Farewell and Hello ..........

The jet-lag has dissipated, the suitcase is back in the garage and the pile of backlogged mail has receded to manageable proportions. I wish I could say the same about my email inbox but that’s another story.

Anyway, before I turn my attention back onto the scene here in America and the abomination that is Obamacare, there are a couple of snippets from England that are worthy of note for several reasons.

Some women have to work and some women want to work and I’m the last person to dare to dip a toe into that maelstrom of discussion. Some women want to have kids and some don’t. Inevitably, therefore, there is an overlap and some women who want to work or some women who have to work also want to be or are mothers.

Unless there’s a “Mr. Mom” around or an “au pair” or a nanny a solution has to be found. Typically that is “child minding”, “day-care”; pick your poison?

Two women in the south of England devised their own solution. Both worked for the same employer and their chosen profession involved shift work. And they knew each other and so it made sense to arrange their schedules in order that they could provide mutual assistance to one another. And for several months all was well.

You know, some people have far too much time on their hands because some neighbor thought this scandal must end and so the two mothers received visits from the British equivalent of Child Protective Services. They were told to cease and desist or become registered as, effectively, a child-care business.

Now that step in England, as in the U.S., is a non-trivial process. Then add to those time-consuming and expensive measures the fact that both were receiving a “reward” by virtue of the fact that they were not paying for the care given to their child, so they were now liable to pay income tax on that reward.

The justification offered by “the powers that be” about the clamp-down centered on the threat to the children from pedophiles in an unsupervised environment. Really?

Did I mention that both women are Police Officers? Both are detectives with more than 10 years experience. They know what pedophilia is. They know what it looks like. They know what it smells like.

Bottom line; these women are not pedophiles. They are caring mothers but the “nanny state’ of the UK wants to regulate and tax them. Because that is what socialists do best, first, last and always.

Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but Verify”. Socialism says Tax and Control.

Some American readers are already grumbling that this stuff couldn’t happen here. Well it already has because some lady in Michigan has a house near a school bus stop. She’s a grandmother and felt bad when she saw little kids waiting in the wind, rain, snow and ice. So she offered them refuge in her house. But no longer because the nanny state of Michigan determined that she was not licensed for child care.

And now, my second “Brit Snip”. Some demented politician in England wants to levy a tax on out-of-town grocery stores because they offer free parking and that represents unfair competition for the Main Street stores of downtown UK.

Tough!

Here in Scottsdale, I go to Costco to save money and the folks in England want to save money too. Does this British clown not understand that all he is proposing is to add to the cost of living while providing nothing in return?

By now my more impatient readers are waiting for me to tie all this together and I will. Trust me! And, here it is.

Today in Phoenix, we learned that the state of Arizona is going to up the fees for a child-care center from $150 a year to as much as $13,000. Will those centers eat the extra? Or will we? All of us.

The law of unintended consequences has long arms.