Gordon Brown's Baby Boom

The tax credit systems is deeply flawed as Frank Field explains, let alone the fact that it spews out incorrect £100's of millions which are not collectable back, and it is also subject to widespread fraud.

There are other effects.

Because Broon has volunteered government money (and I mean big money, not mere assistance but more like enough to live on) to pay for children (single parents working 16 hours a week get £487 after tax credits - an astonishing £30 an hour equivalent), there are far larger numbers of children being born.

The more children you have, the more money you get. The programme is ultimately self-defeating, as the pool of demand ('poverty') is growing rapidly.

My brother has six childtren. It was not worth both he and his wife working because of tax credits, so he's gone down to three days a week, and she's part time too. The country gets exactly what it pays for - more children and less work.

I'm single with no children myself. Because tax rates on taking money out from my company is now 63.8% (40% Income Tax plus 23.8% Nat Ins), I now live from rental income (taxed at 40%) and so I too am no longer working (pre-1997 you could take money from a company taxed at 40%).

Broon has pushed both my brother and myself out of work - me, by taxing so highly it's not worth it, and my brother because of supposedly 'eradicating child poverty'!

It's work that Brown's eradicating - not child poverty! All of this talk of hard working families is a joke. With Gordon paying for it all, they can put their feet up, and party.