Welfare Reform Should Tackle the Cheats at the Top As Well As the Bottom
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Greedy MPs and rapacious bankers are just as dishonest as welfare fraudsters and freeloaders, says Jenny McCartney.

David Cameron, at the launch of the Welfare Reform Bill last week, made a rousing plea for the restoration of our ethics. In his speech, he bemoaned the end of “a collective culture of responsibility”, of an age when people’s self-image was measured by “whether they did the decent thing”. In such an era, he said, “fiddling the system would have brought not just public outcry but private shame”.

Mr Cameron was speaking with specific regard to our welfare system, and much of what he said is true. We are all familiar with those lurid tales of enterprising gentlemen who have claimed disability allowance while giving disco-dancing lessons on the side, or ladies whose complicated housing scams trawl in the annual GDP of a small Baltic country.

As well as such criminal fraudsters, however, there are the opportunistic freeloaders who trigger public ire without actually breaking the law. The latter are open in their intention to have large families that will be wholly supported by a groaning state. It was reported last week that the anti-social antics of the family of Tom O’Leary and Tanya Walsh (two adults, 12 children) had caused distress to the neighbours of their £1.2 million council-funded abode in Muswell Hill. Miss Walsh wrote on her Bebo site recently that her hobbies were “eating chocolate and having children”: the only people cheering her on were the makers of confectionery and Pampers. Read on and comment >>> Jenny McCartney | Saturday, February 19, 2011

My comment:

At last, a refreshing bit of common sense! Thank you for this extremely sensible article, Jenny McCartney. It is very tiresome to listen to the fraudsters at the top always going on about the people at the bottom milking the system. Who milks the system more than the greedy bankers and fraudulent MPs? And I write as a disinterested observer. Cameron had better start looking sideways before he looks down. He should get his chums to lead by example. – © Mark

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Benefit Claimants to Have Payments Cut
THE TELEGRAPH: Benefits claimants will have their payments cut as ministers seek a further £4 billion in welfare cuts.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, said that the Government will go further than previously announced in trying to bring down the cost of Britain’s social security system.

The promise of new welfare cuts has caused strain in the Coalition, with some Liberal Democrat MPs protesting against the move.

Mr Osborne said the welfare system had grown out of control and allowed some people to make the “lifestyle choice” of claiming benefits for their entire life instead of working.

Reforms being drawn up by the Coalition will give welfare claimants “a strong incentive” to get a job.

Welfare now costs £192 billion a year, almost a third of all government spending. An estimated 5 million people of working age are now economically inactive and receiving benefits.

In the Budget in June, Mr Osborne announced that benefits cuts will save £11 billion a year by the end of the Parliament.

In a BBC interview, he signalled that ministers will now seek deeper cuts, reducing welfare spending by another £4 billion. >>> James Kirkup and Andrew Porter | Thursday, September 09, 2010