Brian Nicholls

Last updated 11:39, Wednesday, 04 June 2008

Kids are great, wonderful even but only when they are your own or, so I am told, your grandchildren.

That warm feeling and the pride that comes with every little quirky thing kids do disappears and turns to frost when it is other people’s children who are prancing about unchecked and when they are behaving badly or demanding sweets in supermarkets.

There is nothing worse than parents who seem to live under the illusion that the rest of us think as much of their misbehaving, spoiled brats as they do. The sort of parents who, instead of teaching manners and how to behave, look at you as if daring you to say anything when their little precious has just used the sign at the swimming pool which says, ‘No Diving, No Jumping’ to gain more height to dive-bomb you as swim innocently past.

It’s a fact of life; most of us don’t find other people’s kids at all alluring. So why does this Government think that those of us who brought up our own children on no more state help than a pittance of a family allowance which wouldn’t buy a sack of spuds are happy to contribute so much to raising everybody else’s?

Family tax credits, child support, free childcare, breakfast clubs, after school clubs, paying them to stay on at school after GCSEs and now the right for parents to work whatever hours they please until your kids are 16.

Of course the income of parents reduces when they have children. We all remember it well. Two incomes suddenly reduced to one. But it was a fact of life and it was our choice and our responsibility to deal with it.

Call me selfish but, due to circumstances beyond my control, my income is the smallest it has ever been but at the same time I have never paid as much tax as I do now. I can’t afford to look upon these kids as my own and smile benevolently as their parents get all these benefits so they can go back to work to earn loads more than me.