I think we are slipping away from the real thread here, so to put it right!
Bl**dy Teresas, book there and lose your child benefit! (only joking Capt. Nikos!!).
Seriously though, I think Osborne is making a few errors here in the way this is being done!
Child benefit in my opinion should be paid if the combined income is £50k or less, over that - no! - or reduced on a sliding scale maybe.
Lets be honest - when Child Benefit (CB) was started, it was designed to help families bring up kids in a time when the population needed expanding, now no longer true.
It was designed to help the poor, to pay for the kids food and clothes etc. or even to be put in a post office account for the kids, if you could afford it.
In those days not many women in families worked either.
If we are even more honest, it shouldn't be a perk to pay for a second or third holiday, but I can understand it being viewed as a right, having paid National Insurance!
It was always part of a families income.
Even when my kids were young, and we received it, (and by god we needed it then), the value of it was probably less (in real terms) than it seems to be now.
I was not a high earner in those days at all, (not now either really), and both of us had to work to pay the mortgage with little left at the end of the week.
We relied on mum-in law to baby-sit so we could survive and not live on baked beans.
Holidays were out of the question for us for the first 7 years, and then it was a weeks camping for the next 5 years, then in the early eighties,
package holidays arrived in plenty, and we went abroad - three of those to Spain and in 1983 our first holiday in SS (not the kids), the next year we returned again -
this time with the kids thanks to a promotion at work, and every year since.
These days we have 2-3 holidays each year but we both work hard to do it and give up other things at times.
Truth is we shouldn't forget which Chancellor of the Exchequer it was, who wrecked our economy, spent the Country's reserves,
and put us in deep "pooh" (or high credit), before we complain. Sadly, it was all covered up in spin and stealth so no one really realised until too late.
Topic: Teresa - again 2011 (Read 37741 times)