’ve caught snatches of the LibDem conference this week. I had thought it was the turn of the Tories, but as I haven’t heard a single policy announcement which could even vaguely be considered Conservative, let alone right-wing, I’m assuming that, in a break with tradition, the Lib-Dems are celebrating their rise to power (on the back of a lower share of the national vote and fewer MPs than they managed in 2005) by holding two conferences.
I expect the Tories have decided not to hold one because delegates might be tempted to lynch their party leadership for betraying everything they believe in.
Similarly, I seem to remember that the LibDem Prime Minister, David Cameron, had agreed to let a few token Tory MPs sit around the Cabinet table as part of the so-called “Coalition”, but so far I have only been able to identify Liam Fox as a genuine conservative. (And I’m confused by the presence of Ken Clarke, a fat man who has managed to squeeze his bloated body into that tiny sliver of political space to the left of the LibDems.)
The evidence for this being a LibDem conference is overwhelming. First, every announcement has been miserably mishandled, every policy has evidently been hastily drawn up on the back of a fag packet, and every policy constitutes an attack on traditional families and the middle classes in general, while favouring the criminal and/or feckless elements in society. And nothing announced so far will make any real dent in the deficit, let alone to the country’s eye-watering debt (stupid fantasists – i.e. 95% of our political and media class – evidently can’t tell the difference).
The only thing which makes me doubt that what’s taking place in Blackpool is a gathering of triumphant left-wingers is the fact that the BBC has mounted waves of attacks on everything being announced - their default mode when any Tory opens his or her mouth.
Personally I’d abolish child benefit altogether. Having a child is a choice each of us makes: there is no reason to reward us for our choice. If you can’t afford a child, don’t have one, because I really don’t want to pay for it. As a parent who pays through the nose to send their kid to private school, I already fund the education of someone else’s little darling (no, that’s all right – don’t bother thanking me). I don’t see why I should also be expected to pay for their food, drink, cigarettes, drugs, holidays, clothes and, in some cases, incarceration. (Mind you, “Red” Ken Clarke’s taking care of the last expense by not sending them to jail in the first place. But I expect the lucky winners of the old nicotine-pusher’s largesse will be round to claim their money from us anyway – probably at three in the afternoon when we’re all out. As they won’t have to suffer the inconvenience of being banged up, they’ll all have plenty of time to make house calls.)
As our LibDem government has decided to go on being generous with our money, I don’t see why it would prefer to reward working couples who earn up to £85,000 a year, while punishing a couple earning £45,000 a year, where one of them has decided to stay at home and look after their family – after all, the latter’s kids are far less likely to commit crimes, and will generally do better at school. (Mind you, the LibDems don’t give a stuff about “traditional” families – I’m sure a Tory government would take a very different line!)
Listen, Osbourne, with your pudgy face, your shifty, weak, watery eyes and your cruel little mouth – why don’t you show some bloody guts and cut child benefit entirely? For everyone! What exactly is the point of using the child benefit system to discourage the middle classes - who will look after their children, who will then go on to find proper employment and pay zillions in tax – from procreating, while encouraging the very people whose children those taxes will end up supporting to keep popping them out on an annual basis?
It’s deranged!
As for not allowing any family more than £25,000 a year in benefits – for God’s sake, this is grotesque! TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND POUNDS A YEAR FOR BEING FECKLESS? These people cannot cope. They have abrogated responsibility for their own lives and their offspring’s. Apart from a realtively small number of families who are in genuine need through no fault of their own, whom unforseeable illness or accident has cruelly rendered unable to pay their way, no family in which any sound-bodied adult has been offered work should be in receipt of anything more than the absolute minimum necessary to feed and clothe themselves and their dependants. What they shouldn’t do is receive an unearned annual income which, in many cases, will be considerably higher than that of neighbours who have decided not to sponge off the rest of us.
This current government is proving itself to be as morally insane as the last lot – and that’s really saying something.
Still, one day - who knows - the Tories might get back into power.
Anyone fancy a tea party?
Up to a point Lord Gronners. As a parent who is 2/3rds of the way through motoring three children along that endless road of paid-for education that starts at 3 and ends at about 22, I feel that is how I choose to dish out my money: I say to my lot that it would be cheaper to buy a Merc every two years and drive it off a cliff but I don't resent it. But I don't feel I deserve child support and really prefer that it goes to people who work in less well-paid jobs. I would rather give my tax to clever kids who need a leg up (remember the Surrey Scholarship?) than to subsidise bus passes for pensioned-up wrinklies. Am I right or left, in your terms?
ReplyDeleteTuesday, October 5, 2010 - 11:27 PM
Absolutely delighted for my taxes to be spent on bright children from poor backgrounds to enjoy the benefits of a decent education via a scholarship system which allows them to attend a private school. Does that describe the Surrey Scholarship? Some of my best friends… etc. There also used to be an excellent state-funded network of grammar schools for bright kids whose parents couldn’t afford private school fees.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree about child benefit being paid to high-earners – even medium-earners like myself. Ridiculous! But I do object to the state favouring two-income families over single-income, two-parent families, given that we (nominally) have a Tory government, and that the Tories have traditionally been in favour of stay-at-home mothers on the basis that they encourage greater social stability. Besides, why should some families earning £45,000 a year subsidise other families earning £85,000 a year? It’s loopy.
And I don’t quite see how universal child benefits for everyone earning less than £44,000 can be portrayed as giving your tax to bright kids who need a leg up. Grammar schools and scholarships to private schools achieve that. Chances are your tax is mainly being used to pay for someone else’s Sky subscription and summer holiday. If you’re relaxed about that, you’re a better man than I (well, you probably are, in any case). Child Benefit was introduced so working class mums would have some housekeeping money to look after their kids whether or not the old man pissed his pay packet up against the wall on a Friday night – and to encourage us to keep sprogging in order to regularly replenish the labour pool. But the kind of dad who drinks the ‘ousekeepin’ (or injects it into an artery) rarely lives with the “family” these days, and do we really need to increase the number of unemployable benefits recipients?
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - 04:09 PM
In a perverse way, I am warming to the government this week.
ReplyDeleteReaders of Daniel Finkelstein in the Times have been led to believe for years that the Cameron Conservatives are masters of the art of influence, that they know the tricks of the successful global marketeers, they have understood the lessons of social psychology and will nudge us into doing their bidding.
Mr Finkelstein thinks that's a good thing whereas, surely, it would be a repulsive repudiation of the great British tradition of the gormless amateur somehow muddling through against all the odds.
Funnily enough, years of Finkelstein's preparation of his readers for a brilliant fireworks display of these marketing gifts reached a climax on the day in 2007 when the Conservatives announced that there would be no new grammar schools. You may remember the carnage that followed.
And here they are again this week, demonstrating their nimble dexterity with policy announcements. No-one would give them a job marketing their product. And that, at least, is a relief.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - 09:48 PM
Agreed, DM - the idea of the Tories being master-communicators is hilarious. If I were Labour, I'd stop trying to force the Tories to ditch Andy Coulson - leave him in place for five years and the Tories will be toast. Similarly, that ghastly man Francis Maude, Mr. Moderniser, who has done more than anyone else to get his party to betray its core voters and ditch traditional policies, should be a Labour hero. As the grammar school and child benefit announcements showed, he's a very bright spark! When Cameron had no help, he delivered the conference speech that won him the leadership - since all the marketing "experts" climbed on board, he has delivered a series of dreary duds full of meaningless Blairite bollocks - which rather proves your point.
ReplyDeleteThursday, October 7, 2010 - 05:27 PM