Skip to main content

Underwriting the next generation

I received a bill from the taxman today. Barstards! Apparently, the bill was caused by an error in the IR's computer system that overpaid me for child tax credit. Idiots! I will have to pay the half-wits but will do so with much reluctance. What really gets me is that there are no longer any tax allowances for parents. Give us a break! We have less disposable income than people without children and receive no credit for the benefits that we are bringing to society. My annual childcare costs are equivalent to a reasonable pre-tax salary for a young single person. They make me so angry with their going out and having fun all the time while I sit at home cursing the price of babysitters and watching yet more repeats of Friends on the idiot box.

Provided my children do not become hardened criminals - they do act like terrorists a lot of the time so its too early to say with total conviction - they should grow up to become tomorrow's doctors or lawyers and hopefully contribute to society in a positive way. In 30 years time my daughter may save someone's life on the operating table, or if she's a hairdresser she might might make someone happy with a really good perm (I think they will be back in by then) or simple cut such as this one: http://www.davidhasselhoff.com/splash.html.

Having children is one of the most important ways of contributing to society yet the present Government would rather spend billions fighting a pointless war in the Middle East than subsidise childcare. I am also fairly sure that one of the main reasons that childcare costs in the UK are not subsidised is so that the parent that is not the main breadwinner is forced to stay at home, thereby leaving open another job to be filled by a jobseeker (most likely a young single person! They make me so angry with their smoking weed and staying out all night while I .. enough already!), reducing unemployment but at all times keeping the stay at home parent out of the unemployment statistics.

Enough grumpy old man shit, go to bed!

I'd better do as the voice in my head says. Apologies for the rant (and the gratuitous swearing) but I am nursing a hangover. Also, if any voluntarily childless people out there want to wire me some money for nappies/toys/nannies/beer my account details are: a/c XXXXXXX sort XX-XX-XX.

Comments

Manhattan Mama said…
I know you hate me for the edit Alpha Male (fellow readers, I XX'd out the account details and sort code of his and YLM's account...) but as a reporter who writes all too often about identity theft and what not, I love you both too much to see something like that happen. Okay so I am paranoid and a little edit happy....attack me tomorrow in your post.
Anonymous said…
keep taking the lithium grandpa!!!!

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

A thought

Perhaps sometimes a gift can be delivered in the guise of a tragedy. It's just a matter of perception, after all. I suspect that the talent lies in looking beyond the surface to what lies beneath and beyond. And, of course, being able to make sense of it all and going on to apply that knowledge to building a productive way forward. Here's hoping.

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

A friend recently emailed me to say that her big memory of her stay with us last year is that she had a great birthday, one of the few where she didn't 'act like a spoiled grumpy princess'. She tried to give me all the credit but as I explained to her, it was all down to having a fellow female organising the birthday fun rather than leaving it to her partner. Her email got me thinking about birthdays and how very different men and women are in their attitudes to celebrating special occasions. It also had me thinking about my birthday two years ago when I threw a major tantrum in the Carrefour car-park after being told that we were off to do the weekly shop, kids in tow, which was simply the final straw at the end of a very uninspiring day. In contrast, my birthday last year was rather lovely (a morning on my own in a spa with no mobile coverage, pure selfish bliss). This year - in a few short months, eek! - I'll be hitting the grand old age of 38. This will be my las...