Saturday’s Daily Express told the story of two siblings. Katherine Cooper works a 50-hour week and at the age of 26 has just bought her first flat with her partner. Then there is her older brother Russell Fenn, aged 32, who has not had a proper job since leaving school and lives in a council house on benefits with his wife and four children. He does not see the point in working because the generous benefits mean he would need to earn more than £20,000 to make it worthwhile. He therefore lives off the recycled tax contributions of people like his own sister.
A quote is doing the rounds on the internet that distils the story of modern Britain quite precisely: “You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it. You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it.
"Government cannot give anyhing to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else. Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody else has to work for it without receiving.
“The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half the people to get the idea they don’t have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labour.”
The quote is from the late right-wing American pastor Adrian Rogers. The experience of Katherine and Russell illustrates what an accurate description it is of the position our country has reached today. She says: “I could not bear the thought of having to depend on the state for anything. He says: “Any job that I could take, easily, would make me worse off and then I’d have to spend more time away from my children and my home.” She says: “I don’t mind paying tax to support people who genuinely can’t work but there is no earthly reason why people like Russell can’t get a proper job and support himself and his family.” He says: “I don’t see why I should feel guilty just because I am not a wage slave.”
That’s the line that got my goat, I must confess. Russell appears actually to regard those who work as an inferior class of being. Maybe we are: mugs. After all, he makes a persuasive case for a life of leisure, citing the time he gets to interact with his children and exemptions his family receives from such things as prescription charges.
“I actually feel sorry for men who have to put on a suit and work full-time in an office,” he adds. What Russell, and millions like him, have benefited from is Labour’s campaign against child poverty.
Because the policy says children should not grow up in very low income households, it follows that Russell can habitually fail to support his and yet still see the money roll in.
In his parasites’ manifesto, he makes one decent point: “If all unemployed people like me gave up our benefits, would the Government cut taxes for everyone else? I don’t think so.” Well, I don’t think so either in the case of the current Government.
Labour believes it knows how to spend people’s money better than they do and would no doubt find another lost cause at which to throw it. But the absence of welfare claims by the wilfully dependent would at least give a sensible successor administration some options. These would certainly include cutting taxes on working people. An alternative would be to use the cash saved to bolster the contributory principle of the welfare system.
Currently a typical worker pays around £60 a week in national insurance. If such a worker loses his job – and many have in the current recession – the benefit he can expect as of right after making a claim is... £60 a week. Any payment on top will depend on the number of children he has, his savings and a host of other factors relating to individual circumstances.
As insurance policies go it’s the worst deal in the world: If you make a claim you only get back the premium you were paying in the first place. nobody would voluntarily enter into such an arrangement.
The whole purpose of insurance is to pool risk and therefore be able to support properly those whose luck turns sour and, in the case of national insurance, also to give those retiring after working all their lives a decent statutory pension. The reason our national insurer gives such lousy terms to workers and pensioners is simply that it spends so much on people like Russell Fenn. Any private insurer which allowed such free-loading would not get paying customers. The state’s cruel trick is to make contributions compulsory and dock them from wages.
This, in a nutshell, is what is killing Britain. Until Katherine is allowed to stop paying for Russell the country will carry on going to the dogs.
Anyone got any thoughts on this story being as it is quite close to home? _________________
For the sake of completion, it may be of some interest to post a link to, or to present, the original article from the Daily Express, dated 5th September.
The above, and link also, is an opinion expressed by one of the Express' columnists some days after the article was published, and has been written to be damaging to Mr Fenn and also to other persons like him (although this does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I am seeking to defend the image portrayed in the article).
I've tried to find a link to the article online, although I have limited time at the moment (Eliot smells really very bad and needs a bath, so naturally I'm online - and I should be ranting for Spider-Man against Bats!).
I do have an opinion on the subject; however, I would prefer to read more, and ponder upon what has been stated, before offering a comment of any description.
This sounds very diplomatic of me, doesn't it? Incidentally, I'm going back to work tomorrow after some well-deserved time-off, with the plan of one day ruling the transport of Kent with an iron fist. _________________ With Great Power, Comes Great... Potential to ROB BANKS!!! HAHAH! THAT'S HOW TO BEAT THE RECESSION!!!
I have tried to find the original piece that this article refers too, perhaps i can purchase a signed CGC 11.5 minty fresh copy as i suspect there may be piles available at a house that's not a million miles away.
But never the less i will have to take the words from this point of view which to all intents is quite negative toward the sofa slob who sucks on the nations resources.
The one thing that cannot be ignored is that there are people who go though life doing as little as possible and try to get as much as they can, so long as you pump a kid out on the odd occasion the state will keep you, simple? Self worth and pride don’t come into it.
It is especially sickening for someone like me who in the past has attempted to give this sort of person a living,
Debe is quite harsh on this subject, and takes no prisoners, if you cannot prove that you can support a child finically then you should not be allowed to have one, its that simple, and although I feel that this is arguable, it would kerb an unwanted baby boom in which individuals only have kids in order to keep the benefits rolling in.
The down side to these politics is the danger that giving birth becomes a pastime of the privileged, with only those of a high income bracket being allowed to breed.
Although a valid point, it is one which reeks of overt extreme right wing thinking when you examine the full implications.
I on the other hand am less black and white, lets look at the benefit system and take myself as an example, I have worked full time since the age of 15, in that time I have only been unemployed for six months after being made redundant, during that six months I planed my self employment quickly realising that the labour pool for the likes of me was shrinking rapidly.
I could have claimed benefits after all I had children, instead I strove to stand on my own two feet, it took me a couple of years but I managed to earn enough from being self employed and be able to stand on my own to feet, the benefit system helped me do this in the shape of the enterprise allowance scheme, a scheme which would bring my earnings up to basic unemployment levels because of low earnings from self employment.
I could of taken the soft touch, and said I HAVE KIDS….FEED ME! But at the end of the day self respect and self worth have by far larger rewards, at the end of the day I wanted a better life and was willing to work for it, my kids would never grow up wanting for anything and at the same time I wouldn’t need to ask anything from anyone, what I have is mine.
However should I fall down the stairs tomorrow and break my back, I would like to feel that there is a cushion for me, and that this country of which I have dedicated my life too and worked for in the last 37 years will in my time of need give me the support I need.
Never mind old bean, you take it easy we’ve got you, after all you have made great contributions in the past.
And that’s a benefit, not only to me, but my wife who now will have to look after me.
I was talking to an old associate the other day in the shop, a lady friend who I knew when I was just 13 years of age.
We talked about school and old friends, and she told me how she worked with a very old school friend of mine, names popped up and she reminded me that she was in the class below me, Christ she must have only been 12, blimey how grown up we thought we were, never the less she told me who my old friend Chris had told her that he had to sign on, and since he how had left school he had never actually ever had to sign on, he had always worked, it was hitting him like a sledge hammer.
In some ways I felt relieved that those many years ago I had made the choice to employ myself and thus avoiding what he must be feeling, and in another way I felt for him in a way that you couldn’t understand,
I wonder, will the benefit system be there for him? Or will they give to some worthless piece of shit who has not had a proper job since he left school?
One thing I would like to say is that nobody should be able to take without first giving
Full bodied people should be made to work for benefits, 40 hour week sweeping the road, picking up litter after a busy weekend of mc d’s and kfc, hey! there’s a sewer up the road needs unblocking.
Perhaps there’s more of a job opportunity here than meet the eye, we could employ some eastern Europeans who are willing to work!!! as foramen to show these lazy English men what to do, and more importantly, how to work, sad thing is that the foreman’s will probably be paid less that the claimants.
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