Foreign Perspectives

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Standing apart from the system these days we’ve not noticed first hand all of the chaos that has resulted in some of the reorganisations of UK government departments over the last year or two but can only laugh at some of it from afar.

Perhaps the best example is the Child “Tax Credit” and Child Benefit combination.

For political reasons, the Child Tax Credit is called a tax credit although, in all but name, it’s clearly a benefit payment. You claim it exactly like a benefit and it’s paid exactly like a benefit so it’s only the name that differentiates it. And that’s the problem: seeing as it’s been called a “tax credit” then it can’t be integrated with the Child Benefit systems thus saving a fortune on duplication of administrations and reducing the errors being made in payments.

That’s a recent one of course but the National Insurance Contributions have long been separate from Income Tax. The bands at which both are levied have been aligned for quite a while now so there’s no reason to keep them separate other than the political double-speak that called the National Insurance scheme an insurance scheme when in fact it’s merely another tax. If it were an insurance scheme then it would build up some money in the kitty but, of course, it doesn’t as the money is paid out as it comes in.

So when will common sense prevail and such nonsenses be put to an end? Somehow I can’t see it being anytime soon as there are just too many interested parties who it suits to have the current system perpetuated.

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As you’ll have noticed, I’ve posted next to nothing over the last month. A total of seven posts vs what would have been a more normal 30 in fact.

That’s because I’ve been over in Northern Ireland trying to sort out some administration since June 5th and only got back home on Friday evening.

Now, I wasn’t expecting there to be much change in the traffic on my websites but the blog is different. The most commonly held belief is that you need to post at least once a day to keep up the traffic. That seems reasonable: after all, blogs, for the most part, cover “current events” in some fashion so without the regular updates, the traffic on a blog is bound to drop off quite quickly, isn’t it?

Well, the funny thing is that the blog traffic didn’t drop at all by any meaningful amount. The number of hits showed very little change at all nor did the adsense income. The number of subscribers via Feedburner dropped about 10%. The number of incoming links as counted by Technorati went up.

So little was the change that it has me wondering if the best strategy would be to build up a blog over six months or so then start a new one.

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Seeing as SuperFrenchie thinks I’m “just” anti-French, I thought I’d redress the balance a little and point out one area where the UK is anti-European too.I was in getting my driving license renewed last week which is something of a hit and miss affair as the explanatory leaflet leaves a LOT to be desired in clarity. Even though the thing was in English and, one would assume therefore that I’d understand it, the opening paragraph on what proof of ID was required was totally incomprehensible and appeared to be totally wrong too.It opens by saying that if you have a colour photograph on your existing driving license then you don’t need to have someone certify your photograph nor to present a passport. Except, that when my father presented his renewal application complete with his old driving license with colour photo, they wouldn’t renew it without his passport.

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