Osborne And Philpott

To highlight the extraordinary situation of a huge family, led by able bodied work age adults, living entirely off benefits and no work, at public expense while their neighbours toil and pay taxes to fund the fiasco, is a point worth making. Whether it is quite as simple as that and whether senior government ministers, namely the Chancellor, should make it is another question.

Child benefit is paid to prevent children falling upon the hardship of extreme poverty and by all accounts of teachers and neighbours who were in contact with the Philpott children, they were well fed and clothed, never late for school and never missed a day. The side product of this successful state support was its manipulation by a ruthless egocentric who treated everyone, especially women, his women as he saw it, with contempt and the siring of  more and more children as a profitable business.

Unhappily any system, for whatever laudable purpose established, can and will be abused by those whose only navigation tool through the challenges of life is personal gain by any means.This does not mean the system is bad, nor that the majority of those who benefit from it are bad; only that a handful are bad and in this case one very bad indeed. There is at issue a principle, dear to Conservative party activists who believe surveys that suggest the majority of voters agree, which questions the level of obligation of hard working taxpayers as the phrase goes who want to get on funding such exploitation.

Underlying this self-righteous assertion is a rather nasty trend. It is the divisive one of seeing taxpayers as one part of a state burdened by another which is feckless, lazy and composed of spongers. Of course there are spongers among benefit recipients, just as there are liars in the Cabinet. This does not mean we should end benefits any more than we should end democracy.

The stark truth is one few dare face. The economy is wrecked by a shrinking of its industrial base and a headlong dash into property and debt on such a titanic scale that nobody knows how to get out of a bind that the majority of the hard working taxpayers had a hand in setting up, with their profligacy with plastic money, equity releases and abandonment of saving, during a debauched celebration over many years of a boom without any real foundation in mathematical fact whatsoever. The consequence of that is a benefits bill amounting to a third of government spending necessary to prevent a descent into poverty and deprivation of third world dimensions.

The whole nation pays some tax, if only vat, and there is no such thing as taxpayers as a separate entity. To get out of a prolonged and continuing economic crisis, for which none thus far has offered a convincing route of escape, will require a sense of national unity and pulling together Olympic style, including bankers, speculators, spongers, ambulance chasing lawyers and all. Even then salvation is far from certain. Politicians who think they can pick up some votes by sowing division come form a political tradition of the very worst kind. History is full of examples. They all came to an unhappy political ending.

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