And so it is suggested by some in the Tories that those on welfare should not get cash but a card which would allow them to buy anything they wanted except booze, cigarettes and Sky TV. Deluded lefties are bleating that this is demeaning for hardworking folks who are just temporarily out of work and that the Tories thus hate the working class. Bollocks.
If you are temporarily out of work you will get another job. You then get off welfare and then start paying taxes. At which point you will resent that cash going to folk on welfare who spend it on luxuries. Welfare is meant to be a safety net not a way of life. It is not a job.
If you plan on being unemployed for a long time or forever that is fine. Well it is not actually. But I cannot see why those of us who do work hard should pay for you to have anything other than the bare minimum.
If this change makes some on welfare go seek jobs so that they can carry on smoking, drinking and watching rubbish on Sky great. Perhaps then, when the Real Man Pizza Company advertises for a waitress in a City where several hundred thousand young women between 16 and 24 are claiming welfare, just one English speaking person might apply for that post.
Deluded middle class Guardian reading lefties have one world view. That might appeal to those who regard welfare as a job. To the vast majority of Britons (of whatever background) who work and pay taxes to fund this insanity that world view is indefensible. And that includes most members of the “working class.”
As it happens I suspect that the scheme will be shouted down by the Left and cowardly Dave Cameron who does not wish to be seen as nasty will not implement it in the end. And if he does it will be largely circumvented by a black market – welfare scroungers can be entrepreneurial if they want to be.
The truth is that at last it seems that some are conceding that welfare payments are more than sufficient to fund a lifestyle of Sky, booze and fags. If one concedes that point then surely one must accept that the real answer to this issue is simply to cut the level of welfare payments across the board for those who have been out of work for more than a couple of months and to channel the savings into dramatically increasing the threshold at which anyone pays tax. That is the logical solution to the problem the welfare card seeks to address.
But in bankrupt Britain, where we have to be nice to everyone, logic and common sense appear to have no role to play.