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

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.

not a pick your battles thing for me. i support this.

it was a lib dem manifesto policy fwiw.

i support it in principle i should say. sounds like an inept implementation.

as per ususual, it isn't clear where the lib dems stand:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/steve-webb-overrules-nick-on-universal-child-benefits-16240.html

I don't support it at all - it's part of a narrative arc that allows this government to do divide and rule to kill all the most sensible parts of the welfare state by making middle-class people less invested in the concept because they're being conditioned to accept the idea that universal benefits are too costly. Nobody losing this benefit will have been responsible for the financial meltdown so this is a shell game and it's more ideological than anything else. Banks are still handing out bonuses, after all.

Everyone I know who voted Lib Dems is embarrassed by their choice, caek - what is your excuse?

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 in chicken tikka masala.

There is nothing silly about this. Been there, etc. for about 2 months.

suzy, are you opposed, in principle, to the idea of reducing government spending given the present circs? if not, why? if so, what would you not spend instead? you can't pick anything that's already been spent (e.g. bailout).

i vote in a constituency in which it's either ld or conservative. if it's any consolation, the libdem lost and we voted in a truly insane ultra-religious crank, which i'm sure pleases the you and tom d.

xpost Not to step on your bona fides, Mark, but my mom invented this gambit for me (only it was hot dogs and Tater Tots in the IV) when I was four and being treated for cancer. I thought it was annoying/silly by the time I was five (and I hope you're not having to make up stuff to make a sick kid feel better, if you know what I mean).

Nobody would elect me because I would raise taxes! On millionaires! I would look raise NI and income tax slightly for those making between 20 and 100K and look at people on PM's wage and over to make a larger additional tax contribution because they're precisely the fuckers who know how to loophole.

did you vote for one of the parties with "raise income tax and NI" in their manifesto then?

Fair enough. (xpost to Suzi)

It's mainly because most people go "Oh how awful, don't you pine for some real food?" etc, when actually you don't feel hungry at all.

Anyway, back to the libtors.

I'm not a British subject, caek, so I can't vote. YES I SAID 'SUBJECT' because LOL, when push comes to shove, taking this crap is not something a citizen does.

so this is a shell game and it's more ideological than anything else.

i don't doubt that the tories relish doing what they're doing, but it's dishonest to say that you could go on without cuts. even socialist governments (like spain) are cutting back

if yall have a counter-move, say so

it's part of a narrative arc that allows this government to do divide and rule to kill all the most sensible parts of the welfare state by making middle-class people less invested in the concept because they're being conditioned to accept the idea that universal benefits are too costly.

it's pretty rich of the, well, rich, to support the welfare state only as long as they also get money shoved at them. im not an economist, but kind of feel like giving money to the rich nullifies the effect of giving it to the poor, prices being determined by 'what the market can bear' etc. idk, but this is hardly one of the most sensible parts of the welfare state.