Leeches
Posted By Russ Emerson on April 16, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Via Mike over at the aptly named Cold Fury, we find a tale of woe, the story of a family scrimping and saving, the father working extra jobs and the mother taking care of the kids.
No… wait…. Quite the opposite, in fact:
The Davey family’s £815-a-week state handouts pay for a four-bedroom home, top-of-the-range mod cons and two vehicles including a Mercedes people carrier.
Father-of-seven Peter gave up work because he could make more living on benefits.
Yet he and his wife Claire are still not happy with their lot.
Not happy? Well, cry me a [expletive deleted] river.
At current exchange rates, the handouts that family receives add up to an annual income of over $65,000. That’s not enough. They want more. They want more taken from other people and given to them, unearned.
Wa-a-ah.
Look, I’m all for big happy families, but if you refuse to support your family — a category of behaviour well beyond inability to support your family — then I have no problem with an agency taking your kids from you and putting them in homes where they might learn how to take care of themselves, while leaving you to live in a cardboard box, starving to death.
If you won’t work, you don’t eat.
Much of the fault in the above story properly goes to the British government — when you pay people not to work, they tend not to work. Britain has made the safety net into a hammock, and the Daveys shamelessly snooze while others work to support them.
Shame needs to be re-introduced as a basis for discussion and reportage of such stories. If you don’t believe it, follow the link, read the rest of the story and prepare to seethe.
You might remember those statements we all get from the Social Security agency that say “if you retired right now, your SocSec monthly payment would be X dollars per month.” I distinctly remember mine, because one of the line items therein was the amount I might receive if I were to have to go on full disability — it comes to less than one fourth of my present income.
Could I live off that? Sure… it wouldn’t be much of a life, but I could survive. Barely. I’d have to sell my house, probably my vehicle (insurance isn’t free) and so on.
That SocSec disability payment wouldn’t be much of a hammock.
Even with my disability, I can work. I’m glad to work. I like what I do for a living. I am fortunate, yes, that I happened to be in a career that allows me to work from home full time. Had I been, say, a carpenter or a travelling salesman, I would be screwed, unless or until I were able to re-educate or re-train myself to do something else.
Nevertheless, while my health declined I never thought about quitting working. Maybe I was just in denial about it, but I never considered just giving up.
So maybe you can see why I have no sympathy, none at all, for those like the Daveys who live off the sweat of other peoples’ brows. Let them starve.
Because of this post, I have created a new category for posts, “Barbarians.” The barbarians may be either inside or outside the gates; either way, the foundations of Western Civilization are under assault.
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