If you allow people to monkey about with their CV you just get people playing the system. It’s a waste of time. It has got to be all about getting people into work.(David Green, director of the Civitas think tank)
Civitas don’t like the unemployed. In an article Green wrote in early 2007 he stated that one in three households in Britain are dependent on state benefits for at least half its income. What he does not explain is that majority of these households on benefits are pensioners and people on very low pay or are lone parents.
Instead he resists showing any understanding for people who are living on the poverty line and that welfare provision treats people as perpetual children incapable of providing for themselves.
Many of the people “dependent” on the state for benefits are pensioners who have spent their working lives paying National Insurance…if they are dependent on anything it is their own hard work! Most of the others will be lone parents or will be people that bosses will not employ due to discriminatory attitudes towards people with disabilities. Nearly all of these people have lives that are a daily struggle: they could tell the average right-wing think-tanker a lot about facing huge obstacles just to get through the day.
Green’s conclusion states: The idea of belonging is central to any viable society. Unfortunately, it has been manipulated by collectivists to deceive many into accepting ‘command and control’ in public services.
Basically it is the en vogue phrase in the lexicography of NL and that being culture of dependency. Favoured as well by the likes of right-wing ideologue, Charles Murray and Frank Field.
It boils down to the fact that the so-called feckless unemployed are bleeding the welfare state dry and this is breeding some kind of dependency. It has got that Victorian whiff about it with images of “wastrels” being carted off to the Work House are conjured up. At the end of the day it is all about “thrift”, “hard work” “responsibility” and “self-reliance”.
And now with current attacks on welfare reform where the culture of dependency theory is core to NL’s ideology, Civitas just don’t think Purnell is going far enough. Turbo-charged attacks on the benefits system, workfare and workhouse ….now, if Green had his way. And who knows in this current political climate….
The welfare dependency I see?
For one, banks bailed out was something for nothing. I thought it was to help them lend?
Now the steel and automotive industries are also asking for subsidy without real equity. Money, yes! control, erm, no…
Allowing for-profit companies to bid for welfare provision – another form of government largesse.
These corporate parasites are really gaming the system, aren’t they?
The politcal problem is that no-one expects to have to claim these benefits. We all live a whisker away from a serious accident or finding out that little rash is cancer. The car driver coming up the road has only got to “go for it” without looking properly and you go from being a “hardworking family” to being a “scrounger” in the blink of a boy racer’s eye.
This means of course that it is easy to think that there is a tribe of lazy people out there looking to take the tax payer for a ride.
Also where is the legislation to make sure that there a jobs to go to in the industries of the future, energy conservation etc, that people can build careers in regardless of whether they face disabilities or not.
The kind of syllogistic reasoning used by Civitas is dishonest and pathetic.
Welfare dependency is bad.
Less welfare means less welfare dependency.
Ergo, to reduce welfare dependency you need to reduce welfare.
Here’s another example:
All criminals breathe air.
People who do not breathe air are not criminal.
Ergo, if we stop criminals from permanently breathing air they will commit no more crimes.
If this kind of argument wasn’t already beginning to gain ground I would laugh about it.