am I still entitled?
A: Yes
Q: I earn £2000 a week. Am I still entitled?
A: Yes
Q. I dun earn nuffin. Am I still entitled? I’d better be… fookin’ dog eats nuffin but corned beef.
I did not even realise that child benefit was a universal benefit, I thought it was to make sure poor kids were properly fed and clothed
exactly.
Gordon Brown is receiving it x 2 as we speak.
Boy, that’s amazing that even the rich people in UK can get benefits for their children. Here in the U.S. it is seen as a stigma to take handouts from the government. I think the climate of the country is different here. People like to be self-sufficient and not seem like freeloaders. I think maybe that’s where this perception of the U.S. not having these programs stems from, but it is supposed to be set up to only help the poor or those down on their luck for a short period of time.
Then I salute your good fortune. Your society so far havent been poisoned by the socialist concept of ‘entitlement’
Everyone one is entitled, someone else has to pay. You can see how that policy is utter madness, but you see, to the socialist money really does grow on trees and appears out of thin air.
Most people here dont actually subscribe to this madness. Unfortunately we have a vocal minority of whining well off spongers who also happen to infest the media. I imagine a lot of these are civil servants who simply believe being ‘good’ enough to earn a very good wage entitles them to something.
The average bloke in the street (i.e. me) doesnt see why he, whilst earning considerably less that £44k, whould subsidise via tax/benefits those that do earn that much. I will gladly accept a wage of £44k if it means forgoing benefits. I dont receieve benefits now, so if im earning more than double im pretty sure I’ll not miss them!
We do need to move away from an entitlement culture to one where sponging off the state is seen as just that, glorified begging. 13 years of labour has skewered peoples perception, this is just a small step in the right direction..
What next? how about food stamps.
oh ffs, whats with the moderation?
In th United States “Child Tax Credit reduces tax liability for families making less than $130 000″.
O/T, but the truth obviously hurts Norrrrrth of the Borrrrrrder:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-11484322
Which word is actually offensive/untrue? Perhaps if he used “pissed” rather than “thick”, would that help?
Most of the middle class “adjustments” are IN THE FUTURE (as we speak being watered down), and only trumpeted now in the vain hope Pensioners and the Low Earners won’t complain about higher taxes to pay for Bankers greed and Westminster incompetence NOW!
When is the Un-elected coalition going to start sequestrating cash from Ministers that failed to do the job they were paid to do?
Where is the reduction in MP’s and staff they promised?
Why are only 7 crooks from Westminster soon to be in the Dock when the majority (or those that botherd to turn up) lounging about getting pissed at Westminster were (and still are) looting the Taxpayer?
Just half the value of child benefit and pay it to both mother & father – end of this silly problem.
Some woman wrote into the Evening Standard yesterday saying she stayed at home looking after the kids whilst hubby went out and earned 49K.
She complained that they would struggle as she used the child benefit to help pay their mortgage.
TOUGH FUCKING LUCK.
Why should I – who earns the average wage and has no kids subsidise the mortgage of someone on £49K ?
It is bad enough my hard earned taxes going to chav scum – I am damned if it is going to Tarquin and Felicity’s parents for them to spend on wine, skiing holidays etc.
Secondly – capping benefit at £26K ? – stuff that – make it £15K.
Spot on. Oh dearie me are the well healed Mumsiewumsies getting their knickers in a twist. Tough titty. Tarquin and Gwendoline will have to forego their ballet classes / drama classes etc for a while. That or dig a little deeper into your own pockets. Well heeled prats like Mumnet are cordially invited to join the rest of us in this tough old world. Divvy up or fuck off. We’re not here to subside your precious pretentious activities.
The overweening sense of entitlement shown by the yummy mummys on mumsnet is pretty sickening.
They think it’s their God-given right that the rest of us subsidise their brats even when their income is greater than most of us.
I mean, how else are they going to keep the X5 on the road for the school run.
Fucking monsters.
Absolutely spot on!
My work takes me into the homes of some of these people. I get to listen to the whining and moaning, in fact you would think they lived lives of unimaginable struggle and strife. In 4 bed detached houses. In fact, if im in your house then you are looking at spending 5 or 6 figure sums (though bugger all of it goes my way!) on construction work.
Woe, is in deed them. I once had a client complain their 5 bedroom house wasnt big enough (2+2 family) to let them have a playroom for tarquin and felicity. They had a huge lounge, decent sized dining room, big kitchen/diner and a conservatory. And she complained about all of that with a straight face. She will be now banging out self pitying posts on mumsnet no doubt whilst the childminder goes to pick up the kids
I have learnt to keep a poker face as I think slapping a client a shouting ‘Get a fucking grip of yourself!’ is likely to reduce my chances of getting paid.
I have no problem with people earning good money, in fact I make my living of providing a services to such people. I just dont want to be giving them their money back via benefits, especially considering I earn about half this £44k figure.
Surely the solution is to only pay Child Benefit to those people claiming Child Tax Credit?
Since this is means tested it already captures those who are entitled and “needy” (a bit of a laugh given that it is payable on household income up to £50,000).
Not a bad idea, but my guess is the costly and bureaucratic “tax credits” will face major reform.
tax credits should be scrapped and tax allowances raised significantly instead.
seems i have pissed off Guido in a previous life. Either that or my posts are too boring.
Damned moderation!
Bit of both probably.
There really is no need for the taxpayer to subsidise the decision of those earning more than double the national average salary to have children.
http://adlib-dibdib.blogspot.com/2010/10/progressive-child-benefit-shocker.html
“It would be far more efficient to tax people less rather than hand them a little back after their taxes have passed through the hands of bureaucrats.”
True, but that’d only work if they basically put the entire tax/benefit system in the bin, and started afresh with simpler rules.
What they need do do is make everyone fill in a simple form (similar to the tax credits form) to say how much the household earns and who lives in the house. Then they can calculate what the minimum/breadline income is for that household. If you’re above that breadline amount then you don’t get any money. If you’re below it then they pay you the difference.
They can factor-in everything from that one form, and just have a single payment for everyone. You wouldn’t need separate forms for all the weird things like winter-fuel payments etc; you just factor all that stuff in when processing the single form.
Then you just tax the above-breadline income at a relevant rate.
You can set the payments/tax-thresholds in such a way that, like guido says, if you’re below the breadline then you simply don’t get taxed at all.
You can do all this without costing the tax payer any money, and it’ll save a fortune in admin/government costs which can then be used to pay back the deficit and help fund lower taxes in the longer term.
Mong “What they need do do is make everyone fill in a simple form (similar to the tax credits form) ”
simple form it is not.
Mistakes made by administrators of this so called simple form?
what was the count last year something like 25% and a form each for a married couple!!!!! and posted out in seperate envelopes!!!!!!
Your idea is exactly the type of thinking thatBrown did and the reason we as a country are bankrupt
“What they need do do is make everyone fill in a simple form (similar to the tax credits form) to say how much the household earns and who lives in the house.”
FUCK OFF! My private income is NONE of their damned business!!! I am not claiming any benefits, so the Government can go fuck themselves!
All this demonstrates is that the right does not believe that taxes should be levied according to the ability to pay. Anyone who doesn’t believe that children have no impact on the ability of anyone (lower or higher tax rate payer) to pay taxes clearly has never had children.
The logic of what Guido says is that the state pension should be withdrawn from those pensioners who are higher rate tax payers – for some reason not even the Tories are that stupid.
Ultimately yes. In time the shift to be entirely to private pensions, that is a pretty mainstream view.
You obviously have a differnt view as to what constitutes the mainstream. Is this the next thing Cameron will have to apologise for not including in the manifesto? Aren’t you worried about the lack of democracy in this whole process?
http://www.stockrants.com/forum/us-penny-stock-picks/5343-abmt-advanced-biomedical-technologies-inc-scam.html
Keep an eye on this as someone we all know is about to make an appearance
Benefits should only be paid for hardship no matter whether it be parents, pensioners or any other group. The sooner this country gets away from handing out taxpayers’ money to those who don’t really need it, the better.
It’s intesting on the news channels that there seems to be lots of protests but when analysed it is from well-heeled newscasters, presenters and meedja types who are all on much more than £44,000. I agree that the anomaly of single parent/two parents should be rectified but in principle this removing of child benefit is a brilliant move and congratulations to Osborne and DC.
+1
Ignoring all the “cant” around this issue when was it a god-given right for the better off(or anyone come to that) to have as many children as you like and expect the state to pay for them ?Of the many comments generated from the vocal “middle class” is the one where a correspondent states that they have 3 children and that because they will lose the child benefit they will be unable to afford the mortgage !!!!
Sorry,LUV but if you decide to have 3 kids you should be expected to cover the cost and that includes the mortgage.
Dave should face these “Yummy Mummies” down..they are far too bloody vocal. Why should the rest of us pay them to raise their bloody “Ruperts” & “Jemimas”??
why should we be paying for the Shitola-Paris, Waynes and Kylies?
Has anyone of you ever met a “yummy mummy”
They are a fantasy made up name.
there isnt one that I would touch with yours let alone mine.
I have a simple rule if they walked upright straight forward and their guts would strike a vertical pane of glass before their unsupported jugs they are a lazy good for nothing.
next time you are out or look around your office I defy you to find one who has had a kid that doesnt fail my test.
You need to visit Cobham.
I suspect your chance of seeing their unsuuported jugs are pretty non existent.
Of course for the really rich all those wheezes allowing you to transfer income to children to use their personal tax allowances and SIPPs will still available. Don’t believe all this rubbish about us all having to bear the burden too literally. It would be fascinating to know what advantage the Osborne/Cameron/Clegg families take advantage of these loopholes funded by all us poor plebs.
Why not abolish the individual tax allowances of all dependent children to stop these abuses??
Typical Family A:
Two children, wife higher rate payer, husband unemployed stays at home on the internet – 33.70 worse off.
Had to turn off “The World At One” after 15 minutes – could not listen any more to an overpaid Beeboid mugging a Cabinet minister. There is a difference between asking intelligent and searching questions and “play the broken record” verbal battering.
This has become all too common-it’s Paxmanisation. Even Brillo sounds as though his piles are playing up this afternoon.
I think he’s got several children we know not of, why else has he spent every day as an inquisition on the proposed child benefit cuts? Maybe he’s running a book on how much damage the beeboids can do to the Coalition, offering odds on whether he and the other members of the labour publicity team can bring it down!
I’m sorry but I voted for a low tax small state. The party that promised this got the most votes. When will it get on wiht delivering what it promised?
Serves you right for believing politicians’ promises in the first place!
“When will it get on wiht delivering what it promised?” When they have paid off the insane structural deficit.
Whilst they are doing that they are trying to engage an overly infantalised public with the idea of supporting themselves As a society, instead of relying on an overly powerful state dictating to us what sort of society we should have.
When we, as a nation, have finally grown up, stepped up, and taken care of ourselves (as a society) then we will get the smaller government we both crave.
We, sadly, cannot just shrink government over night. It would be like a mother leaving a six year old child to take care of themselves.
Is cast iron Dave’s speech the same as last years,keep getting this feeling of deja vue as I listen to him yacking.
This argument falls down by the fact it appears they take away the benefits but never actually manage to tax you less…..
Before this week I never knew how many poor people were on 44k a week, nice poverty if you can get it.
Yeah, it’s all the Premier League WAGS who are on Mumsnet complaining.
Oi, don’t disrespect the Crouch End posse! We’re the coffee mums and we deserve our welfare, don’t we? Can’t leave the breeding to the chavs!
If Cameron had any balls he’d have scrapped Child Benefit altogether. If we can’t afford it for the better off – who at the end of the day are paying for it themselves from their own taxes, I don’t know why the Tories think it is the “poor” who are subsidising the better off. Are they thick? If it is not universal then it has become redistribution of wealth, a socialist tenet. Cameron finally shows his true colours.
BBC 6 Music News’ round up of Cameron’s speech: a two minute reaction from Andy Burnham, who didn’t like it.
Er…
That’s it.
Heard Cameron’s speech in full.
I am a Liberal by instinct and by voting pattern over many years. Because of those many years, I am a serious cynic of anything said by politicians, which makes me enjoy this site.
So what did I make of the speech? I thought it was excellent. No problem with it and this is said by a man whose perception of society began with Bertrand Russell’s rejection of one based on acquisition and sought one founded in creativity.
It stayed with me as I rose to the top of international companies. It stayed with me as I grew increasingly concerned about the growing disparity of wealth in this country (sorry about these sentiments, you die hard conservatives)
I doubt that the media will get it, but the extraordinary concept of “The Big Society” has been made clear. It was a joke to me when first elucidated, just another Blairite type spin. I was groaning right up until I learnt that it arose out of a discussion between Dave and his dad. Say what I would, you don’t disrespect what a father and son share in ambition for their country.
So those who really think about what he was saying – which excludes most of the media and many backbenchers – will feel more comfortable about embracing it. It is not about taking over control of the litter in your local park. It is something that is much deeper than that. But you will have to think deeply to perceive it.
So I liked the speech. Like Kenneth Clarke just said, I’ve heard too many of these speeches to be easily impressed but, like him, I have to admit that I was.
Our increasingly ludicrous political “reporters” have tried to find something to sneer at in the admittedly not well presented or handled child allowances announcement. Trying to make a storm out of a shower of rain whilst a tsunami of a deficit hangs in a huge tidal wave over us. Joey Jones and Adam Boulton trying to make up major stories where truly there was only minor discussion. The YouGov poll decided the matter.
So Cameron gets my “sellotaped to a letter pound”. I can join in the many who will define their cleverness by the extent of their cynicism but for now I hope he can manage the journey he has begun. There is nothing naive about believing the country needs him to succeed.
£26,000 benefits cap, eh.
Not a bad little earner. Better than earning £23,000 as a schoolteacher and better than earning £60 for sweeping the pavements in Islamabad.
Osborne and Cameron are more leftwing than Blair. Don`t waste your vote on them next time!
Case Study A:
Family where both parents work and each earn below £44,000 – keep their middle-class welfare.
Case Study B:
Either a one or two-parent family with a single breadwinner earning just above £44,000 – lose their middle class welfare.
The perceived unfairness of this system will contribute to its collapse, comrades!
Mumsnet? See what happens when you give women too much time on their hands? Here in Kandahar we know how to deal with them…
Same here – nothing like a stoning or two to make them see sense…
The problem with curtailing Child Benefit for the “better off” is not its withdrawal per se.
Guido is right that the “big state” tax / benefit spiral makes no sense economically. It introduces criminal waste, always fails to cater for unintended consequences, distorts natural incentives creates a disconnect between wealth creation and standards of living.
The welfare state safety net, which a government should provide for those in real need, should not lead to those on low incomes subsidising the better off.
It seems wrong that a family with an “average” income of £26k should subsidise one with a higher rate income of £50k.
But in that case, how is it right that they continue to subsidise a family with an income of almost £100k?
How can any tax system be credible where there are bands of liability in which it makes no sense to exist: earn £49k, get a top up to £51k; earn £50k get nothing? (The same goes for the ludicrous way SDLT is implemented).
DC said benefits should not discourage the earning of money, yet this is precisely what this does.
There was no need to create a PR cock-up by announcing this in such a specific way, especially when is so clear that it has not been thought through.
The benefits cannot exceed average salary argument was presented in far less detail and was based on HOUSEHOLD income.
And the message was much better received.
If this could be done for all the other benefits, why the cack-handed mess with Child Benefit?
Must do better, Dave.
Cameron learnt sofa government from Blair – You sit on the sofa til one of your mates blurts out an idea. Then everyone falls off the sofa in excitement and rushes out to announce it. You don’t bother to run the policy by anyone who has a brain – just your best mates. Then when you go public with it and people point out the stupid consequences, you respond with arrogance and pig-headedness, further infuriating the public. Then about two weeks later, you quietly drop the policy, with no credit gained, and a lot of animosity earned. Cameron truly is heir to Blair and Brown.
Never Forget…………
Camerons’ hobby – smashing up hotel rooms with Boorish Johnson et al. – Thats the kind of dimwit we’ve got for a leader!!.
All someone just above the threshold needs to do is sign up to the ridiculous CycleScheme, where you get a bike up to £1,000 by salary sacrifice (yeah, we’re all going to use them to commute greenly – not).
That amount could take you below the threshold, so you get an extra couple of grand in Child Benefit plus a £1,000 bike which you can then flog on E-bay (or it’s a better-than-free Christmas present for one of your brats whose conception enabled the ruse in the first place).
Simples. But too tricky for Gideon.