Monday, 4 October 2010

Child benefit cut

Wow - they've really gone for it despite the massive u-turn it represents on everything the Tories said during the election about such universal benefits. The cut in child benefit announced today for households with a £44k p.a. earner is being digested everywhere tonight.

Sadly, me and mine come in at just over the wire and therefore we will be losing the £134 approx. monthly we currently get for our two children. Just to remind you at the back, you get £20.30 a week for your eldest child and £13.40 a week for each of your other children. That's assuming the ConDem coalition makes it to 2013 - if they think it's so good why wait until then? The truth is that the child benefit cut represents a very small part of the deficit and therefore it must be mainly a symbolic gesture. Chancellor George Osborne had to balance out his £26,000-a-year cap on the total value of benefits received by unemployed households with this perceived 'attack on middle-class benefits' such as the universal nature of the child benefit.

More lucid analysis to be found, well, almost everywhere, but especially the links below.

In the meantime, I was amused to read that the love-in begun during the election between online mums and David Cameron, has sadly come to an end:

Siobhan Freegard, the co-founder of Netmums, an online forum for mothers, has apparently said: “This proposal is a direct strike on those families who have worked hard to get themselves into a position where one parent is the breadwinner while the other is a stay-at-home parent.”