There is a historical precedent for the current uproar concerning – according to your political leaning – either ‘benefit scroungers’ or the ‘deserving poor’, and that is the position of conscientious objectors during World War ll.
Nobody took any notice of those who said they did not want ‘to kill’ during the affluent peacetime era, but when backs were to the wall and ‘Jerry’ was on the doorstep, they became the object of national derision, coercion, abuse and worse.
Much the same is happening to those in receipt of tax payers enforced largess now that the country is broke and the population scrabbling for every penny it can get.
As with those in receipt of benefit, conscientious objectors were not a homogeneous group. They came in many shapes and forms. Some, the Quakers, went to prison. Others found a way to enforce their right not to kill, placate their religious beliefs – and emerged as decorated heroes rather than objects of derision.
Since my own Father was one of those who emerged as a decorated hero, I have given some thought to how this transition was accomplished. It was a matter of lateral thinking. He, and many hundreds of young men like him – volunteered for bomb disposals. There they were saving lives, not taking lives. Such was the PR spin of their actions that even I didn’t realise until recently that most of the Royal Engineers bomb disposal squad were actually despised and denigrated conscientious objectors.
I am not suggesting that those on benefits volunteer for bomb disposal – or even as human mine detectors, though I am sure some would cheer that suggestion; what I am suggesting is that there might be a halfway house between the polarised views of the Daily Telegraph comments sections – ‘benefit scroungers should get a job’ v. ‘there are no jobs and why should they be penalised for having ten children’.
Assuming that there is an argument that one has the right to have ten children, particularly if it arrives through religious beliefs, and that a civilised society has a duty to support those children if you are neither capable of earning sufficient or there simply are no jobs available at Poundstretcher or wherever - does it follow, if you are hale, hearty and fit, that you also have the right to sit at home doing nothing more taxing than watching Jeremy Kyle?
This theory has been posited before, but has always fallen foul of the unions – ‘we’re not prepared to see our unskilled jobs, dustman, road sweeper, prison officer, whatever, handed over to the unemployed’; or the health and safety brigade – ‘can’t have just anyone painting old ladies fences’; or the bleeding heart liberals ‘community service is a punishment and the deserving poor shouldn’t be punished’.
There is another avenue of work, and that is the army. No, get your knee down! Not as soldiers – there is no reason why our military should be forced to take on everybody who is unemployed, they are a thoroughly professional service these days – however, they are also mass employers of the unskilled and potentially unemployable.
On every base, in particular overseas, somebody washes dishes, somebody peels potatoes, somebody operates the laundry and it is generally locals. Not a pleasant job, but it still costs money. Money that the MOD, or who ever pays the charwallah these days, could well do with saving.
Some of the 67,000 households that the DWP now say will be affected by the proposed benefit cap will undoubtedly contain the severely disabled, some will be single parent families – I am specifically discounting them from my proposal, I don’t think the British public en masse feel the same rage about the level at which they are supported.
I am pointing the finger at those households who contain one or more able bodied men who are part of a household receiving benefits over the £26,000 level simply because they live in an expensive part of the country, and wish to remain there, or who have chosen to raise a large number of children.
Let the household keep its benefits for all the reasons which have been regurgitated a hundred times over – but is there any good reason you can think of why the men in the house shouldn’t be out in Helmund peeling spuds or washing dishes rather than sitting at home crying ‘there aren’t any jobs good enough’?
At the moment it is a double whammy – not only do they not have to work in order to support their families – they get to stay home with them all day watching the telly.
Can you come up with another plan to give the ‘employable but economically unemployable’ a chance to gain the admiration of the nation and turn their fortunes round from being ‘benefit scroungers’ without upsetting the unions or impacting on the cheeeldren.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
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A totally impracticable solution and the fact someone of your calibre could suggest it surprises me.
I’m always prepared to listen and learn – can you tell me why it is impractical?
Do you have another suggestion?
Well, for one thing, there’s the huuuuuuuge resource implication in training them and in keeping an eye on unwilling drafted labour (did you see the curious case of the Soupe de Pisson served at a court last week?).
Given that which Anna is proposing I think that sort of thing would be countered rather quickly out in Helmund.
So the men that would be standing watch on the wall are standing watching the kitchen instead?
Or…perhaps Anna’s human bomb location services come into play?
But at least it would have an impact on the number of children they could breed.
What IDS is saying in a nice, roundabout way with a pretty bow on top, is that benefits for the permanently, willfully unemployed will be reduced or stopped beyond a certain point thereby forcing them to get a job or beg on the streets. What he is hoping is that they will choose the former and what he assumes is that there will be a job somewhere in the country that they can go to. It’s not a bad gamble as it goes. BUT it relies on the economy creating jobs and on the majority believing that it won’t apply to them just to ‘others’.
There are plenty of jobs – the millions of foreigners that have arrived in the prvious few years are tetsimony to that.
The problem is that the permanently unemployed are in a lot of cases unemployable… being borderline anti social halfwits or drunks etc..
Simply put a life on permanent benefits should suck arse.. Those that can will those that can’t get the bare minimum…
Before the knee comes flyiongh in to label me a “heartless tory bastard” the sad fact is that the social effects via entitlement culture and a “you can’t touch me I’ve got my rights” culture are overall far more damaging than a few people living skint…
And once you stoppped lavashing largesse on the hopeless, you might have a spare few quid to improve the lot of the genuinely needy i.e. people like bendy girl who have real problems and deserve better than to be lumped in with the lazy and feckless…
NO, they won’t be forced to get a job, but they *will* be better if they get a job than if they sit at home watching TV while their wife does all the housework. They will NOT be forced to beg on the streets on £26k a year after tax.
I periodically get a card through my door inviting me to deliver leaflets or act as a charity “chugger” or whatever. I’ve been asked if I’ll do a paper-round (because a few years ago I covered for my son for a few days when he couldn’t walk) . There are low-paid jobs around in the high-rent areas for anyone willing to take them. IDS says you’ll be better off in work than on the dole so no-one, but no-one will be forced to beg or starve unless they choose to do so.
The Army doesn’t employ enough people, but the general idea is sound….. Just needs tweaking for modern times.
The Guardian, and others, keep suggesting that people returning to work in the fields is a good idea, sustainable living, saving co2, less complicated life with less materialism.
So surely the “perfect” socialist solution should be to put the unemployed at work in farms as replacement for tractors? The unemployed can lead the way transitioning the UK to the ideal socialist/green nirvana. No jobs lost. No training required. No evil fossil fuels being used. Help tackle the obesity epidemic.
And think of the cross party support. Even the Tories want everyone to start growing vegetables, rejuvenating the British spirit of WW2, to fight the evils of climate change.
“So surely the “perfect” socialist solution should be to put the unemployed at work in farms as replacement for tractors</b.?"
Or, in the case of a great deal of the women, Friesians…
Anna – if I understand you correctly – and I believe I do – you’re suggesting that the able-bodied long-term unemployed become camp followers to the Armed Forces. Now, what would the gay rights brigade think of that? ;o)
It’s clearly better than doing nothing, but I don’t accept the argument that you have a right to have ten children and expect others to look after them or the right to still get benefits if you refuse any job which you are capable of doing.
There is simply no good argument why some people should have the right to choose to take food from the mouths of their neighbours, rather than take a job just because they don’t like it much, or it pays too little.
…”no good argument why some people should have the right to choose to take food from the mouths of their neighbours, rather than take a job “…
…is one of the most hysterical (not in the sense of funny, but in the sense of out-of-your-mind) comments I have ever read. Keep swallowing the propaganda, but be careful, you’ll choke if you swallow too much.
Do tell us what you find so amusing – is that you think OF COURSE there should be such a right?
Because taxing us all to ensure that these families don’t go without is indeed taking food from the mouths of those neighbours.
I’m not saying there is a right. I’m saying that with JSA of £67 pw, no unemployed person is taking the food off a working man’s table. To quote something you often say, Julia, “Simples”.
As for Housing Benefit, if fewer greedy gits were buying to let, and forcing rents up (and with that, the amount at which HB is paid), maybe we would not need to pay so much. The housing rental market needs as much reform as benefits. Landlords are profiteering from the welfare state too, but nobody talks about them stealing from workers’ mouths do they?
Without the distorting safety net of Housing Benefit prices in the rented housing market would be reduced. Blame it on economics.
As for JSA Income-Based that does take food off a working man’s table as it is a qualifying benefit for HB, Council Tax Benefit, free specs, dental care, prescriptions, etc.
What Brian said.
I guess it is ‘simples’ after all…
I’m saying that with JSA of £67 pw, no unemployed person is taking the food off a working man’s table. To quote something you often say, Julia, “Simples”.
And the £67 comes from where?
“And the £67 comes from where?”
Currently, about 80% comes from the taxpayers’ pockets. The other 20% is borrowed by the gubbermint.
Well said Murray– spot on
Murray, you hit that old rights nail on the head. I guess you remember the scene in The Life of Brian where the revolutionary group votes a man the right to have babies even though he cannot have babies because he’s a man.
Of course every couple has the right to have ten children but should they choose to exercise that right they have a duty to support those children to the best of their ability too.
A right and an entitlement are two different things
I suspect that the Armed Forces use local labour when out and about partly as a PR exercise – showing the locals that they have a human side, and are not just there to impose the will of some foreign power.
I’d have the idle blighters who demand “free” money at work picking litter, clearing snow and leaves, fetching shopping for the elderly (no money needs to change hands), and anything else that needs time but no skill. If they don’t like it, they can either compete in the labour market or take the Queens Shilling. If the Unions don’t like it, they can withdraw the funding from their pet politicians….
Hi Anna,
Glad to picked up on the union angle. Someone recently asked why they never see anubody doing community work. There is plenty of work that would benefit the community out there. For instance, clearing drains and ditches by the side of the road. Since they stopped walking the streets to sweep and resorted to using a mechanised sweeper the drains have become more and more choked. Ditches are full of discarded trolleys and detritus. A squad of community workers could keep all that clear- except that the unions won’t agree to anyone other than their members doing the work. Abolish closed shops. Make community service mean something.
Until we destroy trade unions and their job protection schemes we will never get “work for welfare” up and running.
The unemployed should be reclassified into job seekers and unemployable. Most of the people I see in our town during the day fall into the second category. There are solutions but most are currently unthinkable. Give it time.
Community service is a good idea in theory except that the supervisors are normally on only £8-10 per hour and the “volunteers” don’t want to work and will threaten the supervisor with a brick through his window or car torched if he files a complaint: is it worth the hassle? As for stopping benefits for non-compliance, the paperwork needed to send a case up to a Decision Officer was complex and, more often than not, rejected on a technicality.
“…the supervisors are normally on only £8-10 per hour…”
I once had an IT contractors job paying £9.50 an hour, I thought I’d won the f@cking lottery. The “Life” of Brian must be very rosy indeed…
Not rosy, just dreary greyrealityas this recent example shows. I wouldn’t recommend changing your career to working with members of the criminal underclass if money is your main motivator .
I don’t wish to be Mr Selfish here but surely the right to have 10 children ends when someone else has to pay for them?
I don’t care if Mr & Mrs Nexdoor have 34 children. As long as I don’t have to chip in for their upkeep.
CR.
I question the generally-held assumption that all these thousands of unemployed people are unskilled. Certainly there are fewer unskilled jobs available these days, with many East Europeans apparently willingly taking on jobs found to be unpalatable/uneconomic by locals.
But to take one example, many of the younger jobless must havevaluable computer skills (even if they are presently mainly gamers) – employing these does not require physical relocation, just a web connection.
Are job centres “fit for purpose” in matching people to opportunities?
Job Centres being public sector employers, one could argue it isn’t in their interest not to ensure a large pool of people need to keep coming through their doors, hmm?
Actually, Julia I was a Personal Advisor for long term unemployed people who was made redundant from a JobCentre in 2005 because unemplyment had fallen.
We had annual targets to exceed to get people into work. One reason why we saw regular clients was the large-scale replacement of permanent jobs with short term, zero-hours, minimum wage, contract jobs to increase the profitability of businesses. It was ironic that many people on minimum wage were eligible for tax credits and other benefits to bring their take home pay up to a living wage. And why did the industrious and reliable Eastern Europeans take those jobs? Because they paid four times the rate back home. Find a country that pays four times the average British rate and even the inhabitants of the Chatsworth Estate will migrate there.
Related: this also means we’ve been sucking the most useful citizens – the workers, the builders, the nurses – from other nations for years, making their bad situations worse.
The reason why it is useful to have locals providing services to the army is that at least that way they are paid a reasonable wage to stay home and rebuild those countries, instead of trying to get here.
Gosh this is interesting reading, I’m a scrounger work shy, would never work for the min wage, gosh no, would need a lot more then that.
Mind you I would give my left leg to get a job only I have no left leg, I might even give my right leg sadly nope it’s gone.
OK my hands well by the time I go through all that’s missing it would just make me feel tired.
I served my country as well, hero if dead but a zero if your brought back injured, I’m now classed as Paraplegic .
It’s been interesting to read this, cannot say I would enjoy meeting some of you mine you, am I real yes sadly.
Presuming Fred, that you are real, and not joking, nobody here would apply their irritation to you or your situation. I for one am incensed at the despicable treatment of our injured soldiers when compared to others.
However, this country has clearly created a society that thinks it is fair to tax the poor, and give it to lazy sods.
Oh yes I’m real….
Oh dear Fred, you have put a spanner in lots of over-blown rhetoric. Que’ll surprise, not everyone on benefits is the ‘scounging feckless parasite with 50 children, sky sports, an ipad, an iphone, a flat screen telly and an 8 bedroom mansion on easy street paid for by my taxes’.
You precisely encapsulate my problem with this whole debate: it’s all Daily Mail headlines and no damn facts. While everyone is busy making sure the system doesn’t encourage generational unemployment, they are forgetting there are people for whom it is a genuine and justifiable lifeline. They also forget to moderate their language. Good Luck.
PS Do keep up with this blog – you won’t necessarily agree with everything but it’s never dull, always informative, usually entertaining, hardly any mindless shouting down, the limericks are of an incredibly high quality, and someone will always quote some bloody obscure bit of philosophy you then will feel strangly compelled to read up on.
Do keep up with this blog – you won’t necessarily agree with everything but it’s never dull, always informative, usually entertaining, hardly any mindless shouting down, the limericks are of an incredibly high quality, and someone will always quote some bloody obscure bit of philosophy you then will feel strangly compelled to read up on.
Beautifully put M.Barnes, precisely why I stick around day after day – the blogworld’s best commentators on here, can’t get enough of them myself, better than any open university course!
The limericks fail to explain
Why M. Barnes feels he must complain
Poor Fred has few limbs
But can still suck quims
And “I’ll get my coat” yet again.
Dear Fred, stick around and you’ll see
That, although we don’t always agree,
The myriad charms
Of our own Raccoon Arms
Mean it’s really a great place to be.
Ed P, please, although I’m your fan,
I don’t think M Barnes is a man.
But here is the crux
Your limerick sucks
Because I’m afraid it don’t scan
aaaaaaaand they’re off!
EdP goes into an early lead, taking the pack by surprise
Macheath smoothly moves through the gears like the rolls royce of limericks she is
And here comes the mighty Mick Turatian! On the rails. A cheeky run and it’s anyones race now……..
I have one thing to add and it’s this:
Whether M Barnes is Mrs or Miss,
Whether Rev or Esquire,
We need not inquire -
Mick Turation’s just taking the piss!
My life is not short of delights
But there’s one face that keeps me up nights:
Not so much a girl as
An old trout in curlers
Who alas has got me banged to rights.
I’m delighted to learn that, like me,
You’re troubled at night, Mr T:
For, without exceptation,
I curse ‘micturation’
Each time I wake up for a wee.
I’m sorry that when you’re undressed,
‘Tis not I who troubles your rest
And what’s even sadder
Is blaming your bladder
Not the yearnings of your girlish breast!
Mick Turation, it might now be best
To put this whole subject to rest
For who can sleep easy
Without feeling queasy
When the subject matter’s my chest?
I’d say that’s a dead heat – and a superb effort, way out of my league.
Well done, both!
Yup! I think the waiters are putting the chairs on the tables on this thread.
Good fun, though and thanks fellow muses and Macheath is far too modest: “a red sky at night / means your turbine’s alight” was a joyous couplet that stays in the memory.
Agreed – macheath is too modest!
What’s this? Gloria Smudd has come round the outside and taken them all by surprise. Mick Turatian has been put off his stride by the deep muscular chest of this seasoned filly. They’re neck and neck…… powering towards the line…..
Oh And it’s a Photo Finish. Well I never! They couldn’t be separated.
And I think the crowd are truly appreciative of the fine entertainment that’s been provided by these thoroughbreds of the Limerick trade.
“Assuming that there is an argument that one has the right to have ten children, particularly if it arrives through religious beliefs, and that a civilised society has a duty to support those children if you are neither capable of earning sufficient or there simply are no jobs available ……”
I totally disagree, those who think they have ‘the right’ to children have the equivalent responsibility.
If people breed for religious reasons, others of their faith should provide the support. Why should (for instance) Muslims pay extra taxes to raise Catholics?
Restrict benefits to the first two children only and you will be amazed at how fast the ‘right’ to have children disappears.
“Nobody took any notice of those who said they did not want ‘to kill’ during the affluent peacetime era”
Er, what about the “King and Country” Debate of the Oxford Union in 1933?
Lytton Strachey attempted to avoid conscription in WWI by claiming to be a Conscientious Objector:
“Would you care to tell us what you would do if you saw a German soldier raping your sister?” asked the military representative on the tribunal. “I should try and interpose my own body,” replied Strachey. Priceless! His application failed but he was turned down on medical grounds.
The ‘answer’ is very simple.
Apparently there are some people in this country that are so talented that they are worth million pound salaries and bonuses that are multiples of those salaries, (rather than the sub-multiples than the plebs hope to get). These people are wealth creators. Having created that wealth they then try and divert as much of it as possible into their own pockets but sometimes they divert some of it towards the politicians in the hope of gaining an ‘honour’.
The later diversion, is, of course, frowned upon nowadays. Why not open up the process? Create 1,000 jobs get an MBE, create a million pick up the ermine!
Sadly there is a problem here because at the moment a lot of their ‘wealth creation’ is often achieved by getting rid of jobs. However I like the idea of adding a bit of tension in their lifes: cut some jobs, get a bonus, make some jobs, get a ‘K’!
It is very complex. This is precisely the reason that no government has been able to design a perfect system. So what do we do? Argue about the examples of the extreme circumstances and the emotionally charged sob stories?
Any welfare system can be manipulated by people intent on deception but that is people for you. The best we can hope for is a system that is fair for most.
In my ideal welfare system I would have the following groups excluded from unemployment benefits and they should have a seperate system of welfare provision.
Mentally & Physically Disabled – Disability Provision
Injured, Disabled, Mentally Impaired Military, Firemen, Policemen Special Pension & Sheltered Housing where they can live together in quality housing not the shittest schemes in the country. These people risk their lives and should be rewarded by the society they protected. We have billions for Overseas Aid yet abondon our servicemen.
So what about unemployment benefits.
Benefits tourism stopped. People presenting themselves as homeless, unemployed and not UK passport holders should be deported ASAP. The cost of deporting & temp housing charged to the Embassy of their country of origin and deducted from Overseas Aid budgets for said country.
Students coming to study should be here to study. If they cannot afford it tough. No work permits for overseas students, no grants, housing or even council tax rebates.
Unemployed people to be assessed on the basis of their past work contribution to the society. People who have worked for 20 years and made unemployed to get a higher rate. People who have never worked to get less.
(Anna’s Idea Modified) A Community Work and Training Program to be formed using the Military model, ex service personnel employed to run these programs. Singles 16-25 year olds (the ones who cause most trouble) who have never worked will be placed into camps where they learn work skills, contribution to society & motivation. Part of the week is spent appling for jobs and those who succeed in getting placements will move to semi sheltered accomodation where they can continue for a max of 2 years while seeking private or social housing but they are free to come and go as they please similar to University Dorms.
Child Benefit for women is maxed at 3 children. If you cannot feed you child do not have one. If you want to have more pay for them yourself.
Obviously you can remain at home with your parents who will have to pay for you until you find work.
It is not the job of society to provide for Idle people. It is the job of society to provide a safety net to protect your welfare.
Housing Benefit would never be paid on private property. The state can build housing and provide maintenance. People who are made unemployed who have enough credits of years of work in the system could have rent paid for specific period and remain in their house.
Under no circumstances should a family arrive in the UK from abroad, never pay a penny in tax, have 6 kids and live in a house costing the tax payer £800 per week. I beleive in London their are over 50,000 people who fit this category. I would deport anyone who comes to the UK and makes no attempt to work. If there are no jobs then sending them home makes sense economically.
Obviously this is a rough outline and their will be many gaps. But I think you get the direction.
“The cost of deporting & temp housing charged to the Embassy of their country of origin and deducted from Overseas Aid budgets for said country.”
Bless. As we all know, “they” arrive in this country via the proper channels (no pun intended) and they all have valid passports aswell.
I believe many of them have “lost” their passports, so they cannot be deported, and of course they claim asylum, saying they would be tortured in whatever country they believe would serve their purpose.
Cue handwringing, think of the cheeeeldren, have a big house.
Or perhaps we should just grow a pair and send to wherever they say they are escaping from, I suspect they would soon remember their real origin, and have relatives to prove it.
Total public expenditure this financial year, about £700bn (of which £140bn is borrowed).
The Welfare budget is £200bn, the Health budget is £120bn. So these two combined make up the thick end of 50% of all government expenditure.
The Welfare State may have it’s worthy elements, but oh boy does it cost…
Some people find that spending Other People’s Money is remarkably easy, and are very quick to cry foul when others try to be responsible with said spending.
The bottom line is that we just can’t afford it – so how do we support the genuinely deserving while reducing the heamorrhage of money to those who choose not to make the effort to help themselves?
To answer Anna’s question, how about a National Thrift Drive, collecting and recycling all waste and scrap materials. The unemployed could do the collecting, sorting, delivery of cleaned materials to processing plants, composting of organic matter, repair overhaul and sale of reclaimable equipment. Payment would be linked to results, so no income for Thrift site, minimum bennies; good turnover, better bennies. (Might even stop the incessant flow of charity bags, many from organisations with very tenuous links to charity – my alltime record, six in one week.)
Failing that, the Russians used to have a good system. Move a huge pile of coal from one end of a factory site to the other with a shovel and wheelbarrow. Next week, move it back. Bennies linked to volume shifted. Couple of weeks of that, and they’d soon find that they’re not so unemployable after all.
Maybe it would be better to explain this by reducing it to a micro level.
Small village, 1000 people, 600 working to provide provision for the remainder.
200 are the older ones who worked to provide for previous generations and build the village and the children of those working.
100 are sick/disabled and unable to work so they are provided for by others.
100 are just sitting watching everyone else do the work while doing nothing. complaining they are not being looked after enough and want the best houses so they can relax their whole life while never contributing and having large families that everyone else pays for.
100 more arrive from a far away village and they want to join the unproductive ones and relax in a big house doing nothing.
Seems ridiculous but that is benefit tourism. Economically ridiculous, morally corrupt and socially destructive.
Since I am still standing on my soap box.
Why is it we consider Civic Nationalism where everyone contributes to be demeaning to the unemployed.
Surely an efficiently run public service staffed by ex military personnel would be ideal. Skills would be learned, streets would be clean, unemployment would never be idleness, food could be grown, beaches cleaned, houses built, items exported, money earned, etc.
I grew up in a really rough estate where most of the criminality was idle youth trying to find money in a society that did not help them. The kids were not bad but they could become bad over time.
Maximising the potential of every single member of society is how you succeed.
The last sentence is very true. There’s a link here with education policy. How do you build an education system that aims to find each person’s talents and abilities and nurture them, whilst trying to correct the weaknesses? The worst sort of ‘one-size-fits-all’ child-centred comprehensive education clearly doesn’t help the problem, indeed, it may well contribute to it.
Why not take the UK to its inevitable conclusion?
Break the country up into tribal ghettoes where local rule prevails by dint of violence and corruption.
“the (local) people” will decide if they want to support non producers.
Natural selection will take place and the biggest ethnic groups will prevail.
They tried that in Northern Ireland (unofficially). Didn’t work.
This thing (a bit of a side issue in this piece) about having ten kids and having the rest of us pay for it, is something which can be dealt with quite simply.
The answer is localism…
In Switzerland, the political landscape is one of pure federalism with the top layer, being more or less unemployed, the federal cabinet consists of seven members, and they meet four or five times a year. As one travels down to the lower levels of government, the participants become more aware of their surroundings… At the lowest level a government (often voluntary) worker is looking after a hamlet, one street or block of flats.
Now, if one is a typical British teenage mum, who has chosen (in Daily Fail parlance) to breed for a living, tried to do the same thing under those conditions, she would be aware, every time she walked down the street with her three baby buggy, just where their breakfast was coming from… Her neighbours.
In Switzerland, the government largesse is delivered at that very low level. Only after all other avenues have been exhausted, like the father, or other family members able to support, is accommodation or finance available… The stimulus to breed is just not there.
The problem is that in the rest of the world, government is becoming ever more remote, and further away from the streets where we live.
Perhaps the Swiss raise their young to be more conscientious than their UK counterparts; I seriously doubt whether it would worry a prolific teenage mother here that the people around her were picking up the bill – at least from what I have seen in the classroom on a regular basis.
The word ‘entitlement’ has been much bandied about over this issue, but it’s hard to find another way to express the idea that the state will, can and should supply not merely the bare necessities but a defined standard of living.
Anna has made the point elsewhere that, in the French system, families are expected to take some responsibility. That was once the unofficial practice here; my parents, the only ones from their families to go to university (thanks to state scholarships) felt obliged to step in when other family members suffered the results of recession.
Throughout my childhood, there were times when money ran short at home because an uncle had lost his factory job and needed a loan, or my grandparents needed to borrow money to move house. They were proud people; they accepted benefits where absolutely necessary but otherwise we looked after our own.
Over here in the Orient there is very little in the way of welfare except for the seriously disabled, and unemployment benefits end after 6 months.
There is however a fallback support system known as “the family”. Naturally most people are reluctant to have a lot of unemployed relatives knocking on their door, so they take whatever jobs they can get however demeaning to avoid the shame of having to beg from their nearest and dearest.
Teenage pregnancies are dealt with by getting the sharp edge of mother’s tongue and having to live at home with grumbling parents rather than being given a nice furnished flat at taxpayers’ expense. Which is I believe what used to happen in the UK before socialism took over.
There will always be genuine hardship and there must be a certain level of assistance from the state. But if you are daft enough to encourage idleness and fecklessness – and to tolerate the likes of the Bishops and BBC defending it – then as ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Anna is right. We do need to look at this. It is easy to stand on the sideline calling people scrubbers and then watch their lives unravel even more than they have already.
When the state retreats, as we hope it will, there has to be something to fill the gap. The Victorians saw that it was a moral poverty, not just financial, that caused much of the harm. To talk of such paternalism in some libertarian circles would lead to derision but the paternalistic Victorians managed to bring friendly societies, the much criticized homes for fallen girls (what else would have happened to them with no support or ability to work?) and the culture of discipline, Christian charity and family.
Now that the cultural revolution has destroyed the institutions that filled the gap that the state now occupies who will build the new ones in the future and what will they look like?
I’m game if you are. Think about it.
Quite topically I just heard on the local news that Debbie Purdy (she in support of assisted dying and with MS) is in serious debt and has been taken to court for not paying her council tax. Her fault? Not telling her husband to stop working as a musician and to go and sign on. This straight from the benefits office (five times) who tell her that she will be better off because the state will help with her council tax, free prescriptions, mortgage interest, etc. She already receives disability living allowance and incapacity benefit.
If the welfare state which was set up to help those who cannot work is failing people like Debbie Purdy but allowing those who can work but don’t to get 40″ flat screen TVs then it seriously not working and is not fit for purpose.
I am so proud of Mick. This year he is working upto his 50th resit of the 11+ after securing the Kilroy trophy for the best bog art at Craptown Junior.
A potential solution:
It is not entirely palatable but the biggest sticking point I see is getting the state to accept and deal with the distortions it causes via the welfare state. Civil servants who devise these systems always seem to fall into the trap of believing that rational behaviour = what they would do yet we all have different views and different values.
The way to do this is to maintain benefits for those currently receiving them but allow no more claims, or much reduced claims, based on the date when you start claiming. If the state has been paying people to have large families and now wants to cut the income for those families it isn’t entirely decent to do that. The choice those parent/s made was based on the benefits they knew they would get. But you could certainly say to the baby factories that they will qualify for *no more* child benefit and not automatically receive better accommodation. And apply that equally to everyone else too – those who have no children yet won’t get child benefit. Those with children won’t get an increased child benefit just for having more children. Everyone is treated equally.
Do likewise with housing benefit to achieve the same aim. A reduced or no HB for claimants after a cut-off date but maintain those who already receive it.
It would stop the problem continuing from one year to the next. The cost would diminish over time without having to do anything. The biggest problem imo isn’t the choices people have already made – to choose to live a comfortable life at the cost of others – the state allowed them to make that choice. The biggest problem is that the state shows bugger all interest in preventing those same choices being made by future claimants.
Such a cut off mechanism would steadily create more space for charitable and voluntary support networks in our communities too as the amount of crowding out the state does would diminish gradually.
Weird – that one of Macheath’s sticks in my mind too….totally inspired.
It’ll be like ring a ring o’ roses in a few hundred years. They’ll learn Red sky at night at whatever replaces primary school – probably uploading induction assembly at the nutri-point – a Mach classic is born!