SUPPORT THE SELF-EMPLOYED

Hi guys, I hope you're having a great week so far (or if not, that you're hanging in there for the weekend). A quick post today to ask for your support for all low earning self-employed people, which includes me and many of the talented children's and YA writers I know.

Some of you might be aware of the recent uproar over the proposed (unfair) changes in National Insurance Credits. They were going to make self-employed people pay more National Insurance, bringing them in line with employed people, even though self-employed people don't get access to most of the contribution based benefits that employed people do, such as statutory sick pay. The government were forced to do a u-turn due to widespread resistence, which was a great thing. But another issue to do with the tax paid by self-employed people has managed to slip under the radar, and it's just as serious.

They're goung to abolish something called Class 2 National Insurance credits, and this means that many very low earning self-employed people will face losing their state pension, even though many of us have already paid into it for years and despite the fact that self-employed people have no entitlement to any employer subsidized pension, which means any pension provision we make for ourselves already costs us way more than an employed person would expect to pay (that's if we can afford to do any saving for retirement at all).

Here's some more background if you're interested.

If you (whether you're self-employed yourself, or hope to be one day) think that targeting the lowest earners and forcing them to stump up massive wads of cash just to keep themselves above the poverty line in old age, while leaving higher earners untouched, is deeply unfair, then please sign and share my petition here.

It's all I can think of to do right now, and you never know - it could make a difference. And thank you in advance for supporting children's and YA writers.