Thursday, July 08, 2010
Charity continued
All three members of our household now appear to be eligible for the winter fuel payment, in consequence of which two of us separately received four pages (eight sides) of stuff from somewhere in Ashby de la Zouch (Wikipedia tells me that the Ashby bit is Danish and the Zouch bit is French), rather vaguely signed 'HM Government'.
First wonder is, what is the transaction charge associated with this modest payment - £125 in my case? A significant addition to the payment I might receive? But with transaction charges falling in future years when the money will get paid more or less automatically unless or until I remember to tell them that I am dead? Or maybe the bank will get around to doing this last.
Now given that we are not a poor household, not, as far as I am aware, eligible for income support, I thought that this was a payment I could probably manage without. So second wonder is, why is this benefit apparently being made without regard to circumstances, to all and sundry? Suggest to the assembled family that maybe I ought to drop all four pages into the shredder and make compost (inorganic) of them. Do something useful rather than adding to the national debt. This suggestion met with much opposition. Opposition which I feel is a bit misplaced. We don't mind giving to charity but we do mind giving to government (or not taking in this case), presumably on the grounds that we trust the charity to spend the money on something sensible but that we do not trust government in the same way. Which is also rather misplaced given that we allow the government to spend about half the money there is. Also given that there are a lot of pretty hopeless charities about.
There is the line I have sometimes heard that it is mainly the careful middle classes who get the most benefit from benefits of this sort. The poor are too feckless or perhaps too illiterate and the rich are too lazy. So it is just us chaps in the middle who benefit, rather than the poor who might actually need it.
There is another line that having paid one's taxes all these years, one should jolly claim what is going. One has earned it.
There is another line that benefits which are not means tested have much lower administration costs.
One response to which might be, that it is more or less impossible for government to make regulations which are fair to all comers. So the rules tend to be a bit more inclusive than they need be and it would help if those who are not in need did not push around at the boundaries. A bit of voluntary restraint would be proper. If it became a habit, the government would not need to spend so much of our money on expensive lawyers dreaming up complicated rules.
There is another line that one gets comfortable by being careful, and this includes taking what is due to one. Why should one be less comfortable than one might be, just because there are improvident tossers in the world.
There is another line that if we all make a parade of not claiming benefits, the poor who need them might be deterred from making their more legitimate claims.
Having chucked all this lot into the mix and pondered over the cup that cheers, the four pages now enter the shredder.
Followed this up by reading half of a third review (in the LRB) of the book by Fodor about evolution (see June 12th) - that is to say reading every other line rather than the first half or the second half. As far as I can make out, this review also concludes that Fodor is wrong, but does it very respectfully and politely. Whereas I read in today's Guardian (Mombiot) that journalists regularly receive thoroughly unpleasant letters and climate scientists regularly receive only slightly less unpleasant letters. There are a lot of unpleasant people out there with nothing better to do. All quite upsetting if you are normally thin skinned - to the point where said climate scientists lose their cool a bit.
But the good news is that, after the third review, the climate scientists at Norwich whose emails got pinched have been found guilty of not much worse than bad public relations. Their science emerges more or less unscathed: the world really is warming up and it would be a good idea if we did something about it.
Which, as I type, strikes me as an odd use of good news. It would be much better news if the world was not warming up. But it would be bad news of a different sort if sending hate mail about was what it took to come to that view. Clearly time for the amber nectar.
# posted by Jim @ 8:14 AM 
