Middle Class Could Be Forced To Pay For Things They Can Afford

MIDDLE class families face no longer being able to use child benefit to buy wine, it emerged last night.

Ministers have spent two months searching desperately for ways to cut the UK’s soaring welfare bill before finally realising they should just stop giving money to people who obviously don’t need it.

A senior source said: “We looked into who would be adversely affected by scrapping the £87 a month child benefit for middle class families and realised pretty quickly that it was Oddbins and Majestic.

“We may as well have been paying them directly, so all people would have had to do was drop by once a month, show them a photo of a child and pick up their free case.”

But Helen Archer, a woman who doesn’t know what a job is from Grantham, said: “I use my child benefit for Oliver’s trombone lessons. Two years and he’s still absolutely fucking shit. Thank Christ it’s not my money.”

And Emma Bradford, a part-time locum GP from York, added: “My £87 a month goes towards the accountant who is helping us avoid inheritance tax.”

Meanwhile old people’s charities have warned that scrapping the winter fuel payment for middle class pensioners could force them to burn their Bill Bryson collections in their garden chimeneas.

A spokeswoman for Old UK said: “Thanks to the recession the average middle class pensioner couple is already down to just 27 holidays a year. Many of them in Scotland.

“Removing the winter fuel payment will simply cause a vast bonfire of gentle, but keenly observed transatlantic humour, or force thousands of people to stay in Magaluf until early April.”

 

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Inflation To Continue Doing A Variety Of Things, Says Bank Of England

BRITAIN faces several more months of inflation doing things before eventually deciding to do some other, equally interesting things, the Bank of England warned today.

Issuing his latest inflation report, Bank governor Mervyn King said: “VAT – that’s one of the things – then of course there’s all the oil and gas, the cars, the food – let’s not forget the food. So basically, yes, all those sorts of things… obviously.

“Erm… what else? It says here that clothes are cheaper – though I suspect that’s because it’s summer and so the clothes are generally a bit smaller and don’t use up as much fabric.”

Holding up a graph he had drawn on some paper, he added: “Quite possibly up for a while then along in a straight line for a bit before heading down, then up again, then down again.

“Or it could be more of a zig-zaggy kind of thing, depending on a wide variety of factors which you simply would not understand and so there is no point in me wasting my breath with a lot of technical what-nots and doo-das.

“Suffice to say, we have established beyond doubt that inflation exists and almost certainly has something to do with money.”

Meanwhile chancellor George Osborne told city analysts that he had a funny feeling that everything was going to be just fine.

He said: “I’ve been looking at all these charts and they just look really nice. All we need now is for the Under-flationary McPherson Exchange to keep pace with the, er, Johanssen Index of Surplus… Trade… De-Balancing?

“And also people should buy loads of shit and stuff.”

The City welcomed the chancellor’s comments. Julian Cook, chief economist at Donnelly-McPartlin, said: “This graph looks a bit like a mountain. What’s the one in Switzerland? Not the Eiger, the other one. I wonder why it decided to look like that? Fascinating.”

Mr King added: “Sweet Jesus, I’ve just noticed the price of eggs. How the fuck did that happen?

“That’s it, I am buying a chicken.”