Feeling the Benefit

Riischildren

Well, bugger me. I chose one bollock of a time to take a week off didn’t I? As soon as I’d frantically signalled a time-out for the purpose of scoffing chocolate the nation promptly downloaded the contents of its collective brain into a dumpster and set fire to it. See, this time last week benefits claimants were apparently scroungers. Now they’re apparently child-killers as well. Way to go, Great Britain, way to go. Happy Easter to you too.

Now thanks to my time away I may be late to this particular party but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a drink. In fact, after seeing the national response to the prosecution of Mick Philpott, Mairead Philpott and Paul Mosley for the manslaughter of six children it looks as if I’m going to need several drinks. That’s because, somehow, this aberration has been turned into a generalisation and rather than the Philpott case being the freak result of a freak set of circumstances it’s now being discussed as a perfectly reasonable outcome to the simple application for a benefit.

Just how much hatred of the poor has the Tories instilled in the nation to allow it to make this leap and think it logical? The Philpott case must be manna from heaven for them. In the same week that Iain Duncan Smith decreed that poverty is a state of mind rather than an economic circumstance, George Osborne announced that what the nation needs is a giant mud-wrestling competition over whether the state should pay for lifestyles that don’t involve trust funds, Eton or group wanks onto digestives.

It’s as if Osborne thinks that claiming Employment Support Allowance automatically turns a human into a domestically violent, woman-collecting, caravan-lovin’, spaff-sharing sex addict. Ah, so that must mean, then, that the NHS is being given a tough time because the country’s most notorious serial killer, Harold Shipman, was a doctor. It’s the logic of a man whose brain resembles an empty beehive that’s being used as a squat by crack-smoking vermin.

Look, when Jeremy Bamber killed his family in 1986 did the nation turn on the wealthy because, suddenly, too much money made them potential killers? Or does anyone bitterly label the aristocracy as sex-addicts because Lord Bath has wifelets? No, because it’s such an absurd train of thought that the only people who would spout such insanity are those who communicate with green crayons. So why does it apparently make sense when applied to the poor?

See, I have claimed benefits during unemployment and times of long-term ill health. My parents have claimed benefits too, when poor health forced them into early retirement. I’ve worked with teenage mums who also claimed benefits and am mates with the victims of redundancy who also needed support from the state. And I can categorically state that at no point did any of us consider having threesomes in caravans, stabbing a girlfriend or killing six children.

The Philpott case is abhorrent to everyone regardless of how much cash they have, so how in the fuck can anyone conclude that if you are poor you’re more likely to repeat it? Yes, poverty makes people feel desperate and degraded but it doesn’t make them wannabe child-murderers.

Which means that when I took last week off I wish I’d spent it on Venus because even its sulphurous clouds would have spouted more sense than this. Poverty is no longer feels like a punishment in itself, it’s become a reason to be punished. The Philpotts may have committed a vile and indefensible crime but, when it comes to attacking the poor the rest of the nation is no longer that far behind them.

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One Response to Feeling the Benefit

  1. Lauren Jewhurst (@laurenbigeejit) says:

    Throughout all of this mess I am encouraged that actually the majority of people are turning on the Mail, Osbourne, Mensch and co. for suggesting that Philpott was driven by benefits…. The majority of people are sickened at the thought that we might look at the faces of those 6 babies and think “they’d still be here if it weren’t for the welfare system” What the actual?! Those kids are gone because their father was a violent, manipulative, possessive and controlling murderous thug. If there is one good thing coming out of this, it’s giving a voice to those who work with victims of domestic abuse because this is CLASSIC domestic abuse going on here… not scrounging benefit fraud. Great post.

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