Thursday, October 28, 2010

Advice For Those Who Face A Benefit Cut – Get A Job!

The ousted and disgraced Soviet committee that was our last government are, under command from their Trotskyist Union masters, leading a lament worthy of a classical Greek chorus, about the coalition’s necessary benefit cuts. As a counterpoint to the drone of the chorus are a procession of pathetic tattered waifs strays paraded like the Victorian poor by the leftie BBC, whining that they may have to leave their house (which few of us honest working folk could afford) or, God forbid, actually have to tighten their belts in this time of national austerity.

One of the arguments for maintaining this army of paid for by the state Labour voters, has been that by getting a job they would be losing their hand-outs and so be worse off. Well poor them! Hopefully now that their benefit has been cut they will find that they will now be better off working. Making the benefit side of the scale lighter should tip it in favour of actually working for the money rather than just being handed it as a prize for indolence.

Why too do we reward profligate and irresponsible fecundity? Want an all-expenses paid place to live? Easy – get pregnant. Want a bigger place in a better part of town? Just have more kids. Have you spotted what’s wrong with this argument yet? Thankfully the coalition has and has begun addressing it. And while we are talking about housing why has no one mentioned that one of the biggest flaws in housing benefit policy has been to let private landlords charge unchecked rents to benefit claimants?

I’m sure that much of the housing boom was fuelled by people buying “Buy-To-Let” properties which were paid for by the government doling out inflated rents through housing benefit. This misguided policy by our former Soviet masters has also meant that those looking for rented accommodation in the private sector have been priced out of the market. It also means that property prices have been artificially inflated keeping first time buyers off the property ladder. We rightly decry the Edwardian slum landlord and the Victorian mill owner who kept their workers in run down back-to-back hovels but let Teflon Tony and Bully Baron Brown fund a similar culture with public money the country could not afford.

Benefit reform is long overdue and, as a country, we must get back to living within our means. The problem is that because the last government blew all the money on their misguided attempts at social engineering our means are much more straightened that they used to be. Of course if you have a job, and I mean a real job not just a “make-work” local authority skive, benefit cuts are not a problem to be feared but a solution to be welcomed.