What's Good About it

Today is Good Friday, but for tens or hundreds of thousands of families around the country there is nothing good about it at all. This the day the money grabbers have taken their money away and have left them significantly poorer than they were the day before. All this when the poorer families need what money they can get to live in on and when they are going to find it hard to get the extra work to qualify again for the money they have lost.

Basically what the Government have done is up the minimum limit that working couples need to work to claim working tax credits from 16 hours a week to 24 hours a week. Under the old system if one person in the couple worked more than 16 hours then they could claim as a couple, now under the new system a couple has to jointly work a minimum 24 hours a week to qualify.

The idea being if a single person can work 16 hours a week then it not to much to ask a couple to work 24 hours a week. Now that seems reasonable enough, but in the economic times we live in finding extra work or getting an employer to up your hours isn't going to be easy to do. In fact most couples are going to find it impossible.

The changes are going to mean many for many families with children, who are already on the breadline, will be losing up to £4,000 pounds in working tax credits through no fault of their own. It is not like these people aren't trying to work, because they are already working, it just that they can't find the work to work full time or increase the hours they do work.

The fact there are over 2.5 million people out of work just shows what a mess the job market it is in and with more public sector jobs losses to come it is only going to get worse. There aren't the extra jobs or the hours out there for these people to work.

In times of austerity these changes might be reasonable, but at time like this they are ridiculous and the money grabbers should be ashamed of themselves. They are taking money away from some of those in society that can least afford to lose it. They are also going to be taking money out some of the poorest local economies in the country which will just cause more hardship.

What is ironic that the money grabbers are quite happy to give money to their friends, the higher earners, in the form of tax cuts while they take money away from the poor and introduce a stealth granny tax. It makes you wonder what planet these people are on. We are living in time when many people are having to work part time because there aren't the full time jobs available, this is the wrong policy at the wrong time for thousands of families.