Bombers on benefits - 4 comments
It was surely only a matter of time before one of the "buy it and chuck it" newspapers exposed one of the terrorist bombers as a benefit scrounger. Pity the life of the journalist whose job was to research this. Pity the Middle Englander who these revelations enrage (now, if there's one thing worse than blowing up people indiscriminately...)
Here's the Mail, and here's The Sun.
Update: Jonathan's take on today's Daily Express headline.
I'm waiting for: "Sick: Loony Lambeth funds terrorist night school course with our money!"
![[Valid Atom]](http://www.bloggers4labour.org/images/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom feed")
4 comments so far...
When I saw the Daily Mail in the shop today I thought it was one of those Private Eye spoof Daily Mail covers.
The Mail is now officially beyond satire!
Bombers aside, does it bother you that most unemployed don't want to work? Do you think that unemployment is a lifestyle choice? When you speak disparagingly of "Middle Englanders" I wonder.
The relevant link is here
Well, (a) merely having a job doesn't stop people being spongers or deadbeats, (b) not having faced the career choices faced by 'the kind of people who are likely to be unemployed', it's easy for people for people to talk of compulsion. I'm only making these two points as the 'of course people shouldn't reside permanently on benefits' point is so obvious.
Don't you feel that the campaign against 'scroungers' is a deliberate manipulation of the people (over many years) by politically-motivated newspapers in order to (a) bring 'shame' into politics, and (b) encourage class- (and race-) based contempt for one's fellow man, all over a relatively pitiful stream of revenue? These Mail/Express campaigns are wholly destructive IMO.
How many jobs really are productive, wealth-creating, or else essential services? I've seen enough money (and enough brainpower) go to waste not to be hung up on whether the person is in work/out of work, private or public sector, or whether they're on a high or low wage.
In what way is someone in work a sponger or deadbeat?
If it's obvious that people shouldn't remain on benefits, what do you propose we do? The government's "workfare" has manifestly failed, because it rules out compulsion. If you are going to get people off welfare you have to either compel them, or timelimit the benefits. This is the approach taken in the USA and it has worked.
I don't understand the point you are trying to make in your last paragraph. What does it matter if a job is productive or wealth creating? People on very low incomes are taxed to pay for people who don't want to work. I think that is entirely immoral. I find it extraordinary that you are not "hung up" about it.
A "relatively pitiful" stream of revenue!!? I don't like to be rude, but what planet are you on? There are three million people unemployed or on incapacity benefit. Just how pitiful do you think the cost of this is?
Post a Comment
<< Home