JohnBM:Liberal

My little (27-year-old) brother Paul this weekend passed the halfway mark of his tour of duty in Iraq with the RAF.

I celebrated with a couple of pints in Elland whilst Paul celebrated with for once not being on the receiving end of insurgent rocket attacks.

Stay safe

Congratulations to Cllr. Jennifer Pearson and Brendan Stubbs (Agent) for their trouncing of the Tories in Warley Ward of Calderdale MBC.

A storming 901 majority.
The election was postponed from May because of the sudden death of the Conservative candidate Richard Maycock.

Results
Jennifer Pearson (Lib Dem) 1,319
John Foran (Con) 418
Jenny Carr (Ind) 360
Julie Ann Baxter (BNP) 335
Ilyas Najib (Lab) 236
Adrian Grenville Greenwood (Ind) 145
Faizan Saghir (English Democrats) 51

Neo-authoritarian John Reid today announced his intention to seek a parliamentary consensus to extend the 28 day detention without trial to 60 days.

Yet again the Nu Lab posse seem to have forgotten that consensus requires a decision to be made after discussion not before.

Hopefully this will be last gasp of Hauptsturmführer Reid before Gordo’s Whitehall purge of the 27th.

A few weeks ago it was announced that Comrade Gordo’s child tax credit system overpaid claimants by £6 billion since its birth in 2003.

Today I received my first child tax credit renewal form.

This evening, Jo and I sat down to fill them in:

1. We read the form (2 pages to fill in)
2. Read the accompanying notes (35 pages)
3. Re-read form (2 pages)
4. Dug out Jo’s P60 and entered Jo’s income details in form.
5. Tippexed out Jo’s income details
6. Dug out an old diary to work out how many weeks maternity she had last financial year.
7. Deducted £100 per weeks maternity leave from her income and then deducted her travel expenses when back at work – Entered this final figure as “income” on form.
8. Dug out my P60 and entered income details into form.
9. Dredged the notes for references to dividends to find it in “Other Income”.
10. Signed declaration.
11. Put the A3 booklet in the A4 stamped addressed envelope provided (assuming it will be charged at larger size by post office).
12. Poured two large glasses of red wine.

For Jo and I it was relatively straight forward. We have three degrees between us, a modicum of common sense, a combined 11 years experience of working with pedantic lawyers and we claim no job seekers allowance, council tax benefits, income support or any other income.

The tax system is not geared up to giving out money any more than the SAS is geared up to babysitting.