Wednesday - October 06, 2010

ask not what your country can do for you, but what your country can do for others

I know most of you won’t find this of too much interest, except perhaps the folks who live here and who may fall under the new cuts being proposed by the new govt.

The country is in deep financial trouble, of that there isn’t any doubt.  Leading the headlines for months now have been stories of welfare cheats and how much money per child moms, both wed and unwed, are getting.  Huge bru-haha at this moment because there is to be a cap on handouts and a reduction of benefits across the board. Or so it is claimed.  Mr. Cameron has stated that all “must share the pain” in efforts to reduce the deficit.  Well now, that is NOT exactly going to prove to be true. Not at all. But it reads rather well. We’re all in this together, kind of speech. Really?

New laws won’t be due till the year 2013 and so some of the mistakes already being uncovered in the master plan may well change. We can hope for the better but it’s government after all so let us not hold our breath.

Your country needs you: David Cameron’s wartime rallying call to Britain as he insists there is no alternative to drastic cuts

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 3:55 PM on 6th October 2010

* Cameron: We have to pull together to rebuild Britain
* PM insists child benefit cuts are necessary
* He evokes Thatcher with pledge to help small firms
* He attacks banks and urges them to start lending more
* He insists spending cuts will be driven by fairness

David Cameron today launched a robust defence of his Government’s drastic spending cuts as he called on the country to ‘pull together’ to rebuild Britain.

The Prime Minister admitted the reductions would be ‘difficult’ but insisted the alternative would pile debts onto the next generation and be ‘shirking’ responsibility.

Mr Cameron, at the Conservative Party conference, accepted that people were ‘anxious’ about the impact of cuts but declared: ‘There is no other responsible way.’

In a nod to the child benefit row, he insisted it was right that those with ‘broader shoulders’ bear the largest burden as the Government battles to pay down the deficit left behind by Labour.

The Tory leader, in his first conference speech as PM, tried to marry his Big Society concept to the cuts programme, telling the public: ‘Your country needs

you.’

all the rest

There is in place at this time, a coalition government of the Conservatives (Tories) and the Liberal Democrats (LibDems) The LibDems are green and left but it’s my understanding that they aren’t as far left as the previous govt. under Labour.  Whose new head btw has gained his position due to the unions and is called Red Ed. He is Ed Milliband, brother of David Milliband, who Hillary had said she had a crush on last year. Great recommendation, huh?
The following is part of an editorial by a real Conservative named Simon Heffer.  Personally, I think Mr. Cameron is consv./lite. Well, he’s left of Heffer most of the time and I am tired of seeing Mr. Cameron holding his babies. Another subject and the fault not his but the damn papers here.

Unfair welfare reforms are the latest sign of the Conservatives moving to the Left, argues Simon Heffer.

SIMON HEFFER
Telegraph
The welfare reforms announced on Monday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer portend severe tensions.

The absurdity of paying benefits to the better-off should have been addressed decades ago. It is not just universal child benefit that should have gone, but universal winter fuel allowance too. Nor can I understand why the children of plutocrats get free prescriptions, or their wives, when with child, free dentistry. However, such reforms require two conditions: that the benefits are lost only by those who can afford to lose them; and that those who do lose them are given recognition by the tax system of their need thereafter to fend for themselves, and incentives to work harder. It is clear that the Government has failed to do either.

Since the announcement was made, it has been admitted that a couple earning £87,750, neither of whom pays tax at the higher rate, would get the full benefit of £1,752 a year for two children; whereas a man on £43,876 who supports his family so his wife can bring up their children, or a single parent on the same income, for whom the benefit may be an important contribution to paying for childcare, would get nothing. The word “fair” is so abused in contemporary political discourse that one ought to require a licence to use it. But if, as the Prime Minister protested yesterday, it is fair that simply being a higher-rate taxpayer should deny one child benefit, then I’m an aardvark. It could not have required great bureaucratic effort to base the benefit on the income of the household in which the children live and it would have been much fairer.

entire commentary here

Something to consider here.  Logically one would assume that looking at taxable income for a couple where both are working, would not get benefits if they were making say over £80,000 a year.  Well ... not exactly.  The cap for child benefits is going to be £43,875. So, as long as each parent makes NO MORE then $43,875, they are entitled to child benefit payments.  Well, how about the mom who is not working but staying at home and looking after one or two as a full time housewife.  BUT ... her husband is working full time.  And he earns £43, 876.  Sorry Charlie.  You lose the benefit unless you drop the extra dollar. Or pound in this country.
In order to change that and say wait a minute, the couple with £80,000 don’t need the benefit so change that. Nope. Because that would then mean you are “means” testing who gets how much etc, and it would cost more money to implement that, then the plan they want for 2013.  Whew.

Another note. Here’s how silly this could get. Picture this.

A divorced woman could be earning up to £43,875 and get a monthly maintenance of £10,000, or £20,000 or even a million on top - and still receive child benefit.  If she doesn’t have a job and lives off her ex husband’s money, she will continue to get child benefits, however much she receives.
Crazy huh?  Think it can’t get crazier?  But WAIT! There’s MORE!

While Cameron and party have said all must share the pain and dig in yadda,yadda, there are TWO, (count em, two. clap-clap) programs where cuts won’t be made.

National Health .....  AND .....

FOREIGN AID!

You could not make this up.

Posted by peiper     on 10/06/2010 at 10:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Economics • Government • UK •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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