Child benefit

[frankiegth]

If the government were to say we'll double child benefit but it will be paid in food/clothing tokens would it meet with your agreement?

My children are now way too old but if such an offer had been on the table when they were youngsters it would have been an offer I personally would have gladly taken up.

[amberaleman]

There are huge advantages in keeping any benefit system simple.

Children need food and clothing - but they also have other needs such as accommodation, education, exercise and healthcare. Some families can provide food and clothing from existing resources, and for them Child Benefit (CB) may help to satisfy those other needs. Keeping the system simple gives families a choice over how to spend the money and so caters for a range of different household needs.

Vouchers create an extra layer of administration - as retailers who receive them in return for specified goods then have to be able to exchange them for cash. And any doubling of the value of CB would have to be funded by increased taxation (or more Government borrowing ).

So I wouldn't change the system! But I should declare an interest - I work for HM Revenue & Customs, the Department that administers CB.

[thevicar]

CB administration eh? Care to buy some CDs off me, they fell off the back of a lorry - interesting data they got on 'em...

[ojiveojive]

Don't worry about Child Benefit, what should be addressed is businesses claiming £1820 off their wage bill, £70 per week for six months for everyone they employ that is on New Deal. Usually these employees are on minimum wage so these businesses are being subsidised by you and me and as the employed concerned are usually on minimum wage they then have to claim Working Tax Credit in order to maintain anything approaching minimum living standards. Many are only kept on for the subsidy period then replaced by other New Deal unemployed in order to maintain the income stream from us. And the people that find these New Deal people jobs? Mainly american companies that have moved into the privatised job placement industry and that make billions of dollars profit from the unemployed and the disabled www.biscom.org.uk/. It is mandatory for long term New Deal unemployed to attend centres where they will be treated like fodder in a one size fits all irrespective of abilities system in order to maximise the returns for the placement company. I don't mind subsidising benefits for the wreckless, the feckless, the luckless or the fcukless. I don't mind subsidising asylum seekers, single mothers, single fathers, refugees or anyone else trying to scrape some kind of existence in our selfish society (for which I still blame Thatcher). I do object to subsidising someone's expense account in order that they can continue to pay the minimum wage whilst themselves living off the backs of low paid workers. I do object to foreign companies creaming off millions of pounds for their shareholders by taking advantage of people who have to agree to travel anywhere within a 90 minute radius journey in order to work for minimum wage or lose their benefits. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr .

[Sultan of Cannock- SRFC]

There you have it, though. After all, "New Deal" was an American phrase taken from the New Deal that the was the Roosevelt (?) aminstration's policy for dragging the USA out of the depression of the 1920's /30's.

Like a lot of what New Labour does, look behind the spin and what sounds like a wonderful idea (and maybe could or would be if was run properly) turns out to be unsatisfactory both for those of us who pay for it and the poor buggers we'd like to help.

BTW, i don't think that Maggie can claim credit for the "selfish society". The "selfish society" had been around during the time that i was growing up partly in the form of the Unions forever striking for higher pay. The workers going on strike at Ford Dagenham or Leyland didn't give a stuff about what happened to the workers at the smaller component firms. We had mass meetings, intimidation at show-of-hands votes. We even had secondary picketing, where one of the metalworking firms across the road from us went on strike and tried to prevent US from working, too.

For all it's faults, i was asupporter of the Callaghan Government because at least it's heart was in the right place. Sunny Jim, as a union man, gave them beer and sandwiches, invited them into Downing Street and tried to talk some sense into them that you couldn't just keep chasing prices with wage increases that in turn just fuelled more inflation. (In my first year at work i got a whopping 20% payrise. Unfortunately, inflation was 23%!)

Callaghan tried to do his best for the country, and had he won the election in '79 then the economy probably would have had a softer landing. Perhaps we would be like France now. However, rubbish littered the streets, green-goddesses went to fires and the dead remained unburied as the Unions kicked him in the teeth through greed. Loads of "blue collars" then went and voted for Maggie as she encapsulated the mood of the time.

Thatcher didn't create the selfish society, it merely found in her the leader it deserved.

[Col ISIHAC.]

Ah! Happy times...

Sulty talks the sense and truth of a thousand men; the flying pickets which Mags outlawed in '84!

It has always struck me as ironic that Sunny Jim failed to do through mediation what Maggie achieved through bullying, hectoring and sheer bloody-mindedness. Maybe she wasn't responsible for the greed culture per se; but the fat cats, the city cats and yuppies caught greed and prospered; while everyone else suffered at the hands of that bl00dy she devil!


The day her obituary is printed, I shall rejoice.

[peekay]

She took my milk.