I have to warn you – this will be a rant (hence the ‘category’ of ‘rant’).

For those of finer sensibilities, or who prefer to only read the less rant-acious blogs, turn away now. Read something from the ‘poetry’ category, take up table tennis, or learn the ancient martial art of navel-gazing (one of my favourite ‘down-time’ pastimes).

Still reading? Cool. So here goes.

First the facts:
1. I am a single full-time working parent.
2. My daughter lives with me 7 days a week.
3. I earn more than 44k a year (whoopti-doo, I hear you say. Just bear with me, this is all going somewhere.)

Now the punchline:
1. I presently get £80 a month ‘child tax credit’. That is the full extent of the financial assistance the government (which I have paid for during my 15 years working in England) gives to me. £80 per month. That’s it.
2. Because I earn more than £44k a year, I will lose my £80 per month child tax credit come June. That’s right, all gone. Supposedly, I don’t need it anymore. Thanks coallition government!
3. If I lived with a partner with both of us earning £44k (total annual household income of £88k) we would together receive £160 per month child tax credit, even after June. Nice, eh?

So, according to the government, the magic number is £44k.

And if two people earn less than this live together, they need financial support from our tax money, whereas I don’t (I do not take home anywhere £88k, although it would be really nice if I did!).

So there you have it.

Oh, and the coallition government also brought a stealth income tax increase in during this year, meaning someone earning more than £40k pays an additional £100 per month in tax… Because we can obviously afford it.

Where is this money going? I hear you ask.

Better schools? More libraries? Higher paid doctors and nurses? Public infrastructure? Paying the needy or elderly to be able to live better?

Nope.

This money is the debt we inherited because some idiot in the previous government (Brown…) decided it was a good idea to blow your and my money on failing banks. “Good money after bad money.” Interesting decision.

So, fundamentally, I lose £80 per month, Hounslow closes 8 out of 10 libraries (four of which were either just refurbished or rebuilt in the last 12 months!), we lose police, schools lose funding, local communities and charities lose funding, to line the pockets of already rich bankers.

The same bankers who gambled and lost our money in the first place. (Note, they did NOT lose their own money at all – neither the first or the second time, because most high-end bankers pay next to nothing in tax – 20% at most on maybe part of what they earn.)

That’s all.

Screw the working class, the middle earners. Tax them harder, remove their benefits. Let the gambling continue in the markets. (And before anyone self-righteously accuses me of cashing in on the scramble for cash then stabbing those gambling ‘heroes’ in the back when it all fell apart; I did not ever buy any shares, aside from the “option” to buy shares of a company I once worked in which was actually part of the pension scheme.)

And of course hike up the cost of commuting, electricity, gas…

I don’t want to pay for some gamblers to continue to burn our world economy.

Rant over! 🙂

Back to happy self.

Back to rewriting. 😉

Til next time, keep breathing easy,

mE (Em)