Skip to main content

Hello- and what do you think? (Snappy title, eh?)

On a whim I'm jumping on the blogging bandwagon...so this may be the only post that ever gets written. I have no plan and no theme...so this may degenerate into photos of the menagerie doing 'cute stuff'.

Anyhow, I was watching Sky News paper review this morning, and one of the guests (whose name I  can't remember) picked this story to talk about: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2225987/Angela-Epsteins-furious-attack-Government-My-family-losing-child-benefit-just-earning-100k.html
 The guest was very unsympathetic to the view in this article- which I am too. Not so much because as a non-child owning person I resent paying for other people's children (which was the view of lady on t'telly) but because I am flabbergasted that you could perceive that you need an extra £1,700 per year when you earn £100K. I'm not sure I could manage to spend £100,000 per year! (Ok, that is a lie- I would have a horse and a great big shiny horse box).
If we accept the premise that we as a country need to spend less on benefits (which I am sure not everyone does), a cut like this seems like a reasonable way to do it- providing that make it means tested does not cost more in admin than it saves. Also- it would possible be fairer if it was done on household income, rather than there being a cut if one parent earns over a certain amount.

I may be totally alone in this- if Eamon Holmes is to be believed- as he seemed to think that 'the nation' would agree with Jackie the sports presenter who had 'some sympathy' with the author of the article. (Although said sports presenter thought that having a MacDonalds in the athletes village at the Olympics was not at all weird, so I reckon I'm not going to agree with her very often!)

Is my idea of a resonable income completely off? Or should I just stop watching Sky News...?

Comments

  1. Unknown1 November 2012 at 16:49

    Hi
    I do get your view, the problem is, as middle earers, confortable but not rich, we constantly get squeezed, it is the only benefit we are entitled to and easy to take away. We may not need it you say, but I would rather see them deal with tax avoidance loopholes. If vodafone, Starbucks, Boots, top shop, gary Barlow, to name but a few all paid tax as due in UK then deficit would be solved. It just seems that atking on the mgarich is not an option, yet squeezing more from the hardworkers in the form of tax rises, pension contribution rises with actual pension cuts, removal of childbenefit and pay freezers for vital public workers such as nurses, police. teachers and social services....well, that's fine!

    rant over, its not that I totally disagree but......

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. NicolaB1 November 2012 at 16:57

      I definitely agree with you on the loophole closing and taxing the mega rich (although £100K seems fairly rich to me!) and if that did solve the debt problem then no problem with keeping it as a universal benefit.
      I suppose the real issue that I have is that in my head, benefits are for the hard up, and I can't make 100K equal strapped for cash...

      Delete
  2. EcoCatLady2 November 2012 at 19:10

    OK... my mind is blown. You mean to tell me that everyone in the UK gets a child benefit from the government regardless of income level?!? Plus, everybody gets free health care? I think we're living in polar opposite universes!

    Guess I have mixed feelings about it - and since I don't have any idea how £100K translates to US dollars, I can't really comment on the income levels. Part of me thinks it would be amazing to live in a country that had such benefits to begin with - can't imagine it actually. But part of me thinks it's sort of silly to give government benefits to people who obviously don't need them. Maybe it would make more sense to provide services like child care free of charge to everyone?

    I do admit that as someone who is child free by choice I do get a tad bit annoyed by having to support everyone else's kids - at the same time, I recognize that paying for public education isn't really paying to educate your own kids, it's paying to live in an educated society.

    Gonna have to mull this one over for a while...

    ReplyDelete
  3. NicolaB2 November 2012 at 19:46

    Yup- also all people over 60 get a bus pass. And the winter fuel allowance (although there was some talk of cutting those too- but the admin involved in making them means tested makes it cheaper to just pay it to everyone).

    £100K is about $160K to give you an idea. Not sure how much more tax you'd pay on that here compared to the US (especially as the family in the article are duel income, so it gets more complicated...)

    The welfare state is pretty amazing- we do take the NHS and its amazingness for granted! I am not sure if the treatment and care in the US is better for being private or not. I always get annoyed and defensive of the NHS when I hear politicians in the US saying how dreadful systems like the NHS are- how can it be bad that when something happens- like when I got bitten by a dog last year- I just go to hospital, get stitched up, get given a big pack of antibiotics, and have weeks of appointments with nurses and it costs me nothing (well, obviously we pay through taxes, but I don't have to work out if I can afford treatment!)

    Anyway- I think it would make a lot of sense to have free childcare. You have to earn about £20K plus to make it financially worthwhile to go back to work (this is a bit of a guess, but I definitely know that if I had a child I would probably spend more on childcare than I earn).

    I've never thought of paying for other people's children's education as a problem- probably because, as you say, you might not like the society you get if education was not free!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2014 aims and review of 2013 aims

After all of the Christmas feasting (the fridge is still full of cheese, and sprouts that didn't get cooked), and despite the first cold of the winter, I am feeling the urge to get cracking with some projects, and finish up all of those little lingering jobs that I've been putting off. One of those is to work out what I am aiming to achieve this year...and this is what I have come up with: - complete first module of C&G knitting course and start second. Save enough money to pay the course fees for the whole course. - donate 2% (minimum) of earnings to charity. I am planning to donate at the end of each month, and to donate to a variety of causes, local, international, animals, people, conservation- hopefully a wide variety. - read down the house- I'd like to read 12 books this year, which would leave quite a few books unread. But it'd be nice to establish the habit of reading again. - reduce stash of knitting yarn from just under 40,000 metres to under 30,000 m...
10 comments
Read more

A book at bedtime

I used to read a lot when I was a child/teenager. We'd go to the town library, I'd check out the full allowance of books (which I think was 8, but may have increased to 12 later on) and by the next time we went back to the library (probably the following week), I'd have read them all. Now that I have to do things like go to work, feed myself, wash clothes etc etc, I probably don't read that many books in a year. (Although I do read the newspaper on my Kindle most days).  This may also be influenced by the fact that if I really get in to a book I find it hard to tear myself away from it to do anything else, such as sleep, and end up knackered and living in a bit of a mess. (Moderation...what's that?! So rather than watching stuff on BBC iPlayer at bedtime, I am going to start reading, but limit myself to 10.30pm lights out to try and impose this 'moderation' thing on myself. (If I am really tired or it is a boring book, I may fall asleep with book on face, a...
6 comments
Read more

Belated round-up

Having just re-read my 2014 aims post , and noticed that I intended to write a monthly round up of my progress, I thought it was about time for, err, a three-and-a-half monthly progress summary! - C&G knitting course- I have made slow progress on this- although slow is better than none! I have at least written out a giant list of what I need to do to finish the module so that I can have the satisfaction of ticking things off said list. I've knitted a few more samples and written up the notes on them. I think I need to focus more on this aim, if I am to actually finish the module this year. I seem to have a bit of mental block about it though, and I am not sure why. - donate 2% of earnings to charity. I have been doing this, although more by sponsoring people for the London Marathon and joining the National Trust than by picking a charity each month and donating to it, which is what I originally envisaged. I am wondering if donating less often, say every six months, would b...
3 comments
Read more