Oh bless George Osborne is giving up his child benefit

[PolkadotCircus]

......soo all us very squeezed middle parents should feel a whole lot better.

He's written to The Daily Fail to let us all know of his sacrifice and how it is the "fair and right decision".

George would just like to ask how exactly is it fair and right that amongst the other 85 % of families who will still get child benefit there are many earning far,far more as a family than many losing it?You know those on 80,90 and even 100k.

Also if you come from another European country you'll keep it regardless of what you earn,again how is this fair or right?

You waffled on proclaiming the need for your other cuts but frankly I didn't bother reading any further as being part of a party with such blatant disregard for fairness or common sense I felt it was a waste of my time reading anything else.

Oh and being worth£4 million with a nice wallpaper million £ trust fund on top doesn't really qualify you to lecture those of us hard working families at the other end of the food chain on making sacrifices.You know those of us that have always worked hard, with zero trust fund,private education or Oxbridge network to get us on in life.Those of us that you keep clobbering time and time again.

The fact you seem to think we're all coffee drinking yummy mummies who could go without a months worth of manicures to cover our loss of CB just shows how ridiculously out of touch you really are.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm just going to put another jumper on(central heating isn't often on these days and we don't have a WFA to fall back on like many wealthy pensioners).Need to get Dp up so he can sort out his bike for work Monday.That would be the push bike he cycles many miles on each day after a demanding day of work as we've been priced out of public transport.Also need to try and eek out 3 times packed lunches for Monday from the meagre offerings in my Lidle filled cupboards as currently on day 4 of our no spend January and can't afford school dinners.

Anytime you want to give me tips on stretching our meagre budget even further in order to cover our loss of Child Benefit feel free!

Polka, i disagree. My childcare costs will reduce in 3 years time, they certainly won't plummet. Costs for my 2 in school are over £600 every month, so i'd expect to still be around the £1,000pm mark when all 3 are in school, that's still £15k untaxed salary, before holiday cc costs are taken into account (30 hours cc per day for at least 4 weeks in summer - assuming we take 2 weeks off ourselves). these are costs that families with one stay at home parent do not have to meet.

And i expect to be paying cc for at least another 10 years, although not for all children obviously. Not everyone can use cc vouchers, if their employer isn't signed up to the scheme then hard luck. And not everyone has the fortune of having a family member prepared to look after their children for free. All this 'but some do this and some do thats' so dual income hh don't have to pay that much in cc is might be true for some but i doubt it is the norm.

presumably lone working parents earning over the threshold could also avail themselves of cc vouchers and family support for cc, but of course they also may not have this luxury as drjohnson makes clear.

the new rules are a botched attempt to claw back money for the treasury i agree, but to imply that we are winners is simply incorrect. the hoo-ha over dual income families still eligible to recieve CB means the govt will almost certainly find a more sophisticated methodology to allow them to take CB from these families, but this won't mean that others who are deemed more worthy by many will then become eligible again. just more families won't recieve it. Divide and conquer. i'm not sure if this is what many would prefer. i would prefer that CB was left as a universal benefit, where those who don't think they need it simply don't claim it.

He isn?t giving up his child benefit. He?s refusing to pay it to his wife and have it reclaimed from his tax. She should LTB.

Brian that is you but by no means every parent with 2 earners.

I am currently a very low earning single parent; I have never earned, nor ever expect to earn, anywhere near the threshold for having CB withdrawn, certainly not before my youngest is too old to be eligible. However, I am not in favour of means testing CB as a general principle, even without the good points made by catsmother regarding abusive households.

However high your earnings are, the cost of raising the next generation is not negligible. You may say that having children is a lifestyle choice (arguable, but for most of us it probably was), but it is in the interests of the whole of society that those children are raised to be good, healthy, well-educated citizens. While parents are expending money, time and energy on fulfilling their social obligations in this way, a small monetary contribution is also demanded from childless citizens who are able to concentrate on their careers and other self-determined pursuits (not selfish, that's a whole different argument and one I don't hold with at all, but certainly with more freedom to choose). This seems to me inherently fair. I know some childless people who deeply resent it, but one day my offspring will be providing their medical care, growing/distributing the food they eat, administering their pension payments and/or pushing their Bath chairs. Inasmuch as they will benefit from children being raised by other people, they are also asked to chip in. Raising the next generation is something we really all are in together, whether our part is direct or indirect.

But now it isn't. The rich-poor divide is being reinforced in yet another area. Parenting isn't something we have in common with people in other income brackets. Some of us are paid for it whereas others are paying not just for their own children but for mine as well, and may well be a bit miffed about it. It's not as if their children are any cheaper to keep than mine.

fwiw i only know of one family who have free cc from a family member (they work pt and have gp care for 3 days) they are aware they are exceptionally lucky. every other family i know has tailored their work life to fit in with their cc needs, whether that is arrangements of 2xft, 2xpt or 1xft and 1xSAH, 1xSAH, etc. or any combination thereof. while this is only folk i know so not representative of the country as a whole, i find it difficult to believe that a majority or even a large percentage of dual income hh are managing to avail themselves of zero or minimal cc costs. if you have statistics to contradict this i'd be interested in a link as i am genuinely interested.

i don't know where this army of willing and able grandparents reside, but it isn't among my reference group. possibly as most of the folk i know also waited to start their family later, making family help from grandparents less likely.

Brian but all those creative options will give far lower bills than you're quoting for primary age kids.My DS and her husband both take a day off in the week and grandparents do the school pick up the other 3 days.They have zero bills for 4 year old twins.

We have many friends who do shift work(nurses,police)or work in the evenings or at home whose grandparents do all the cc or some,some who swap with friends etc,etc.Our school has many grandparents doing the child care as is being widely reported.This is just for primary age kids,the years at secondary will have even less as they get out later,often have travel to do and clubs on top of being old enough not to need child care at all.You get CB for a long time.

Yes this isn't all families but it is simply untrue to say all dual income families have high cc bills.

Anyhow looks like they'll be giving more help re cc bills on top of the less tax, pensions for many and CB dual income families get so dual income families are going to be a lot better off than those on a single salary earning the same or even less.

Oh and my DS earns more with her 2 salaries and will be keeping her CB.

It's not fair!

Some people on two incomes have free childcare from relatives....not the majority of course but I know plenty of families with some (even if it's only one/two days a week) free childcare options....

Also know well-off families who just put all of the CB straight into their DCs' savings accounts from birth so will have amassed tidy little sums for all their already entitled children......

Let's not even mention that now grandparents are less likely to be retired at 55/60/65 they will be out in the workplace themselves, not available to mind grandchildren.

well it seems polka that your anecdotal evidence is very different to mine. i would say your DS is the exception not the norm. in my daughter's Y2 class i can think of one GP i regularly see doing drop off/pick up. i don't know their actual arrangements though as i don't actually know them. that said i only get to do this myself one day a week, as i work a 4 day FT week (4 long days). all those i know are working parents or SAHP though. this is the same for the few i have knowledge of in my son's reception class.

as i said, aside from the one example i mentioned earlier, all the 2 income FT/PT working families i know pay for professional childcare if needed. i would also mention that flexible arrangements with friends etc. are very difficult to make stack up long term. if i want to be considered a decent reliable employee i need to have reliable cc in place. my CM won't 'forget' she said she'd look after my children, or book a hair appt or whatever on a day i'm working. if she ever takes a day off it's planned in advance or urgent. she takes her job seriously so i can take mine seriously too but this obviously comes at a price. this helps when i need to stay at home to look after a vomitting monster at short notice.

I wonder how much you consider to be a lot to pay in CC anyway? As i said we need to earn £27k to pay for ours, and that is only for 4 days, not a full week, those families paying for 5 days or who use nurseries will be paying serious money if they have more than one child being looked after. I think even £12k is a fair amount when my youngest starts school in almost 3 years?

"Anytime you want to give me tips on stretching our meagre budget even further in order to cover our loss of Child Benefit feel free! "

Meagre budget OP? One of you must be on 60k+ to be losing CB. Budget better.

If some people with family income of more than 60k still get CB then well done to them as they've dodged a bullet. The coalition would not have implemented the policy like this except for the fact that tax system doesn't work on household income level any longer.

The lesson to take from this is don't count benefits as a god given right when they can be taken away at any time. All major parties would be making these changes - thus Labours silence - so the lefties on here are deluding themselves if they think a new government or chancellor is going to make any kind of difference.

Gazzlw - we have never needed cb and I find it rather offensive that because of that you feel fit to refer to my children as entitled. My/our children have been brought up to expect to work, very hard, just as their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have always done.

Secondly there has been a lot of vitriol on this thread. I suspect none of that vitriol comes from anyone who would have voted conservative anyway so actually it is wholly irrelevant as far as this government is concerned.

I think it would be ok to lose CB but only if it is fair and it definitely isn't. Having said that, it will be a shock to many.

If people had known this would happen, many would not have taken out such a big mortgage or spent so much on other things. Yes some things can be cut back on (decent skiing holidays or the wine cellar) but most people don't have these and have made financial commitments based on what they believed their family income would be. For the people on the borderline, there is not much room for "managing the budget better" as some have suggested, unless they downsize with the associated costs and losses involved there. Some may even have thought again about the number of children they had, had they known their income would be less. Not much they can do about that now!

It is the "squeezed middle" who will really suffer because of the lack of notice. Had they been warned they may well have taken steps to "cut their cloth". It is particularly galling when it is so blatantly unfair.

I wasn't implying that everyone who has a high salary has entitled children - it was just the particular family I was thinking of... And I can also appreciate, as evidenced by the thread about the family with an income of £250K who consider themselves not wealthy, that just because you are high earners it doesn't make you automatically rich or entitled.