I’m too feckless even to scrounge benefits

And then I thought that I had better look at the issues, so as to be ready with my searing analysis on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. And apparently one of them is that the Chancellor might go back on his plans to take child benefit away from people who pay income tax at the higher rate. He might do that, I discovered, or he might stick to his original plan and take it away as of April 2013 ... and that was when I flung my hands in the air and cried: “Oh balls!”

Because I thought that he already had. When the announcement was made in October 2010 and the papers all screamed “Child benefit slashed for nice people who work hard!” I assumed that they meant “as of now!” and was just beside myself with fury.

Because at that time my wife was three months away from giving birth to our first child — so just when I was finally about to become eligible for this ludicrous baby cashback scheme, it was being scrapped. I was annoyed enough with myself as it was, for leaving it until I was 40 to have children, but now the Government was adding salt to injury and insulting my wounds by taking away the free money to which I would have been entitled if I had only got my reproductive arse in gear a bit earlier.

The full downside was apparently £1,055 a year. Which, should I be fortunate enough in any of those years to find myself being taxed at 50 per cent, could be considered to be £2,110. Or possibly even more, when you consider that one pays what I think they call a “marginal rate” that is even higher (is it 67 per cent?) on some of one’s income. So it was more like about three grand that I would be losing.

Three grand!

So dizzy with visions of my imminent impoverishment was I, that I didn’t stop to read the small print about it not happening for a couple of years. I just stormed round the house kicking things. I was not interested in the rights and wrongs of it. Obviously, neither I nor my wife should get a bean from the Government in benefits of any sort. Obviously, benefits must be means-tested. Even at 7 or 8 I remember thinking it was a bit rum when my mum (a consultant anaesthetist) would go down to the Post Office after letting the benefit pile up for a couple of months, park the Mercedes, go in and collect a pile of cash and then go next door and buy six cartons of Rothmans with it.

It wasn’t the principle of the system change that upset me, it was the timing.

“If Giles Coren had only had a child at the age of 22 like most normal men,” George Osborne appeared to be barking from the front pages, “he could have claimed his full entitlement to massive wonga — roughly £54,000 per child at today’s rates — and by now the kid would be off to university and he could go back to his life. But oh no, he had to dither and faff and wait for ‘the right person’ and now he is having a child and it is too late! He isn’t getting a penny!”

For over a year I have been steaming about this. And now it turns out that we could have been claiming all this time. We can back claim, but only for three months. So the first 11 months of Kitty’s life were completely wasted.

Too greedy to see the moral positives in the benefit change; too dim to notice I could have claimed for two years anyway; too lazy to bother now that there’s so little left. Talk about the squeezed middle — I’m too feckless even to be a benefit scrounger.

• Two boring things happened to me on Sunday: I saw a picture of Chris Huhne and Carina Trimingham at the Lib Dem spring conference (unless it was fancy dress day and the photo was of two other delegates who happened to have gone as Mr and Mrs Potato Head) and I got flashed a couple of times doing about 80 coming in towards the Blackwall Tunnel.

Now, I have nine points on my driving licence already. If those flashes result in a penalty and I take the points I will lose my licence. So my wife will be taking them. And I’ll tell you why.

Because getting on for two years ago, I made a number of vows. I forget the exact details, but the effect was to make my wife and me a single financial and social entity. Mr and Mrs Giles Coren. You invite her, you get me too (you poor thing). And vice versa. If we split up, she gets half of everything, and so do I. What is mine is hers, and hers mine. Including penalty points.

I earn a bit more than her at the moment, what with the baby and everything — that child benefit she is about to be disentitled from is because I earn too much, not her — so if she gets a parking ticket or a traffic fine of any sort, I pay it. Likewise most of the other bills. The least she can do is pay me back with what she has a lot of. In short, wiggle room on her driving licence.

Furthermore, I have nine points to her none because I do most of the driving. This is because I am a better driver than her. I’ve worked that out on the basis that you learn from your mistakes and as I have had 17 road accidents (only 12 serious) compared to her none (not so much as a parking bump in her life) I can be said to be in a completely different class. There can be nothing about driving that I do not now know.

But we go everywhere together. Both of us in the front. It is quite irrelevant who is sitting behind the actual wheel. Between us, Mrs Coren and I have to accumulate 24 points before they can take our licence away. And so far we have only nine.

None of this applies to Chris Huhne, of course. He has already explained to the police that he wasn’t driving the car. His wife was.