don't worry Chips, there are lots of motorists to be screwed over for speeding fines, parking tickets, broken wing mirrors etc to pay for this worthy scheme. And of course none of the low-income families concerned would ever spend the money they get on drugs or booze, would they?

it's a world turned upside down.

I'm very much against EMA's, but that's mainly because I don't qualify for them. Some of the buggers who do get it are invariably the life of the party on saturday, while I have to scrape by on a fiver borrowed from my parents.

The social injustice of it all rankles, I tells ya.

we have something somewhat like that. it's only for people in financial need and you ahve to be accepted to get into it. it is mostly a thing that helps with preparing for college. a kid i know gets about $400 per semester

Ahh, the circle of life: I get taxed to the hilt and they give it to the scrubber for ciggys in the form of an "education aid???". You'd have to wonder who needs to learn the lesson here. Then they tax the ciggys to the hilt and give it to the scrubber as some other form of social welfare so that she can buy more ciggys...

I suppose at least with the extra 30 quid coming in it means that her habit has to reach 50 a day before she has to start floggin her wares on street corners to make up the difference, which is the last thing that government wants...no taxes on that you see.

Edited by - Druid on 3/2/2006 10:25:08 AM

I don't like this thing either. My family is above the limit for EMA, but not so far from them to be able to buy me everything. In fact we were in quite dire straights when we the government rescinded our child benefits thanks to them accidentally overpaying us for a while. Stupid government.

Anyway, I think this should be for everyone or no one. I mean, my friend gets it and hes hardly less well off than I am. And of course, the people who really need it just spend it on ciggarettes or alcohol. The whole thing is flawed.

Yeh, damn lower classes, give 'em a buck and they waste it. We should only give welfare to the middle classes or above, to a kind of person who will be enterprising and make some use of it and not those stupid alchos.

we already do. it's called Child Benefit, every mother who is a British Citizen and permanently resident in the Uk is entitled to it from the day her child is born until it's 16th birthday. This benefit was introduced by the 1945 Labour Govt as an intrinsic part of the Welfare State and remains with us. Why this new scheme couldn't be an extention of the existing Child Benefit structure I don't know. It certainly smacks of more *social engineering* by the authorities, and will no doubt require yet another tier of bureaucracy with civil servants and social workers salaries funded by the taxpayer, as will the Id card scheme and the many other *radical initiatives* the Govt intends to push through in this Parliament. Meanwhile the Hospital Trusts are millions of pounds in debt and cancelling operations and the school system is falling apart. There's something very, very wrong somewhere.

There is of course little or no argument that there's a direct causal link between deprivation, poor housing, etc and criminality but I very much doubt that simply giving people enough cash for a night out at the pub will solve it. This is another one of the bright ideas from focus groups who seem to drive all the policy-making in No 10 these days.

*Waves paw dismissively* Bah, I managed to get through all three years of my first Degree on $25 a week. I even managed to afford to buy my own textbooks and even pay my yearly Service and Amenties fees. Of course, I had to subsist on one 1.25l bottle of GB during the day so that I wouldn't feel ill from hunger, but it was fine. Kids these days... they're soft!

I actually thought it was brought in, as an attempt to keep unemployment low, to try and get more people into "higher" education with the potential to get a degree on those "mickey mouse courses" - such as Golf Studies and David Beckham studies...

The only saving grace is that they need 100% genuine attendance to receive the funds, which should keep "drop outs" from just chilling on £30 to buy beer/fags, without having to do anything. In theory it shouldn't go to those that don't *try* to put the effort in for, which I am all for. I just hate to then see the money that should be there to support their educations, and allow them to fulfill their potential, to then be wasted on buying fags, chocolate and earrings. Hence why I thought it should be "couponesque" in its implementation.

@Taw

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Why this new scheme couldn't be an extention of the existing Child Benefit structure I don't know

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It might be down to even more cunning social engineering than you think. By European law child benifit offered in a member state can be claimed by any resident of that state even if the resident's chidren are not also resident. So if a foreign labourer from Poland or Moldova or one of the accession states is working in the U.K. and their family has not been given permission to move with them the children are still entitled to "child benifit". If you rename it an "education benifit" I am not so sure that it can be claimed by such immigrants.

hmm i hadn't thought of that. that;s cunning (as cunning as a fox who's just been made professor of Cunning at the University of Cunningness)

Indeed, stickier than sticy the sticky stick insect that got stuck on a sticky bun.

Of course there is also the obvious political marketing going on. Adding an extra few quid to a benefit which has been around for years is not exactly news worthy, providing a fantastic new incentive to help with a new innovation is sound bite heaven.

It's all a load of bollotics is you as me.