DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Didn't know this was going to be on: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-58/episode-3

That's the whole reason for the Coulson news revive TBH.

oh it's peter oborne so it'll be the jews to blame, sorry i mean not to blame

to give the scrote some credit, nick robinson just said the reason they're cutting child benefit rather than winter fuel payments is that during the election cameron said something like 'read my lips: i will not cut winter fuel payments'. only osborne said last year he wouldn't cut child benefits. it does seem wrong that two people earning £43k can still claim. both my parents worked full-time throughout my childhood so i can barely get my head around the idea of the 'stay-home mums' the telegraph is whining about. i guess some of my friends' mums didn't work.

I gave up work to look after the kids.

I was a "stay-home-and-read-ilx dad'.

i gave up work

(not to look after children)

the details of implementation sound a bit half-baked (lot of gymnastics to avoid calling it "means-tested", but looks like they've created an incentive for to avoid a salary between 41k and 41k+child benefits) and setting aside the axiomatic point about whether cuts are needed and how they should be timed, surely this has to be pretty much the least objectionable thing they could cut. totally fine with me tbqh.

my aul fella took foreign jobs to get away from the kids

I'm not objecting to the cut per se, but (and I would say this of course - see upthread) I think the cut off point should be higher and I don;t understand why households on a lot more than my household should still get the money. That doesn't seem fair or "we're all in together" at all, just seems to be penalising me for going part-time to look after the kids (and read ilx).

yes, not doing this on total household income being over twice the 40% limit seems (or something like that) seems, at best, stupid.

At the moment this feels like a (rough calculation) 3% pay cut. Ahh, fuck it, it's not like they've suddenly lost my vote, so they could probably care less.

Lot of Tory voters will be on £44k though. Not doing it on combined salary seems kind of ridic, but I'm a bit wary of people being in favour of a cut as long as it's safely outside their own income band. £44k is well inside the top 10% of the country isn't it?

ITV news took a typically lol perspective on it, focusing the questioning of some Tory person on how punishing 'traditional families' with the stay-at-home mum isn't a Tory way to go about things, but put like that it does seem like it could be a nice vote-loser.

15% according to the today program

xpost

Wonder how many Tory voters are couples earning £40,000 each though as compared to one high earner and a stay-at-home parent.

it's not a large number. more important cuts to worry about. p sure the opposition won't be complaining about it.

Class war on Mumsnet:

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1054558-AIBU-to-claim-child-benefit

TotorosOcarina Mon 04-Oct-10 09:39:45

"At the moment cb pays for shoes and music lessons and pocket money and the baby's trust fund and our sponsored Malawian child, none of which we could really afford from our household expenses."

<snort>

Mine pays for FOOD.

Thats why some need it , some don't.

That should be in italics by the way. That's not my snort.

'not overburden the state (eg private education for the DC, private healthcare).' oh do fuck off

damn, mumsnet ain't so mumsy

wonder if they have memes

xp depending on the mums you know tbh

they call them mumes xp

meta mums

I have no idea what that means, btw

I use my CB to pay the cleaner who might be left unemployed if I didn't use my CB that way. Is that wrong? Would it be better if I sacked her?

Think about it.

because everything complicated that happens in this world is obviously put there to inconvenience and annoy them

so much whining today about the strike along these lines

Yeah I just want to pass them a wet-wipe and coo DIDDUMS at most of them. Having said that, I'm about to enter the melee to go to Turner Prize PV.

more retired colonels needed to alert us to the dangers of marxist conspiracies to bring down the government and make us all homosexuals

OTM. I'm getting increasingly pissed off with so many people's inability, or refusal, to see the social big picture. Whiny entitlement is the default setting. It's like everything good that happens to them is because they're a special flower who's earned it and everything bad is somebody else's fault. They're Thatcherbabies in the sense they really don't understand how society works.

yes it's like all the stuff that makes society work happens somewhere else, like in some sort of engine room, and the menials are getting uppity (Bob 'Crowe' is a chav so twitter tells me) just to ruin the cruise

Think this is probably more about the Internet creating a public forum for every vacuous bubble that floats thru people's brains rather than a major shift in attitudes.

internet's only one (but probably the most honest) part

Well IRL there's also the Tea Party - that's a pretty big trend. I'm hoping it's a blip but the volume of right-wing craziness and intolerance of the state on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment is getting me down.

We'll lose CB, other half earns just over HRT threshold, I'm at home with the kids (so shoot me). I challenge anyone to live in London with two kids on 44k and feel like they are a 'high earner'. But my main problems with the cut (apart from huge disadvantage to single parents) is a) child benefit protects NI contribs of the non-working parent and b) one of the main ideologies behind CB was to give some money directly to the carer (usually mother) and hence to the child. It is a huge assumption that in families where the working parent is a 'high' earner, any of that money gets passed on to the non-working parent and children.

I think they might wind up walking this one back.

absolutely no chance

they may change the way the thresholds work

I think they will look like a laughing stock if they roll back on the very first benefit cut they announce in detail. It would just be asking for trouble.

this ought to be one of the easier cuts to pass, but i guess actual poor people get less media shine than some of the richest people in the country so what do i know

Like I've been saying, the British public* have been broadly accepting of cuts as long as they remain in the abstract world of economic talk, when it hits home time and time again what they actually mean, things could be very different.

*Or enough of them anyway.

I say let them look like laughing stocks as they're already doing sterling work in that area. Also Osborne's forgotten the thing with taxation: there is no 'poor people paying for rich people to get benefits' because poor people are also paying for other poor people to get benefits, and missiles, and the NHS - I just want to grab the man and say THAT IS NOT THE POINT.

watching coverage of tory conference if ever there was argument for the validity of physiognomy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/04/osborne-child-benfit-war-families

won't someone think of the people with five children and a top-rated income and a reluctance to have the second parent go out to work?

i can see that the attack on the universal principle is a bad thing -- or would, except student grants, glasses, and dentistry (and prescriptions?) were all means tested iirc. tbh i was kind of surprised that child benefit was claimable by everyone :/

I don't have children, but I pay for it like every other Happy Families thing in the budget that I will probably never avail myself of - and I don't begrudge a single penny. Pretending that your specific tax dollars going to this specific government expenditure is about as silly as being in hospital and pretending, because it's food and you are nil-by-mouth, that the IV plugged into your arm is pumping out chicken tikka masala.

lol http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11470289

How's our oakum industry at the moment?

Home Secretary Theresa May has accepted Mr Gamble's resignation.

She said: "The Government recognises the importance of child protection and wants to build upon the work of Ceop, but does not necessarily feel this is best done by creating a new quango."

I don't have children, but I pay for it like every other Happy Families thing in the budget that I will probably never avail myself of - and I don't begrudge a single penny. Pretending that your specific tax dollars going to this specific government expenditure is about as silly as being in hospital and pretending, because it's food and you are nil-by-mouth, that the IV plugged into your arm is pumping out chicken tikka masala.

― are you robot? (suzy), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 1:10 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

ehh. not thrilled about public funds going on bank bailouts either; it's not about *my* money going on specific things, but 'how taxes are spent' is a legitimate matter for citizens in a democracy to discuss. there is some kind of anti-redistribution involved in paying out money to the rich. anyway, this is a 'pick your battles' moment.