Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric
I can't really comment on the first paragraph, as it is stuff that happened after I left. But ... the thread is about politics; the couple felt abandoned by social services, not by their neighbours. For one reason or another, some folks just fall through the cracks in a fallible system ... Or the "system", being based on "numbers" rather than on compassion, and being operated by routinized civil servants didn't work in this case. These isolated cases happen. And when they do, they make headlines. But, they are not the norm.
And I can't agree that your "welfare system was envisaged to help those in need." It was fought for by the people. It was based on the belief that in a wealthy country, no one should be left behind ... there should be pensions, free education, unemployment insurance, etc. And to say that welfare is a "career option" is, in most cases, wrong. When govts. routinely spend millions bailing out corporations, giving them tax breaks, allowing them to avoid taxes in offshore havens, it is wrong to put all the blame on the poor ... it is the corporate welfare bums who drain the coffers of the state. And when the crunch comes, who suffers?
Maybe the thread is about caring ... but neighbourliness, or lack of it, is difficult to consider in isolation .... and it's not something you can legislate or enforce.
This is a sad case, no doubt about it. But I don't see it as evidence of a massive moral decline. It's an isolated incident.
And here's a question, more or less rhetorical: How many of you would have allowed this to happen to you and to your family? How many of you would have thrown in the towel, whatever the circumstances?
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Eric, some of what you say, I take.
Though without wishing to appear too much like a copywriter for the Daily Mail, on some points you're wrong.
In recent years we have had a situation in which people chose to live on state funded benefits, because it meant they were better off doing that, than working for a living. For this, the system was wrong. Not necessarily the people who took advantage of the situation, who wanted as much money as possible, to fund their family's living costs.
The jobs some people are no longer prepared to do, are now being done by eastern Europeans. Who can work here, thanks to the E.U.'s open borders policy.
State benefits should be there for people, who through no fault of their own, need them. They should not be an option, a choice. Which for some, it was. Long term we can't afford that option as a society.
This programme showed people helped back into the jobs market, who then decided they couldn't afford the loss in income, so who chose to go back to living off benefits.
'Yvette, who, with four kids, finds that a minimum wage from Poundland is no match for the benefits she was getting before. Even Hayley doesn't blame Yvette for quitting, which is out of character for Hayley, and means that there must be something wrong with the system.'
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