The droll American comic Jackie Gleason once confided to a theatre audience: ‘My family was poor — but poverty-stricken.’ Poor being a natural, if regrettable, condition and poverty-stricken one that attracts government concern and assistance.
When the Coalition announced that disability claimants should undergo tests for their eligibility, the move was denounced as a cruel and pointless exercise by those campaigners who always seek to extend, not reduce, the welfare state.
Now it is disclosed that more than a third of those welfare recipients decided to drop their claims rather than face the tests.
Meanwhile, of the 1.44 million who submitted to assessments, 55 per cent were judged fit for immediate work.
For his part, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith will announce this week that the news of his benefits cap — ensuring that families get no more than the national average income of £26,000 — has led to thousands of claimants finding jobs.
‘The number of families who are going to be affected is dramatically lower than we once thought,’ says a department official.
So, are we finally about to reduce our annual, £683 billion welfare bill (which represents around £1,000 from every tax-paying household)?
Alas not. While the number of claimants has fallen, those who remain are receiving more. Thus the Treasury has had to demand further cuts in other Government spending in 2015.
Even so, the welfare budget won’t be smaller. As Iain Duncan Smith says: ‘The reality is that this country is not cutting welfare, it is managing the growth at a lower level.
More... Tories in turmoil over benefit cuts: Austerity programme shambles as Iain Duncan Smith 'admits defeat'... but Work Minister takes on malingerers Website that charges £19 for 'tips' on how to milk disabled benefits system Knives out for Osborne as 'whispering campaign' blames him for Tory poll woes‘Across the UK — contrary to the headlines — all those on benefits will see cash increases in every year of this Parliament.’
Why so? Because the Tories, who’d like to rein in welfare spending, are having to govern as part of a coalition with the Lib Dems, who don’t.
Families who have truly fallen on hard times do exist, but publicity about fraudsters inclines us to think all benefits claimants are unworthy. Most of us have encountered welfare claimants who also work part-time for cash. Many professional criminals appear to be claimants.
Those on benefits are set to see cash increases every year under the current Parliament because the Tories, who'd like to rein in welfare spending, are having to govern as part of a coalition with the Lib Dems, who don'tCases have come to light of fully employed claimants who don’t actually need the money, but couldn’t resist representing themselves as needy. TV comedy producers adore savvy welfare fraudsters.
Some justify a lifetime of ripping off the state by saying they once contributed taxes and want to see something returned to them.
By and large, though, those who have worked for long periods — who have got into the habit of working — don’t think in this way.
Tory ministers who talk about reducing welfare dependency — usually off the record, to avoid rocking the Coalition boat — are referring to generation after generation of claimants who have become unfit for employment by depending on state support.
The truth is that the real ‘welfare dependency’ problem is with politicians on the Left. They rely on the distribution of handouts to their client state to remain in power.
Fighting to secure more benefits: The real 'welfare dependency' problem is with politicians on the Left who rely on the distribution of handouts to their client state to remain in powerThey were the ones shouting loudest when the Government announced tests for disability claimants.
They fight to secure more benefits, not fewer. In simple terms, they see the welfare state as a means of redistributing income from the rich and comfortably off to the less comfortably off and the poor.
It’s only ‘fair’, isn’t it? Without their dependence on fomenting class warfare by demonising the well-off and sentimentalising the poor, why would politicians of the Left exist?
For a time, Margaret Thatcher led a successful resistance campaign against them. And this was copied by Tony Blair and his New Labour followers. But Gordon Brown sabotaged all hope of Labour moving away from welfare dependency.
Frank Field MP — a rare Labour realist on welfare matters — was asked to tackle the problem, but Brown never gave up his own dependence on using benefits to buy votes and Field had to go.
Will Iain Duncan Smith become the Tory Frank Field, betrayed so that the Conservatives can fix a post-2015 coalition deal with the Liberal Democrats? That is the question.
Another Korean War? Not without China’s say soNorth Korea's hereditary communist leader Kim Jong-un threatens the U.S. with destruction.Looking like a contestant on BBC’s The Voice, he is photographed studying missile trajectories.The Obama administration says there’s nothing to worry about. It calls his threats ‘bellicose rhetoric,’ while provocatively test-flying nuclear-armed bombers over the Korean peninsula.Does Washington know something that we don’t? Beleaguered North Korea can’t be attacked without the support of China, its only real ally.
The Obama administration says there's nothing to worry about despite the recent photographs of Kim Jong-un studying missile trajectories As a trading partner of America — and holding most of that country’s huge financial debts — has China promised secretly to rein in Kim Jong-un if he goes too far? Having fought the communist North to a truce 60 years ago — and exhausted its taste for foreign military excursions in Afghanistan and Iraq — surely America needs China to deal with Kim Jong-un.The Chinese are bound to have high-level intelligence on North Korea’s real intentions and military capabilities. And they have as much to lose as America if a war kicks off there.For our part, Britain took part in the last Korean War in the early Fifties. No doubt we’d be expected to turn out for the next one. So, where was our Foreign Secretary William Hague while this latest sabre-rattling was going on? Campaigning against war-zone rape in Africa with Angelina Jolie. Funny old world, isn’t it? TV village people aren’t real The BBC's new, lower-orders costume serial, The Village, stars Maxine Peake as farmer's wife, GraceThe BBC’s new, lower-orders costume serial, The Village, stars Maxine Peake. Her role is farmer’s wife, Grace. John Simm plays her husband, conveniently also called John. He says: ‘John loves his wife, needs her, calls her mother, but beats her as well. He is a very scary father and husband when we first meet him, but then he changes.’
Of course he does. In TV drama, if not in life, redemption is routine. Baddies turn into goodies, while good-hearted (if naive) viewers sob on their sofas.
True facts of country lifeFormer Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion says second home-owners should be taxed out of buying properties in the shires. ‘Townies in the countryside means rural communities are gutted,’ he claims.Presumably he means property prices would fall and local young people would be able to afford a first home. An interesting idea, but would it work?If it did, the Government might have to prevent, via more taxation, townies cleverly making their main residences in the country and designating their city properties as second homes.Second home-owners don’t necessarily ‘gut’ country communities. They improve services and shops and, in my experience, it is largely the patronage of townies that has made farmers’ markets popular, to the detriment of supermarkets. They also spend huge sums restoring near-derelict properties.Sir Andrew is president of the Campaign To Protect Rural England. Even so, you’d expect him to realise that the way people choose to live is a little more complex than he suggests. Social engineering by taxation — or social class cleansing — appeals to a vindictive spirit, the idea that people can be penalised into removing themselves.All it succeeds in doing, usually, is producing more money for the Government to waste. Our own Quentin Letts called the new West End comedy The Book Of Mormon ‘college campus adolescent. I tired of it after ten minutes’. Others said it was very funny. I haven’t seen it, but am inclined to believe Quentin. You might think I’m bound to say this because we’re both writing in the Mail, but that’s not true. It’s just that Quentin’s reasons for finding it unfunny were more convincing than those saying otherwise. News reports have stated that tickets for The Book Of Mormon are changing hands for £300. And yesterday the producers bought double-page ads in the papers. Is this the sign of success or failure? Example: An encounter between Mormon missionaries and Africans in which the latter say: ‘**** you, God’ and ‘*** you in the ***.’ As Letts says: ‘Noel Coward drollery, this ain’t.’However, news reports have stated that tickets are changing hands for £300. And yesterday the producers bought double-page ads in the papers. Is this the sign of success or failure?Comedy generally seems to be getting nastier and more stupid. Last week we mentioned a Channel 4 show in which Jimmy Carr said he was being ‘b******d’ by Jesus Christ. I think I’ll give The Book Of Mormon a miss. Labour’s twice-fired ex-minister Peter Mandelson is said to be compiling a hit list of Eurosceptic politicians he calls ‘the Dirty 20.’ He would, wouldn’t he? As a former EU commissioner he’s obliged to defend the EU. If we leave the EU — as most of those polled in recent weeks would prefer — might Brussels cancel the pensions of British former servants? Surely they wouldn’t be so ruthless, we might have thought — before seeing what they did to Cyprus.Andy Murray says he finally won a tennis Grand Slam after having given himself a talking to in front of a mirror.
He told himself: ‘You are NOT losing this match . . .’
Afterwards, he said he ‘felt something change inside. I was surprised by my response. I knew I could win’.
Sport has changed. Once it was thought childish to show disappointment after losing or pleasure after winning. Now, acting out these emotions is part of the performance. How far we’ve come from Kipling’s poem, If, which advises:
‘If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same …
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!’
