David Cameron and his fag Nick Clegg want to do something nice to help hard working families with their childcare costs. The problem is, some hard working families need more help than others.
Cameron and Clegg have decided that it’d be a good idea to pay 20% of childcare costs, up to a maximum of £2,000 a year. I have to agree that that is indeed a nice idea. As usual with these two clowns, the implementation leaves a bit to be desired.
The maximum benefit under these new plans is 20% of your childcare costs, or £2,000 at the most, per child. £2,000 is 20% of £10,0000. The upper earning limit for being able to take advantage of this scheme is £300,000, or to put it another way £150,000 per parent.
Can anyone, except a fucking politician, seriously think that anyone earning £150k or a couple earning jointly earning £300k need fucking help paying for childcare?
Sure, childcare is expensive but c’mon, seriously? The wealthy, and anyone earning that kind of money is wealthy, might have an empty wallet at the end of every month just like someone on the minimum wage, but the difference is that the family on the minimum wage have to choose between eating or heating when their bank is empty.
What marks this out as the work of imbeciles is the inconsistencies with other policies, namely the changes to child benefit. Anyone earning more than £50k gets penalised with the stopping of child benefit, currently £20.30 a week for the first child. Again, if the family has two parents and they both earn, as long as neither earn more than £50k, the can still receive child benefit.
Just like the new childcare credit, a family with a single earner can earn half as much as the two income family before benefits are stopped. It doesn’t make sense, penalising the lower income household.
You’ve probably spotted the inconsistency. You earn too much to receive child benefit, but need to earn a fuck load more before the government think you’re able to pay all your own childcare costs.
Clegg has stated that they didn’t introduce various cut-off points as families told them they wanted the system to be done as simply as possible. I think Clegg misunderstood. People want the system to be as simple as possible to use. They don’t give a shit how complex it is behind the scenes, as long as it’s simple to access, and to help make things a little simpler, the cut-off should’ve been £50k, just like child benefit.
If the upper threshold for receiving this benefit was lower, the people who really need it could’ve received a bigger percentage of help.
But then, that wouldn’t have pleased their voters, would it?