Bag's Rants

It's bark is worse than it's bite.

Yet again we have a statement from our beloved leaders about changes to the Welfare State they have nourished for so long. Read here.

This time the message is clear. 'Get back to work.' Although I'm a bit confused about how they are going to do this.

When they say get back to work they actually really mean get off the dole. That is why they want to increase the school leaving age to 18. That takes the school leavers off for an additional two years. With the side bonus of in that two years some of them may even pick up addition or subtraction. Even if it is only one. Then they want to encourage more people to stay on further education, again it doesn't show on the unemployment figures then of course there is the ultimate. Government employment. Just like the dole in that the taxpayers pays for it but it does not show on the unemployment register and they don't have to be any good either. Double bonus, employment for all those that can't add up, reason or have any common sense.

So what can they mean? For one thing they can't really do anything without providing jobs. That is really what they meant by the other part, getting businesses to get involved. But business would if it could it's just not worth it. So no jobs nowhere to go. Unless the government is going to fund non jobs in private firms. After all every firm could use a H&S man and a equal opportunities man. Although when I say man it would be filled by black, lesbian women to tick all the boxes. In addition any real jobs must make them at least marginally better off. There are cases where people are literally £10 worse off for working by the time they take into consideration transport. It's only the work ethos of these idiots that keeps them going. Hell, even if it was £10 better off would you work for 25p an hour when you could be doing other things like playing games, being on the black economy or whatever. Not me that much is certain.

But what about all those who have kids they can't afford without the welfare state. People will chose kids rather than work as;
1) They are mass produced by unskilled labour.
2) They protect parents from jail, work and politicians.
3) It costs 20 times more¹ for the government to look after them than the parents.
4) They don't even have to care about the kids.
5) They can blame the kids for all their woes.
6) They will spend most of the waking day in schools or out.
7) They will never get a job that will allow them a major lifestyle change.

1) Basing that on something I read about putting kids in homes rather than fosters because not enough right type fosters are coming along. By that I mean gay or lesbian foster couples.

So have a kid. Gives you back 12 years of mummy not expected to work. Can't really make much difference to daddy, if he is there. Rent is still paid, council tax, food on the table and booze and fags. What have you to lose?

So again it will only hit single people who can't get a job. I suppose it is a start although by encouraging mums to have more kids isn't that going to make it tougher to actually deal with this in the future. We are toothless when it comes to kids. We can't let them starve, we can't let the mums homeless and we encourage them to have more.

Perhaps a better first step would be to remove any support for parents to have more than one child that they cannot afford. One child, perhaps two, get child allowance etc. the rest don't get a bean. So one child gets child allowance, two children get 2 x child allowance and 23 children get 2 x child allowance. No bonuses for housing, no help for transport etc. For those that approach the social with threats we simply take the kids away and adopt them out. Of course that would mean changing those rules as well but it's about time they were changed anyway.

The big issue we have is nobody want to be the ones that take on and resolve the problems with welfare where there are children, nobody wants to be accused of putting kids out on to the street or taking them away from their parents. We seem to know we need to do something but what is so full of emotion and self interest that we can't look at it properly. Until someone grasps that particular nettle then all this talk about resolving the welfare state will simply move the problem from one area to another. And this area has long term implications for our entire society and is only getting worse as we leave it. In fact all the other incentives just encourage it.

posted by Bag @ 1:32 pm