Mail Reader Asked: "I am sure that you agree with me, that social security benefits are a disgrace. Do you also agree with me that the recipients of such benefits should be horse whipped. In my day a good dose of the birch would soon have them back on track."
I see that the Mail (a poor excuse for a newspaper) has once more motivated into action its own version of militant tendency. The Glenda's and Rupert's have been stirred awake once more in their cosy Tunbridge Wells hovels. The unthinking rabble is no longer baying for the blood of the Fox has now turned its attention to the unemployed and the disabled.
Yet in a strange sort of way, the Mail's "Unthinking Tendency" always like to harp on about a time in childhood when they did not have a horse to whip. Rupert's memorable "I remember being so poor that one Christmas I got a battery with a note attached saying - toys not included." causing snorts into their sherry, before they go out to play a round of golf.
In a country where we accept insurance a necessary part of our lives. Whether its for protecting our our health interests, homes, cars or even our holidays. We pay our taxes when we are in employment as a form insurance for our future. In our old age, there is the state benefit of a pension. Not everyone who pays into the system lives to get the chance to enjoy any of the benefit such as it is.
Much of our taxes gets wasted on armaments so that we can go and put Johnnie Foreigner in his place. Some gets wasted on paying private finance initiative contracts at huge exorbitant rates. The banks have also seen the benefit of our taxes, paid to rescue them from financial meltdown. Had they melted down, Glenda and Rupert's salted away nest egg, would have been lost.
Often Glenda and Rupert will have had a lifetime of work, enjoying child benefit and latterly the heating allowance as well as a state pension. A pension used to top up their private pension provision from their past employment. They will have invested in their own home and during that time will have have enjoyed various tax relief benefits.
Now, they will be signing the property over to their children - just in case they have to go into the old age provision for sheltered housing. The thoughts that all the money the property has accrued should be used to pay the bill for their continued care in sheltered accommodation is an anathema. Yes avarice and greed is alive and well and living behind the chintz curtains in Tonbridge Wells.
Ask anyone on state benefits if they would sooner be in work and the answer for the able bodied is a heartfelt yes. The stigma and vitriol whipped up to a frenzy by various newspapers portraying the odd miscreant who has abused the system as being the norm beggars belief. Yet, the main motivators of the vitriol such as the politicians. All sucked away like leeches at their "benefits" such as duck houses, moat cleaning and packets of biscuits. Flipping homes and giving live a virtuoso performance on the fiddle. Bankers bonuses, fat cat pay and pension pots that dreams are made of. The Mail makes little mention of the excesses of the Glenda and Rupert of the future.
How would I tackle the benefit cheats - I would re-employ the people who have been made redundant in the various departments. This would have two benefits for us all - catching the miscreants and putting people back to work. It will never happen - economics says that you have to catch a lot of miscreants to make it worthwhile and cost effective venture. The numbers that are caught however, don't stack up. But it makes for a good newspaper story to wake Glenda and Rupert from their slumbers for a bit of much needed cortex exercise.
I'm pretty sure that there are still a few of the old Tory racists, hangers, birchers, flail and floggers left in Tonbridge Wells. I for one do not believe that their values are shared by the majority of British people. The public will always condemn the inequalities in provision far more than they will criticise someone when there is a real need.
For years it has been known that what happens in America will soon happen over here. George Carlin in 2007 predicted what would happen in the USA and now its over here.
Regards.
Uncle Mort.
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