On National Insurance and Child Benefit

There's recently been coverage in the media of a thing called 'The Living Wage', that is a wage upon which people can live comfortably, a somewhat higher wage than the current minimum wage. By a quirk of statistics, the Living Wage is within a few pence of what the take home amount of the minimum wage if it wasn't taxed. That is, if people on minimum wage didn't pay income tax, they'd be taking home the living wage.

Fiscally, I'm a big fan of raising the income tax threshold to £16,000 or so, enough to take the minimum wage earners out of the tax system. And then, with feelings of generousity, I'd raise the threshold to the median wage, so the poorest half of the UK paid no income tax, and the rest pay the rest of it, at whatever rate balances the books.

However, I'm not the chancellor, and I have doubts. There's the whole concept of National Insurance, which I still believe is an insurance scheme and not just a different name for tax. I feel that all earners, no matter what their income, should be paying national insurance, like putting away a little bit each pay day, for when they fall ill, or become unemployed or otherwise fall on hard times.

And here we land at the problem with Child Benefit. Within twelve months, those earning £50,000 or more will not receive Child Benefit. Whether or not this is fair depends entirely on whether that money comes from taxes or national insurance.

If its from the National Insurance Fund then it ought to be a universal benefit, paid for all children regardless of their parents' income. Imagine if you paid for insurance on your car or your house, and then when disaster strikes, the insurance company turned round and said, no, you can afford to repair or replace without the insurance money so we're not paying up. In which case, I imagine you would do your damnedest to ensure that the insurance company never received a penny from you.

But if Child Benefit is paid from tax, then fair enough, deprive the rich of it benefit, as they are paying for everyone else's services anyway, its part of the package, part of the deal you sign up to when choosing how closely you comply with a country's tax regime*. The tax rates vary regularly anyway so any gains or losses are transient rather than long term.

It appears that Child Benefit is not paid from the National Insurance Fund, and is administered by HM Revenue and Customs and so is paid from tax.

In order to hold views such as this I try to indulge tax avoidance as little as possible, I don't give money to charity, I don't use GiftAid, and I don't keep my savings in an ISA.

*Its widely believed that only the rich can take advantage of tax regimes in different countries to maximise their wealth. I believe this is untrue as I've worked for minimum wage in factories where the vast majority are workers who've travelled thousands of miles from far off lands to work for minimum wage and then send a proportion of their earnings back home to ensure their families have a higher quality of life. This is the same package as Sir Philip Green's wife living in Monaco receiving the benefits of the Arcadia group in the UK.

My next scheme

I recently finished reading John Robb's book, The North will rise again: Manchester Music City (1977-1996). Its a collection of dozens of interviews with 'Manchester's proudest sons', all cut up and arranged in some kind of chronological and genre order. I found it refreshing and eye-opening: most books I've read on Manchester just cover Factory or The Smiths, but this one covers a longer time frame and black music as well as white.

It finishes just when I discovered music in Manchester in my own lifespan.

Anyhoo, long term readers of of this blog will remember my aborted project 'Glasgow Indie Eyespy: The Movie'. Churning out the script/treatment thing was quite a satisfying experience for a few weeks, but it was pretty futile in the end.

As Inuit Panda Scarlet Carwash points out "it could more appropriately be entitled The Life and Opinions of Christopher Gilmour, Gentleman", rather than the historical documenting of the Glasgow indie scene 1997 to 2009.

Maybe I could follow John Robb's template and just interview other people, then edit and compile, and spool it off as an e-book for $3 on Kindle or something.

I'd start off by interviewing folk I know and am vaguely in contact with, like the various Smiths, and then as they name-drop I pick up and paint more of the picture.

Alas, I'm 422 miles away so interviewing wouldn't be so easy. An alternative would be emailing and blogging, the questions and interviews.

Two questions:-
Can I be arsed?
Can my 'interviewees' be bothered writing it for me?

Actually, scratch that I don't think I can do it.

In my head I'd be chatting to Paul McDermot, or Smiths like Adam, Martin, Rowan and Iain, trying to get the history of the Owsley Sunshine out of Joe Kane and track down Jez from The Nova Express. But to actually write the damned thing, I'd need to be speaking to St. John McEwan from the Yummy Fur, Stevie Jackson, Stephen Pastel and Alex Kapranos from Franz, and I just can't do it. I come over all hot and bothered just standing in the same room as these people. This one time I had to run out of Mono cos Pastel was working the counter, and just last week I had to leave a gig early cos the Kapranos was stood next to me.

Then again, I am an established author, I've written booked before, I have a track record.

Hmm, gah, self-doubt.

Ad Hoc Property Guardians and my deposit

I thought I was onto a good thing, maybe I was. You might have heard about property guardians, there was a bit of coverage in the newspapers last summer, but not so much now. If a property like a house or block of flats or offices or whatever is empty, and going to be empty for a while, then instead of hiring a security firm to keep squatters and vandals out, the landlord can hire a live-in property guardian.

The landlord gets someone taking care of the property, the guardian gets cheap accommodation.

I was a guardian with Ad Hoc, one of the two big firms in London. I was paying £50 or so a week and it was okay. Sure the properties were shit holes, but it was cheap and I was skint. The deposit was £300, my overdraft took care of that.

The first place I stayed at was a former council flat in Sudbury. It was freezing and didn't have the gas hooked up for about a month after I moved in last winter. The building was to be demolished in 'about eighteen months'. The other tenants were slowly being moved out whilst I stayed. I started to do the place up, got some bookshelves from Ikea, acquired a fridge freezer, even started painting the walls.

Alas, after three months I was given my notice and found a new place to be a guardian at. That council flat has now been demolished, I drive past the site every so often, the paint was barely dry.

The second place was a rather neat three bedroom semi-detached house in Wembley, right near the station. It had a huge garden, thick with brambles, but it was summer and I was 'between jobs'. There was no heating there either, no gas too, but the weather was fine, so I didn't mind so much. I think they said I would have six months there so I acquired gardening equipment and set to work clearing brambles and putting in potatoes and tomatoes.

Alas, after four weeks I was given my notice and again found a new place to be a guardian at. There's now about ten people living in that semi-, the living room and dining room been turned into additional bedrooms. I wonder if they've got to my potatoes.

The third place was a former old people's home. There were about twenty other guardians staying there in the various granny flats. My flat was on the ground floor and smelt bad. I knew better than to set up home there and kept most of my belongings in storage a storage locker.

Months passed, with such low rent, I was able to start tackling my considerable debts.

At some point, I don't know what came over me, but I grew weary of sleeping on the floor, sitting on banana boxes and not having anywhere to shelve my books, so I emptied out my storage locker and furnished my flat. Less than a week later we were given our notice and told to leave.

Sure, Ad Hoc were quick to find all the guardians new places to stay, offering empty properties round the A406 North Circular Road of out in East London, but the thought of living with the constant threat of having to move on was too depressing so I decided to move to the private rental market. You go to RightMove.co.uk, figure out how much rent you can afford and move to the best property that comes up.<

When I told the nice woman at Ad Hoc that I wasn't going to move into their next place she seemed disappointed.

It was a good deal while it lasted, £50 a week rent, in London, but never knowing how long I'd be at any property.

Anyhoo, its been about eight weeks since I moved out, I'm still chasing up getting my deposit back. I've been phoning them every week, it sounds much like the other guardians at that last place are still trying to get their deposits back too, but to no avail. They have my account details, their accountant has apparently been on the case for at least a fortnight, but still nothing.

They've got my £300 and they seem to be incapable or unwilling to give it back.

Should I have written off the deposit? Or just not have paid my last six week's rent? Is that the more civilized or sensible thing to do?

There's been no word about whether they're taking a cut of the deposit to clean and repair any wear and tear, but it's been eight weeks so that's a moot point now.

If they weren't going to return the deposit could they have not made it clear at some point in the past, or charged a higher rent. But no, just an endless stream of we're working on it, you'll having by the end of the week, the end of next week, etc. It's not so much that they're withholding it, just not competent enough to arrange giving me my money back.

**UPDATE**
Yay, I got my deposit back! It took eight weeks and three days, and they did take a small cut, for cleaning I guess which is fair enough.

Anyhoo, success!

Opting out

This morning I was trying to think of example reasons for why you'd want to opt out of having your medical records in the NHS's database thing, and whilst I could come up with many theoretical hypotheses, the only concrete examples I could come up with was the possibility of your details being leaked or lost or left on a hard disk on a train along with a few hundred thousand other people's details.

Its not really that convincing, cos in such a case there would be a few hundred thousand other people in the same boat and there'd be a case for some kind of class act.

However, via Dizzy Thinks, we find that Greenwich Council are cross referencing their payrole records with council tax and housing records to see if any of their own staff owes them any money. They have to inform the staff that they're doing such a thing.

Its probably not quite what the council employees had in mind when they took up their jobs, that their employer would be seeking out new and exciting ways of extracting money from them.

So aye, at some point in the future, the NHS could decide to mine their records for anything that could be used to extract more money from you, which is why its wise to opt out.