The myths around what some call welfare and others call benefits but which were and still are best described as social security are manifold; a situation deliberately fostered by government politicians and the right wing press. Some of those myths were addressed in the Observer this weekend. I unapologetically think many are worth repeating here.
So, this is what the social security budget is spent on:
Now, who are the skivers? Pensioners? Working families? Those who would be on the streets without housing benefit? Those wilfully unemployed by a government that refuses to create work? Or who?
Or is it all just a myth to inflict pain on those already poor?
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“A freedom of information request by Full Fact showed that in August 2010, there were fewer than five housing benefit claimants receiving the equivalent of £100,000 a year”
I wonder if that fewer than five included Maria Miller’s parents?
Th real scroungers, the banks who leech off our endeavours by extracting interest and the landowners who pay no taxes but live from ours instead in the form of EU grants and subsidies, aren’t even listed. Anyone looking there for the real scroungers, the real parasites, is being misdirected.
I genuinely wonder why we have such poor unemployment benefits, separate out housing from it.
I’d much prefer the norwegian model where you could realistically have the money etc and so on to legitimately retrain and not be punished for it by the withdrawal of benefits. It works much better in other ways as well, you don’t have to separate out benefit etc which is a nighmare to work through.
Although I do think it is more important to do proper work schemes, the FJF was the only effective scheme the government has used in probably decades and needs restarting and expanding to all unemployed people. It’d be worth taking money from pensions and family allowances etc to do that if they aren’t going to have mostly from elsewhere. It would hen improve employment over the long term and reduce ta costs by simply paying a little more upfront to get people working, which translates into long term gains and greatly reduced impact on public services.
Pensions and family benefits need serious reform (and it’s not as if my generation are going to get pensions like that), possibly a gradual tail of of the pensions set against wages so you’ll always get something but the higher your income/net worth the lower the pension is. So it both reduces paying the well off pensions but doesn’t cancel the incentive to save for a pension.
Surely some of the universal entitlements need to be questioned. It probably wouldn’t save much bit giving a pension to the super rich as well as Winter fuel allowances makes no sense.
I think the point, above, concerning the implied uselessness of Job Centres which are largely punitive is a good point. I’ve never experienced any worthwhile help from a Job Centre. I left teaching due to poor health -that was ten years ago. I receive no help with retraining advice/support I was just told there was no money for it and now, the function of the Job Centre is to haul me in for a waste of time interview that has some punitive measure for non-attendance connected with it. Scrap this nonsense and save millions! This waste is ideological!
To answer your last question, Richard, it’s nowhere near a myth, it’s nowhere near a manipulation of figures, it’s a straightforward and fundamental lie delivered via a clearly coordinated programme of demonisation by the biggest bunch of charlatans I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. The time to give them any credit for honesty is long past; they need to be called out for what they are.
So, we have a government of liars opposed by an opposition in the grip of suffering terminal cowardice. The effective result? A critical breakdown in representative democracy
But where is today’s Nye Bevan to do just that?
Good last question
not being flippant but Aneurin Bevan
@BevanInHeaven might be worth a look