Tit and Tory boy pt.II

When your boss has to go and defend what you’ve done you know you’ve fucked up big time, so it’s fun hearing and watching David Cameron trying to smooth things over by wanking on about the need for tough and difficult and tough and fair and difficult and tough decisions. But, WOW what a fuck up the child benefit thingy is.

Aside from the tough/difficult rhetoric, the main response I’ve heard concerned an appeal to practical snobbery – basing it on household rather than individual incomes would involve a horrendous bureaucratic process (true) and also involve means testing. Now its fun to hear a politician say "means testing" in this age of the “targeted” benefit, but isn’t that kinda what the family and working tax credit processes already involve?

I’d have thought an easier approach, a pragmatic one even would have been to automatically exclude all those on £44k+, but allow them to submit a claim if their total household income was below a certain level; that way the rank unfairness of the current proposals wherein households with an income in excess of £80k can get a benefit households with a £44k income can’t would be addressed. Plus, as benefits not paid to auld yins prove, there will always be penty of people who don't claim.

But, WOW what a political fuck-up all the same given the Tory fascination with the nuclear family and notions of mums staying at home to raise the kids, but getting the shafteroo cos hubby is a middle manager in a PLC. And WOW 2x given the Tory desire to appeal to the aspirational i.e. those who don’t earn £44k but aspire to and can see themselves doing so. And WOW 3x given the stupid fucks forgot about the origins of child benefit, which is that it was to provide a universal income to mothers, i.e. one devoid of the stigma attached to nearly all other benefits and grounded as much in feminist as it was statist thinking.

The backtracking going on right now about transferable married people’s allowances (noises rather than commitments) is amazing also given cutting one benefit, but increasing an allowance would limit any net benefit in terms of deficit reduction. But, that’s a tad to sensible, rather the Beeb will simply fixate on any notion of backtracking followed by a wank off over personalities cos that’s how politics and the economy are reported on here.

Which is a pity given this deficit is a finite thing isn’t it, like the Tories are taking all these tough/difficult decisions to address a one off problem whereas presumably the child benefit cut will be a permanent measure? How that work?

Perhaps on the basis that it plays straight into the US Democrat rhetoric Labour are currently wrapping themselves in of the squeezed middling sort, providing a wonderfully practical example of how the current cabinet of toffs just doesn’t get it.