Quick links: NewsBiscuit Home • Chat Room • Writers' Room • Top Ten
StoopyDeGunt
offlineMember
I love it when mega rich, snooty columnists (who spend half their time sneering at the unfashionable types in the suburbs and the provinces) talk about how they have to economise.
Alison Pearson, though, is really taking the piss. She's a millionaire from sales of her book. And yet she writes a column in the Daily Telegraph moaning about losing her child benefit. It's not as if she's going to struggle to pay the rent.
Still, I expect the nanny can expect a drop in wages now.
Scroat
offlineMember
Unbelievable. Here's a bit from it:
“I suppose that, strictly speaking, we don’t need the money,” says my friend Helen, who gave up a highly paid City job to raise her three children in Suffolk. “But at least it felt like we were getting something from the government. Now we will get nothing. We use every spare penny to pay school fees for the two older ones because the local comprehensive is so dreadful. We barely use the NHS. We never see a policeman. There is no public transport system round here so just exactly what are we paying our 40% tax for?”
And she gets paid for doing this!
Hunter F. Thompson
offlineMember
Mrs Wildenstein, who is very much richer, says she has no troble understanding that taxes are due and payable. She says she enjoys the benefits of a civilised world and, well, she's glad to pay her taxes and let the democratic process (in France) make sure that they reach the needy and fund pleasing and permanent public projects.
I mean really: let's ave a shoofty at what exactly 40% of these particular chaps represents. What does it buy? 4 minutes' salary for a star bond trader? Bog rolls for the FTSE boudoirs for 6 months? Four Maserati tyres for a hot-shot property developper? 16 hours in the Maldives (not including travel)? This is stuff of which Mr & Mrs Pearson would presumably approve. Frivolous? But that's what Mr & Mrs Pearson's 40% is being used to pay for, today, under the Iron rule of the IMF.
Whereas: pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers can be amply sourced with the same amount, to equip a suitably motivated, numerous, peuplade. In our present circumstances, what exactly does she expect her ten cents to do for her?
If she wants sight of a policeman, now and again, some convincing actors can be outsourced at mad cost plus 5%, suitably garbed and tasked with walking along her street. They will be carrying a nifty little hand-held device which takes credit/debit card payments, and will knock on her door. Hey! It's the Tory Way!
The All New Jeni B
offlineMember
The Student Loans Company has deemed me entitled to £90.05 per month. From this, I am expected to buy books, printer ink, paper, transport, food, clothes,etc.
I can spare her fuck all.
Quaz
offlineMember
I did chortle at the line from La Pearson where her ex-city friend said of her Suffolk (presumably rural) home "We never see a policeman".
I'd do a house swap for my recently vacated terrace in a town centre if she wants to see police; they were often seen either at night in a helicopter while chasing burglers and car theives, or whizzing past in a patrol car with the siren on, or while carrying out raids and marking out crime scenes. The bus routes were good, and there were 2 decent, if oversubscribed, high schools plus three or four bad ones as well to compensate. It's all relative though, as friends who moved there from London found it like a rural retreat.
As my late great-uncle used to say in mock sympathy, "How the poor live".
Quaz
offlineMember
Rikkor,
Would that be socialism like the $15.4 billion paid by the US in farm subsidies last year? That $9trillion dollar national debt was building up for a while.
Now I'm getting national debt envy, it makes ours look rubbish, no style. Mind you, the EU is paying a $58 billion farm subsidy in 2010, though I'm no longer sure just how comparible the two are in farm area etc. since EU enlargement, but the EU does have to pay a lot poeple for not growing things. All those Italian Olives don't not-grow themselves.
Oxbridge
offlineMember
Socialism was alive, Rikkor? Damn, I must have blinked and missed it.
Yeah, stupid cow. But, with gritted teeth, I have to admire the government's courage in alienating its natural supporter base like this. I speak as one who is (just) a higher rate tax payer, has no mortgage and no expensive habits but still only just manages to provide for a family because my wife doesn't work. If we both worked and each earned half of what I do now, we would be comfortably off. Strange world. There is a case to be made here, shame it just falls to ridiculous women like Alison Pearson to make it.
saltire
offlineMember
Oxy,you say you have no mortgage [or presumably rent] you have no expensive habits and you still just manage to provide for your family as a higher rate tax payer ?
Mortgage/Rent is for most people the biggest drain on their income.Having neither,would, for millions of people,mean a life of relative comfort.
Either you have lots of children or you're buying too much Organic food..
Oxbridge
offlineMember
'Relative' is the key word. We get by and have no debts, which is of course how most people manage. Two children is, to be fair, an expensive habit. As is food of any kind these days.
Not complaining particularly, but decisions like this get made because they are administratively easy. It certainly sits very ill with the supposed focus on families. And they haven't even begun to tackle the benefits culture yet.
ianslat
offlineMember
If you think about it, a universal benefit for having kids basically means that the state is essentially paying people to have children. Is there some small print somewhere that mean then that all children are owned by the state (ie nationalised)?
What are we going to do with all these kids? Sell them at a profit when they become profitable (oh no, that's banks isn't it)?
You must log in to post.
