Criticise the policy, don't offend readers with bad language and a nasty, personalised attack on the person.

does that mean you disagree with what he has done in principle or rather the cut-off point?
Surely the idea that bankers/footballers/other Old Nicks-in-disguise earning gazillions should not be entitled to the benefit is sound. Where therefore should be the cut-of point and as an aside, should there be money spent on making it means-tested?

Maybe difficult to track but I wonder just what the child benefit take-up is amongst the City folk?

Only just, though.

I dont think I can honestly justify claiming child benefit. I don't need it. I can save for my daughters' university places without it.

This isn't going to bother me; I've nothing to complain about.

He has simply decided we can't afford it at the moment. And I think he's right, unpleasant though it is. You chose to give it to your daughter. You can continue to save to support her education as I will for my nipper. I see that as my responsibility not one I should expect the government to fund directly.

More pertinantly I would prefer we take the pain for the financial mess we're in now rather than allow it to grow and pass on for our kids to deal with later.

I think the fact that households with two earners on 39k will retain it and a household with one earner on 41k will lose it needs to be sorted out as it is plainly wrong.

as new sections of society realise that the cuts just aren't going to affect some nebulous anonymous "other" but in some way or other each and everyone of us. The Government will try to dribble them out so we don't all notice at once (most likely).

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/middle-class-could-be-forced-...

They said they wouldn't touch it and they're taking it away. I pay a hell of a lot of tax and get bugger all back.

I'm a regular reader and I'm really not remotely offended by the word twat. Sometimes this forum is too PC for its own good. Carry on.

The fact is, you don't need it.

Other cuts are being proposed (to housing benefit, for example) that will have a massive impact on some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our society.

Yes, you and your wife are hugely fortunate to both be working, and paying tax at the top rate - millions of others aren't so fortunate, through no fault of their own. They are the ones who need protection and sympathy - not you, I'm afraid.

Don't think you've really thought this through, Steve...

This is an easy target supported by rhetoric that doesn't actually make sense - George says 'It is very difficult to justify taxing people on low incomes to pay for the child benefit of those earning so much more than them'

Eh? So the tax regime for 'people on low incomes' is driven by the need to pay child benefit to others? Is their taxation going to change because of this decision? No. Its just a cheap soundbite.

Can't see this one going away quickly. The fact that some don't chose to claim - thats their decision. But this is going to materially effect some not very well-off people who are key Tory voters......

that child benefit is paid to people who could manage with out it. I have a problem with the implementation that seems to be so cock eyed purely because to do it right would be more difficult.

A better way would be to stop it for everyone and then, after a period of a couple of years when the deficit is better, use it for a tax reduction for everyone. Or a VAT reduction. But for everyone.

of Family Allowance was to pay money directly to mothers. The aim was to reduce child poverty, and find a way of bypassing dad's getting their hands on the money and just pissing it up a wall (or buying cds).

We have moved on from Beveridge's original intent - although not as much as you'd hope, but I can't help but agree to the overall principle of means testing such benefits.

What doesn't work here is that it will hurt single parents the most. A couple with an evenly distributed income of £80k will be untouched, but a single mum / dad on £45k will lose out. George already faces a legal challenge under equality laws about the wider impact his cuts will have and this isn't going to help as there are lots more single mums than dad's. Needless to say reports of the reaction at the Tory conference last night seemed to be that this was an attack on the sancity of marriage, not on child poverty or equality.

I have absolutely no sympathy for you at all. Do you think your daughter simply 'deserves' to have this money handed to her, which she's done nothing to earn? Is that not the sort of crass sense of entitlement that irks people?

and start from a clean sheet

The needs of each member of society are debated and the taxation regime is decided by a TV vote

...no problem at all with Steve's language or the passion he displays (this is an argument about politics after all), but I don't agree with the sentiment.

Having recently become a father myself, and being in the fortunate position of having a relatively high combined household income, I was absolutely stunned to discover that my wife and I were to be the recipients of child benefit.

I have always been a firm believer in the vital role of welfare within society, and have never voted Conservative in my life, but I can't help but agree with them on this one - state support should go where it's needed. Sure, we'd have found something to do with the money, but we don't actually need it and I can think of about a million more deserving places it could be directed.

Before yesterday's announcement I was actually in the process of attempting to convince my better half (who does not share my views on the welfare state) to either not collect the cash or (better still, given that I don't fully trust the coalition to use it sensibly) donate it to a homeless charity. As such, Osborne's announcement was welcome news, both on the basis that I agree with the policy and that it spares me a domestic.

I also agree that they've made a total pig's ear of the dual income vs single income thing.

Is it just me or is anyone else terminally confused by politics? I've read the arguments from each side and both seems valid. I've no idea what's best for the nation.

Happily these cuts won't affect me as, unhappily, I don't earn enough.

Child benefit was introduced as a temporary measure after the war to encourage families to have children.

I'm sure its original supporters wouldn't have intended it to go to middle to high income families.

The "crass sense of entitlement" that peterthecook mentions and that has long enraged middle class, sorry, middle income, families when "chav scum" milk the benefits system for every penny they can has finally come home to haunt middle income families.

It's this universal "sense of entitlement" that we need to review.

It's been draining the country to the point where we are becoming a third world nation.

As a carer I do rely upon certain benefits myself, that's rely upon, not use for foreign holidays or luxury items. I'm sure George Osborne will be looking at my benefits just as closely, when the time comes I hope we're back on coal gas then I can just put my head in the oven.

was going to give his to the young'un when she starts university, I'm wondering what people think about having to pay for higher education? Mrs Mate didn't pay for hers here but I (yeah, mostly my parents) paid a small fortune for mine over there. She objects to the notion of university fees; a view I find outdated. We're saving for the eventuality of helping put a couple of kids through what will inevitably be a much costlier higher education process than they would have had before.

As a Labour-voting, higher-rate-tax-paying, father of two I have found myself in the incredibly unusual position of having to defend a Tory Chancellor (yeah, I know it's a coalition government but this is hardly a Lib-Dem policy is it?) to my work colleagues this morning.

Yes, the dual vs. single income thing needs sorting out and they need to make sure that there are no loop holes for clever accountants to exploit, but in principle the idea that people earning over £40k need a hand out from the state is, surely, ridiculous?

The very fact that, like Mrs Umpire and I, Steve is saving his daughter's benefit for her future needs rather than spending it now shows that neither his family nor mine need it. Doesn't it?

We will lose the child benefit, which was nice but not life or death. However we can't afford to save for our kids education, or pension, or a rainy day or anything.
It was a clever thing to do - it created a lot of noise, and an impression that "we are all in this together". Meanwhile they are also saying that they will limit the amount of benefits you get to £25k. Now most of us think that is a very reasonable amount of money, especially after tax. But the 2 things combined mean that we are moving away from Universal benefits, and away from benefits according to need to a fixed sum. This is a major philosophical/political change that we are not discussing. The next steps could be withdrawing free NHS treatment for higher income earners (unless they take out extra health insurance), or reducing the top amount of benefits to (say) £12 grand per year. I am not saying they will do these things, but they are possible - all we are talking about now is the money, not the principle (like in the old joke)

have definite plans on CB (saving £1 billion )but when pushed this morning on "Today" Cameron failed to say what they will do if bankers get huge state funded bonuses (around £7 billion depending on your source) this Christmas/year. He refused to say what his government do.
Easier to get tough on a small group of people with a 5% tax increase in some cases than tackle the banks who caused all the problems in the first place.
As usual the cuts policies will take the path of least resistance which most likely will mean those will least will be hit hardest.

Osborne promised to go after the "tax avoiders" - the super earners that employ teams of accountants and lawyers to negate their tax liability - in the Budget but I can't see any activity in this area. As usual, the easy targets that won't put up much of a fight are the ones he is going for.

from your daughter and all the other little kiddies widdies.
He's in control of a limited budget. He has to prioritise where government spends that limited budget, on the basis of who needs it the most. Your daughter's nest egg didn't make the cut. Get over it and take one for the team.

We can barely afford to run the Prius as it is.

... but Gordon Brown / New Labour have a lot to answer for in bringing the middle-classes into the benefits culture (which is what tax credits are, after all). It 'trapped' the middle-income earners into the New Labour project so each others fortunes were inextricably linked.

Benefits should only be paid to those in desparate need, and if you want people to be better off - make sure they get it through their pay-packet and not by hand-outs & top-ups.

been keeping the wife in new shoes for years, she'll be bloody furious.

My family is going to be about £2000 a year poorer as a result of this reform. That in itself doesn't bother me, and neither does the principle of restricting child benefit to low earners.

What does annoy me is that once again a Chancellor - and this happened under Labour as well as now - has targeted the middle earners, when a penny on higher rate income tax would probably have raised as much money.

I'm actually less surprised that the Tories have failed to target the high earners; what pisses me off is that Labour never did it when they had the opportunity.

we've got a big hole in the country's finances, so we need to make some savings somewhere. Lets try:

1. Benefits
2. Defence
3. Health
4. Education
5. The Arts

Birmingham is currently hosting the Tory Conference and is full of little (self?) interest groups protesting about cuts to all of the above, and no doubt lots of other things too.

Given that you could make a valid argument for not cuttting expenditure on most of the above to some degree, where do we think the cuts should be made?

Notice I've avoided tax increases. I'm sure there should be some of those but bleeding those bankers dry is not really going to bridge the gap. Looks like we'll all end up paying even more then into the endless, bottomless pit that is the public sector.

but when the interest alone on government debt is more than the total of the annual defence budget and almost as much as the amount we spend on education we are seriously in the brown stuff. This is before we pay off any of the capital.
I forsee major problems for our economy and our society as "real" unemployment will continue to soar and there will simply not be enough wealth creators to support the public sector. Retirement wil no longer be an option for many and you can't have two sectors to society ie those with protected pension benefits and those who have been led up the garden path with private pensions - one of Gordon Brown's biggest scams.

On the original topic any benefit system that gives cash to people that don't need it is fundamentally flawed.

I currently sit just under the bracket so this change doesn't affect me yet. But (although this is unlikely at present as I work in the public sector)if I get a pay rise or a promotion I'll sit in the higher bracket.

I have a 16 month old son and a wife who doesn't work in order to be there to raise our son. Child benefit gives us just a little extra every month that means that we don't have to make the choice of food/nappies/clothes for our son and a decent meal for me. That is after all our outgoings are taken care of. Even then with the benefit and tax credits we're getting by on just under £300 a month for food and clothes. And that will become a smaller amount come the new year and the changes in VAT.

With this change it will actually make sense for my wife to go back to work. Fine, we have that option and financially that will make it so that the extra money is no problem to do without.

But where does that leave my son?

I grew up in a single parent family and those have long been demonised for creating generations of troublemakers and all of society's problems. But I can tell you from my own experience that being brought up by my mum alone was not the problem. I didn't need a father figure in my life: certainly my generation's single parent families that I know created a bunch of people who knew who to stand on their own two feet.

No, the real problem was that my mum wasn't there. This is affecting higher earners (or not thanks to it being based on tax bracket and not total household income) first but it will filter downwards fast and all of these cuts seem to be moving towards a world where mums are no longer welcome to stay at home and raise children. Forget traditional ideas of family. Seems like you can't have that unless you can afford it.

There's a whole load of problems down the line because of that one. And possibly huge amounts of money to be made in the childcare industry...

In any well-run company you wouldn't announce a major change in any one department's funding in isolation - so why do it here?

Why is this announced on its own?

Why can't we see all proposals together so as we can see the whole picture and get some feeling for the 'fairness' and spreading of the fiscal pain?

And while we are about it how about a benefit for us poor b'stds who are elongating the death of the music business by still actually buying physical product.

We are performing a social service and should be supported

I've sat back and watched this contentious thread ripple and flow with argument and counter-argument, wary of being out-gunned intellectually by most of the posters.

But I do want to add a few thoughts.

I understand why people are angry about the withdrawal of a universal benefit, because as a consequence of being universal, it is now regarded as a right and an entitlement.
But is it such? Was it ever intended as such? It doesn't seem to me to be fair that someone earning £50,000 should be entitled to child benefit in the same way that someone earning £15,000 should.
But as previous posters have pointed out, is it fair that someone earning £45,000 gets no child benefit, while a couple earning a combined £80,000 do?
As the mother of two children, one disabled, the benefit system has allowed my family to remain housed, clothed and fed. My husband works full-time in a relatively low-paid job, and I work freelance part-time, fitted around my daughter's hospital appointments and care.
If it wasn't for child benefit and disability living allowance for my daughter, I don't know how we would survive.
But I am a stickler for fairness. That's why I declare every penny of my freelance earnings, and don't faff about trying to claim back x amount here from my home heating bill for business purposes, or petrol money there for business miles. My daughter is prescribed drugs that cost the NHS £10,000 a year. I think it's only right that our family pays a legitimate proportion of our earnings.
And so I don't think it unreasonable for there to be a cut-off point for child benefit. Being a higher-rate taxpayer seems as good a marker as any. As with any cut-off point, things become murky around the margins of it.

Wandering slightly off-topic, though, I do find it interesting that the prospect of thousands of public sector workers losing their jobs doesn't seem to have sparked the nation's ire in the same way as cutting child benefit for the better-off has.
There is this skewed image of bloated, overpaid, pensioned-up public sector workers that seems to bear no relation to reality. The vast majority of people I know who work in the public sector are people with vocations, who work incredibly hard, often running themselves ragged as more and more work is foisted upon them. People like home carers and special education workers who act as a lifeline to the vulnerable and needy and who are extremely poorly paid.

My heart bleeds for most of you.Stop moaning.

...about 20% VAT come the new year, rather than taxing the £100k earners an extra 1p in the £. Or something.
BTW, a friend of my brother's who works as a PFA in a leafy part of Cheshire, in Gideon's constituency met Mr Osborne, asked him a few pertinent q's relating to tax and drew the conclusion that he knew f**k all about his brief. Which is slightly depressing.

or else that it will be revised somehow to make it more palatable.

I have taken the dual income 'loophole' as being there to favour working mothers, the majority of whom themselves won't push through the 40% barrier and have husbands who won't either. They have to pay for after-school clubs and the like so they should keep the benefit.

Gets topped up once a month by his child benefit. It'll be a nice little sum for him to use to buy a car or whatever come university.

From my perspective, universal child benefit is a disgrace. Why should my wife and I be trousering money we can easily do without whilst others are struggling? The question, however, is where, and how, we make the cutoff.

Perhaps there could be a reward system for those who forego benefits that are due to them, or maybe opt to have a reduced personal allowance or pay a higher voluntary rate of tax?

They could get to the front of queues or have a special badge or something? Maybe if you overpay by enough you get an OBE?

...needs to get a sense of perspective. Anyone currently unemployed but who owns their own home (and yes, I'm included) has just had their mortgage interest support cut by around 70%. In my own case that means I now get £25 a week when I was getting £120. Given that that payment is not being topped up from any other source, everyone in that position simply has £100 a week less to live on. Try that with no income then bleat about losing your child benefit (in 3 years time, by the way).

No TV outrage at this one though. Slipped through in the budget by Gideon without anyone appearing to work out what it really meant.

What I object to more than anything is this constant lie from the Tories that the extent of the coming cuts is a necessary response to the financial situation. It's hard to argue against cuts of some description, but they are using the overall, un-questioned support from the public to go much further than the economics of the situation demands and use the situation to install political changes that no-one voted for.

Perhaps when the true depth of the cuts becomes clear people will wake up to what's really going on here.

are becoming the excuse for everything.
Not a sentence passes a politicians lips any more without the word 'cuts' being involved.
I think this is the tip of a twatting big iceberg and if you are getting in a tizzy about this, you ain't seen nothing yet.
I am also surprised that people can't believe 'middle England' gets shafted yet again. Politicians fight for their vote by not speaking out about drugs and similar risky subjects, then those voters get it in the neck. Every. Single. Time.
The rich boys will win. Every. Single. Time.

children I will lose £128 a month. Child Tax Credit is also likely to go, meaning I'll lose another £40 a month. So I'm about to be £168 a month worse off.

I only just earn above the £44k threshold for this and live in the South East with a typical South East mortgage to pay. The loss of this money will make a massive difference to our way of life, which is already hardly extravegant.

I'm not looking for sympathy, but just wanted to show how these cuts are not just affecting some kind of comfortably well off middle class, but also people for whom there is usually too much month left at the end of the money.

I think people need to be weaned off the idea that a job is for life whether you work in the private sector or the public sector. Too many expect the government or their employer to give them guarantees for employment that just aren't capable of being underwritten anymore, thanks to the wonderful world of capitalism, and its evil twin corporatism: the system that allows government to deal with the top tier of the private sector to the extent that it can sell the illusion that large corporations improve on what the public sector can do. Complete and utter tosh. It's just a system of mutual back-scratching designed to make governments look good and large companies look competent because their balance sheets look healthy.

Corporatism is the ugly hegemony represented by the mistaken belief that the profit motive drives efficiency and that this level of efficiency can only be delivered from a corporate platform; that systems, rather than people, deliver the ends we want. Governments buy into this idea and foister it on us with crap like PFI and centralised funding regimes that merely act as methods of maintaining the status quo. Yes, the public sector can be wasteful of our money but so can the private sector of its own. Corporatism stops the waste being weeded out: the natural destruction that is supposed to underpin the capitalist model. This is why we end up with banks that are "too big to be allowed to fail".

People decry the loss of "the manufacturing sector" as if it was the fault of Thatcher. Complete and utter bollocks. The manufacturing sector was lost because Britain became crap in many areas of manufacturing because too many people looked to others (i.e. government) rather than themselves to justify their employment status (owners and workers). Blaming Thatcher or any government, whatever political persuasion, for the loss of manufacturing is burying your head in the sand. Britain's manufacturing sector had become inefficient and slack: blame management, blame unions, blame the inability of people to wake to the reality of the torpid status quo of Britain in the 70s before you blame Thatcher.

Britain will only have a vibrant manufacturing sector if it has a proper open market system that can allow enterprise and entrepreneurship to flourish. To do that government needs to f*ck off out of the way and stop propping up the corporate system that we currently have as illustrated by PFI. If less people looked to government for justifying their place in society it would help government free itself from propping up corporatism: the real pyramid scheme that brought this country to its knees 2 years ago.

One system of status quo has been replaced by another.

Britain can still have a manufacturing sector if more people were encouraged to be enterprising rather dependent on an employment model that is based on the "job for life" idea. A "job for life" is based on the mistaken belief that you have a manufacturing system that can last a lifetime. Sorry, but capitalism doesn't provide that guarantee and all that corporatism and government manipulation in the capitalist market-place does is prolong the illusion that such guarantees can be made to people. Companies will only survive in the long-term (providing more scope to provide jobs for longer) if they learn for themselves what is needed to stay competitive rather than relying on safety-nets of government support.

Wake up.

Though I loathe to say it, I agree with Gideon and the Tories on this one. The Cake family will lose out but it will be bearable. I would have been happier with an honest income tax increase - which would have avoided some of the gross unfairness in disproportionate impacts - but hey ho.

My motives aren't quite the same as Gideon's though. There's no doubt that this is intended to strike a blow against the notion of universal benefits - in that sense, it's a proxy for the NHS.

I'm rather more alarmed at the Daily Mail-appeasing announcement of a cap on benefits. It'll certainly make it difficult for the forthcoming mass of redundant public-sector workers to retain their social housing. you know, it's almost as if it hasn't been thought through properly.

The below is a c&p from a review of "Who Owns Britain?" by Kevin Cahill.

Also a stark expose of how this land of ours really works.

"For Britain, Cahill analyses this landownership, showing how a tiny minority exploits British society. 160,000 families, 0.3% of the population, own 37 million acres, two thirds of Britain, 230 acres each. Just 1,252 of them own 57% of Scotland. They pay no land tax. Instead every government gives them £2.3 billion a year and the EU gives them a further £2 billion. Each family gets £26,875.

By contrast, 57.5 million of us pay £10 billion a year in council tax, a land tax, £550 per household. We live in 24 million homes on about four million acres. 65% of homes are privately owned, so 16 million of us own just 2.8 million acres, an average 0.18 acres each.

The top landowners are the Forestry Commission, 2.6 million acres, the Ministry of Defence 750,000, the royal family 670,000 (including the Crown Estate 400,000 and the Duchy of Cornwall 141,000), the National Trust 550,000, insurance companies 500,000, the utility companies 500,000, the Duke of Buccleuch 270,700, the National Trust for Scotland 176,287, the Dukedom of Atholl 148,000, the Duke of Westminster 140,000 and the Church of England 135,000.

The Forestry Commission, Britain's biggest single landowner, runs its holdings conservatively and secretively. We could expand the forest estate by a million acres a year, producing rural jobs, getting profits from the sale of wood and pulp (cutting our balance of payments deficit) and reducing the output of greenhouse gases. This would cost between £588 million and £750 million.

Through the 18th century enclosures, the landowning class stole eight million acres from the people. They still hide their crimes and their takings. The 1872 Return of Owners of Land was made, but then hidden and never updated. Shares have to be registered; land doesn't. The Land Registry does not know who owns between 30 and 50% of land.

Cahill compares Britain with other countries where revolutions have ended the feudal tenure of land. Denmark redistributed its land to the peasantry in 1800. In Ireland, in 1876, 616 landowners owned 80% of the country. By 1930, 13 million acres of Ireland's 20 million acres had been sold to owner-occupiers. Now, there are no landlords - home ownership is 82%, Ireland's 149,500 farms are 97% owner-occupied and owner-farmed, there is no poll tax, water is free and pensioners get free transport, TV and glasses.

Cahill claims that Blair's reform of the House of Lords "definitively cut the permanent link between power and the landowners." But just as in 1872, the state is defending landed capital by making it less visible. Class power does not depend on sitting in the House of Lords, but on private ownership of the means of production, protected and subsidised by a capitalist state. The Greens, like the heritage lobby, shield the landowners against public ownership of the land.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says its mission is to shift EU subsidies from food production to land management, but the EU already does this, with its £2 billion annual subsidy to the landowners, not to working farmers. We need to produce our own food: food production is in our national strategic interest. It is a national security issue that must not be determined either by the EU or by the market.

Landowners' wealth is a parasite on Britain, the least productive part of the economy, with the most state support. Their wealth comes not from farming, nor even from renting, but from trickling land onto the urban housing market. They sell land to property developers, at an average price per acre of £404,000 in 1999. The clearing banks and building societies strip our industries of investment capital, then support their clients the landowners by running the rigged and overpriced land market.

Britain needs land reform. "Windfall gains on development land should be made subject to windfall taxes." We should also tax land and stop the owners avoiding tax through offshore trusts; this could raise £17 billion. The European Convention of Human Rights says there should be no confiscation without compensation. Haven't landowners had enough compensation already? We need more land for housing. This would cut land prices, free more to invest in good quality, spacious homes and gardens, and revive the building industry."

Cut this out and send it to all your friends.

a pi... oh, no. No one can afford one.

I agree with the original post-Osborne=utter bastard

Terrific posts, chaps and chappesses, much food for thought. Not much to add to the collective knowledge, but just these three random thoughts that haven't been brought up in any of the other 130+ posts:

(i) I notice the original poster has yet to make any other posts about this matter.

(ii) I think that it was about 40% of the eligible voting population didn't vote in the general election; I therefore (probably erroneously) assume that a very-roughly similiar percentage of posters on this thread were among this group that didn't vote. To this group, I'd say, you didn't vote for this change to CB, or for anything else for that matter, maybe you should have had your say when you had the chance; now this cut will be enacted, maybe next time you should.

(iii) Furthermore, a fair chunk of people who did actually vote, voted Tory; again, there might well be a similiar percentage of posters on this thread who did exactly this. To any members of this group who are angry about this change to CB, I'd say, you voted for this, you're getting what you voted for.

BR
FT

PS maybe it'd be better and more polite to refer to Osbo by his nickname at University, that of 'oik', bestowed on him by various Old Etonians because he went to a 'lesser' public school that presumably cost only 5 grand a term rather than Eton's 15 Gs (or whatever the going rate is!)

PPS hah hah hah! capthcha is .... tuf! As in luck!

... lest we forget his real name is Viscount Gideon Osborne and he has a £4 million trust fund.

We're all in this together you know...

(not a smart contribution I know, but I just loath him and need to shout it occasionally)

EDIT

Oops I see this has actually been discussed. And I had no idea that accusations of anti semitism have been cast. Just so we're clear I'm not anti semitic. I just hate Osborne. If Viscount Gideon will change his name to sound less posh then he deserves more abuse than I can heap on him.

this policy was a last minute idea, ill-thought through, however reasonable in principle, doesn't bode well for this government acting competently when a really serious crisis occurs. How could they not see that the unfairness with the two income versus one income would be massive issue? Some might think this a clever way to show poorer people that they hit the wealthier too by creating big outcry which will help with the furore once other cuts that hit less well off come out, and is some smart Blair-ite move to attack your own to show toughness. Personally I always go for cock-up theory over conspiracy. These people are never as smart as some give them credit for being.

Is that in this media savvy day and age the Tory party is completely incompetant when it comes to running an election campaign or announcing these things.
Makes you wonder just what sort of a f#ck up they will make on the 20th.

I don't get how people earning more than 40 grand can get upset about losing 'benefits'. And I'm also not sure why myself, who has never claimed any benefit in my life, should subsidise your daughters education. The fact that you are able to put it in a savings account at all shows you are in no genuine need.

Never thought I would hear my self supporting the likes of Mr Osborne, but this self centred twaddle gets on my nerves. We will wait for the real cuts in two weeks to start complaining about something that matters. Like health and the elderly. Jeez

You might think its sparked debate here..the FPO lurks on Mumsnet..its on fire.......

a Rich Tea or a Bourbon.

I havent been on here for months and even then it was fleeting but OMG ( as my daughter will and is, probably, as we speak ,texting), If you can afford to save family allowance then you dont need family allowance. I have 2 kids (15 and 13), I work in public sector - nhs- mental health locked wards. i work xmas day, nights etc, my yearly is less than 20grand a year. Im divorced, have to pay rent on a private place that kids can stay at (0ver half my wage), my ex wife workd in private sector and is on just above minimum wage. To have savings of any kind is impossible, to have a university fund is a pipe dream (both kids want to go and both are intelligent enough). So no symapthy to be honest