DatePicker clear button

I don't see why over the last several years, even with all the valid cases put forward as to why a datepicker clear button is *REQUIRED* in some cases, there is still NO clear button anywhere in sight!!

See the following screen shot

[[Image(http://www.integratedweb.com.au/where-to-put-button.png)]]

(note some things are blurred deliberately as this is a new system I am building and don't want to reveal too much).

Now, without turning that SPAN in to an input (and thus allowing people to be backspacing and writing what ever they want in there, that would stuff up the ajax), there is no way to allow a user to clear the date, without adding a manual "clear" button next to every date, but look at the UI, where would this fit? Wouldn't it look retarded?

Really disappointed that this was REMOVED from jQuery UI, why remove it?? Why not keep it but make it an option? This approach would make a lot more sense.

Love it how the jQuery UI team have just taken it upon themselves to decide that there are no practical use cases for this.

I will most likely resort to using a non-jQuery UI datepicker as after all the other forum posts/bug reports/feature requests/blog posts made since 2007 -- none of the jQuery UI team seem to care.