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!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the