8 January 2007

The Cost of Unemployment

STORIES about the dismal state of our under-funded Armed Forces (here and here) contrasted sharply with revelations that a staggering £61 billion a year is spent on the nations' 5.2 million unemployed. If it is a choice between keeping our idlers in smack and cider or maintaining a respected and confident military force in the face of an unprecedented threat to our liberty and security, which would you choose? Okay, this may be a crass over-generalisation of the requirements of our unemployed, many of whom are obviously legitimate claimants, but this inequality perfectly encapsulates the warped priorities of New Labour.
Apparently some 2.7 million of the above receive incapacity benefits, and, whilst many of these cases are genuine, the government estimates that around one million of recipients are actually capable of working. These malingerers are costing the taxpayer in excess of £11 billion a year. The defence budget is to be slashed by some £250 million this year (although forking out over £200 million in management consultancy fees from the national defence budget every year doesn't help). The disparity does not need to be highlighted.
The author personally knows a handful of freeloaders who fraudulently claim incapacity benefits; one in particular has been doing so for over five years. The defining and unifying feature of these layabouts is that they are habitual drug abusers (although not necessarily addicts), in most instances cynically feigning depression and chronic migraines to continue funding their never-ending party at the taxpayers' expense. The amount of authentic medical problems they will doubtlessly incur as a result of their government-funded hedonism is unknown, but the notion serves as a delicious slice of irony as well as a savage commentary on the utter absurdity of the situation. As it is the welfare state is, in
the long-term, unsustainable, but, with the persistence of flagrant and costly abuses like this, its demise might come sooner than expected.

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