http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023400/33m-child-benefit-paid-foreign-chldren-live-abroad.html
British child benefit paid to foreign children living abroad has rocketed by an astonishing 72 per cent in just nine months, to £33million a year.
Most of the money is going on 36,000 children still in Poland whose parents are cashing in on European rules that let them claim benefits in the UK after working and paying taxes here for a year.
Ministers were plunged into a new immigration row last night by the figures, only shortly after proposed tax rises for low-income British families sparked intense controversy.
The huge bill for British taxpayers began with the EU’s enlargement in 2004, leading to 800,000 workers from the new member countries moving to the UK.
But it has escalated dramatically as word has spread among Polish communities in Britain, coupled with Polish-language newspapers publishing guides on how to claim the benefit.
The new figures, released to Conservative Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond, reveal that in the nine months to March this year the number of workers from EU accession states claiming child benefit rose from 14,000 to 24,000.
For Poland, the rise in six months was 43 per cent.
Even larger amounts are paid out to East European workers in child tax credits, but the Government has refused to put a figure on that liability.
The UK benefit is so attractive because it is £977 a year for the first child and £652 for young siblings – as opposed to £160 for each child in Poland.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023054/Christian-groups-Starbucks-boycott-chain-relaunches-bare-breasted-mermaid-logo.html
With her long flowing locks, elegantly curved tail and enigmatic smile, she has always been a symbol of ancient marine mythology.
And when Starbucks wanted a logo to reflect the seafaring traditions of the coffee trade the mermaid seemed a perfect choice.
But the coffee chains’ recent revival of their original 35-year-old logo which depicts the legendary siren as a bare-breasted beauty has proved a little too racy for some.
A Christian group has called for a boycott of the global coffee chain because the new logo now shows the mermaid naked from the waist up, with only two thin locks of hair preserving her dignity
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1023314/The-junkie-mother-THREE-children-born-addicted-heroin.html
coroner has launched a blistering attack on a junkie mother who gave birth to a baby girl while hooked on heroin.
Chelsey Essex died from a massive heart attack at less than three months old after being seriously ill from birth because of her mother Michaela Mullen's drug abuse.
Rotherham coroner Stanley Hooper slammed Miss Mullen, who has just had her third child, for keeping 'producing children who are addicted to heroin'.
She was not at the inquest to hear his scathing criticism because she was in hospital following the birth of her latest child.
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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii
Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.â€
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein