SOCIAL SECURTIY BENEFITS FOR THE CHOP.

Today I've heard some suggestion that social benefits should be cut further in order to help to balance the nation's accounts. Good, I say, until I hear more details. Then, I simply scream.

One suggestion is that child benefit, currently £20.50 per week for the first child and £13.55 for any others, should be limited to no more than 4 children. At these rates, a family of 4 or more children would receive nearly £3,200 per year plus, of course, further lumps in tax credits which can amount to many thousands. When I was a child, there were no tax credits and child benefit wasn't even paid for the first child at all; it was only available for subsequent children and then at a fairly insignificant rate of a few shillings a week.

Why this benefit is paid at all in what is now an affluent society is a bit of a mystery, but limiting it to just the first 4 children seems eminently justifiable; indeed, why not limit it to the first 3, which is all that society actually needs for sustainability ? The only ones to 'suffer' would be those who cannot control their animal urges sufficiently to avoid multiple pregnancies, something which should hardly be beyond the wit of even the most stupid in our society, given the easy availability of contraception.

Next on the list of potential savings is a proposal that the so-called 'benefit cap' should be reduced for those living outside of the more expensive south east corner of our country. WHAT !?

Already, those who live in London and large parts of the south east enjoy far higher incomes than those who live elsewhere. Already, those who live in the south east can afford to move to anywhere else in the country while those who live elsewhere can only dream of ever moving south east. London and the south east enjoys the best of everything; it has the best transport infrastructure, museums, galleries and theatres. It is where all power resides, both governmental and business. Now, the Treasury wants to make this corner of our country even more exclusive, even more 'off-limits', to the rest of us.  

I say "NO, a thousand times NO !" By all means, control and reduce social benefits but not at the expense of making our capital even less accessible to most of the people, while further enriching those who already live and work there. The government must find other ways of managing the spiralling costs of living in the south east and not just chuck ever greater sums of cash at the people who live there. This is the type of challenge that real government is about and that real leaders can manage; sadly, I doubt that our current crop are anywhere near good enough to meet it.