The number of people as a percentage of all welfare claimants who choose to get by on meagre benefits in the UK is relatively small as the money isn't nearly enough to live on. Besides that there are strict rules about using the money to look for work which are enforced by successive cuts in money for non-compliance. The hardened 'can -work -wont- work ' cases are used to tar everyone else with the same brush no matter how different their situation/attitude is. The public perception of benefit cheats sponging off the working tax payer becomes a rallying cry of the right wing media here looking to stir up a scapegoat mentality for larger problems of structural unemployment and looking also to influence goverment cut backs in expenditure in favour of tax cuts.

What's missing is an honest appraisal of the totally depersonalising effects of long term unemployment on the majority of people who's self perception is such that they come to feel unworthy of even being considered for recruitment. They are not strong savvy and cynical, endlessly playing the system. They are scared depressed and pushed around by beaurocrats who treat them as scum, who fob them off with totally inadequate training courses and 'self-assertiveness ' programs that lead nowhere.

A recent TV documantary here put four big media personalities from rich backgrounds through a month long exposure to life on welfare and jobseeking in four differnt unemployment blackspots. Before embarking on their ordeal their attitude was one of haughty disapproval of the 'work shy' and people living it large on benefits. By the end of their four week trial they were reduced to quivering nervous wrecks even when they knew they could return to their old lives soon. They emerged with not just a greater respect for the unemployed but a heightened sense of their own dependence on their perosnal social networks for giving them strength and motivation, something the unemployed often lack.


There's always an agenda at work to produce a downward pressure on benefit claimants. The fear that dependency culture will take hold deflects from any meaningful discussion about the role of government in mitigating the brutal effects of capricious free markets, corporations looking to cut and run to the cheapest labour force in China.
No mention is made of the free hand-outs given to these corporations when they first located here. the rent- free premesis , the grants, the tax exemptions, the promises to get tough on worker rights and unions, the ability of companies to reneague on pension obligations by 'restructuring'. The entire edifice of company law is nothing short of a massive freeloading scam at the expense of the taxpayer and no one thinks to chide or rebuke this state of affairs.

Regards

Alan