Stop the Benefits Scroungers

With the Westminster government intending to hammer benefits claimants on Monday I thought that this picture published on Twitter by @RCdeWinter  is quite pertinent, despite the fact that it relates to the USA (however Walmart is, of course, the parent company of ASDA on our side of the pond).

@wallbngr54 they're disgusting hypocrites #Walmart #Waltons twitter.com/RCdeWinter/sta…
— RC deWinter (@RCdeWinter) March 31, 2013

If companies pay so little to their employees that they have to depend on state handouts in order to have a basic standard of living then it is not those in receipt of benefits who are the cheats and scroungers so despised by The Daily Mail and its ilk, but the owners of these companies who abuse the benefits system as a means to boost their profits by underpaying their staff.

If the government really wanted to tackle the benefits bill for fiscal, rather than ideological, reasons then they would increase the minimum wage to a level where a working couple with an average amount of children wouldn't need to claim any state support.

Before the usual suspects accuse me of socialist ranting or bolstering the left, I would point out that I am a fiscal conservative, and this post makes a free market point. 

The welfare state should support those in greatest need, not one of the wealthiest families in the world and a company that relies on huge state subsidies in order to pay its workforce is not working in either the true private sector or in a free market economy. If paying a fair wage would make the company unprofitable (doubtful) then they should go bust - which would be a boon for the thousands of small companies that their abuse of state subsidies squeeze out of the market place!

Spare Room Subsidy/Bedroom Tax- a response to Glyn Davies MP

http://glyn-davies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/spare-room-subsidybedroom-tax.html


There is no justification for the bedroom tax. It is a tax based on ideological spite rather than on saving money or on fairness. There is an ideological minority in the Tory Party that hates the poor and the bedroom tax is am ideological sop to them.

The fact that the bedroom tax had been inflicted on those who live in private rented accommodation before it was inflicted on people in social accommodation is not an argument in favour of the bedroom tax. It is wrong in both cases and, as the old saying goes - two wrongs do not make a right!

As it happens I have some sympathy with the problem of people living in houses that are too big for them blocking housing. My parents are part of the problem! They live in a five bedroom ex-council house - sold to them by the last Tory Government and taken out of the social housing mix. But if they sell it they couldn't afford a smaller house in the private housing market.

If your lot hadn't destroyed the social housing stock in the first place the problem wouldn't have arisen. The Bedroom Tax is punishing the poor for the effects of the anti poor policies of Thatcherism – that you and yours celebrate.

The sickest thing about your policy is that if my parents hadn't wasted money on oversubscribing their little wealth into buying a council house, which may be eaten up by age care costs, they could be living in a council bungalow with a spare room that their children, grandchildren and great grand children could use on visits. But even that would not be allowed if they were re-housed under the bedroom tax!