³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

So happy birthday then, son.

A bit of a mixed bag this year. Wales lost on Saturday. Mind you, you the Irish deserved their win and at least Stephen Jones and his boot gave your Dad a chance to teach you a valuable lesson about how you must deserve your victories. Not sure how much of it sank in but he tried.

The other bit of bad news is that you're worth less than you were when you were born. No, hang on, let me try again. You, of course, are invaluable but that baby bond the government gave you is worth less than when you were born.

It was the Chancellor, Gordon Brown's gift to you. He gave you £256 to invest in a Child Trust Fund. It will mature when you're 18 and by then, he was really hoping you'd spend the money, the "several thousand pounds" it would be worth by then according to Prime Minister Tony Blair, on your education or as a deposit on a house.

You've a long, long way to go but the bad news is that your £256 is now worth £198.55. I know. The nest-egg is looking a bit brittle. You'd better start hoping, son, that the economy and the stock market are in a better shape in March 2023 than they are now.

The woman at the other end of the line sounded rather guilty when I told her it was your birthday but as she pointed out, you're not alone. There'll be another 699,999 children born in the same year as you - every year since September 2002 in fact - whose cash windfall will be shrivelling at the moment and let's face it, most of them will be considerably worse off than you are.

And by the way, if you thought being born in Wales would have added £50 to the pot, forget it. Yes, I know Rhodri Morgan and Labour pledged to give you an extra £50 on top of the £250 you were already getting if they were still in power in Wales after the Assembly election. As it so happens, I was in the playground in Cardiff North when Gordon Brown shared his delight with the news that "every child" in Wales would get the extra money. He was well on his way to becoming Prime Minister by then and this was, he said, a sign of "healthy diversity" between the nations of the UK.

Yes, that's right, Labour are still in power and in the One Wales Agreement they struck with Plaid Cymru they pledged to "implement an extra Children's Bond for all children entering school". If you look you'll see that the idea isn't dead. It just hasn't happened yet. The plan is still that you, along with every child in Wales gets £50 to invest when you start school and that children living in low income households get another £50 on top. Why hasn't it happened? Because the people who must work out how to divvy up the money are still working on it. They've promised to work it out by 2009 though, so perhaps you'd better start watching this space.

Sorry. Didn't mean to cast a pall over your birthday and as I say, you're in a far, far better position than many other four year olds who were opening presents this weekend. There would be plenty who'd tell you that your Dad's lecture about deserving wins on the rugby pitch apply equally to winnings and windfalls and that you and your family were lucky to get a nest egg at all.

I'll tell you about Logan, Seren, Ioan, Jasmine, Rhys and Cerys before the end of the week - children from a family up in Perthcelyn who've opened their doors to us again, just as they did nearly ten years ago and I'll tell you why all of this matters rather more to them than it does to you: a lot more. Their will open your eyes. It certainly opened mine.

In the meantime, enjoy your presents. You certainly deserved those.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?