“WHAT IS THE ROBBING OF A BANK COMPARED TO THE FOUNDING OF A BANK?" (BERTOLT BRECHT)

(Brecht) above asks who is the worst criminal, the banker or the robber, he asked this decades before the present crisis! The vulnerable old lady who does not receive the amount of Social Security Benefit she is entitled to is a far greater scandal than the person who receives benefit fraudulently, and the former sum is far greater than the latter. That fact though does not suit the Condem Govt's nefarious purpouses with their latest scam. Some things never change, such as the entirely predictable attack on “benefit fraud’ by the Condem coalition. This red herring has been used so often by backward-looking Tory Govts. That it has become a matter of when not if it will be trotted out again. This time it comes with an ominous Tory innovation: private firms will be used as snoopers and for every false claim they come up with they will get a bonus (bounty hunters). I wonder what these firms will be like and what kind of people will join the rush to create them, I predict a pretty unsavoury bunch and many will be “poachers turned gamekeepers” shady characters who are experienced at bending and breaking rules who have no compunction in using their expertise to exploit others. We should prepare for a lot more dumbing down of society when this kind of thing starts.

Neighbours will be encouraged to spy on each other and report suspects for financial reward so we can look forward to an outburst of public spirited citizens appearing in our midst. The result will have minimal effect but it will do what the Govt. wants by shifting blame for rising unemployment, crime and misery on to a group who are small time cheats who make very little impact on the economy. This will allow big time crooks and tax dodgers to escape the limelight; such people can loosely be described as the “Tory Friends Club” now expanded to include the treacherous Libdems of course.

Benefit cheats are of course committing crimes but: is it really as bad as the Condems say? they claim that approx. £5 billion is lost through cheating or error: this is a deception: they are deliberately not giving the true picture which is that of the £5 billion approximately £4 billion is made up by errors and approximately £1 billion is caused by cheating, that is less than 1% of all claims. This is a deliberate omission and it is Govt. sponsored lies: “£5 million lost each year by social security payments screams the headline” and the public have the idea deliberately planted in their brains that it is £5 million worth of fraudulent claims which it is not and it’s nowhere near that figure. This is typical of the lack of moral fibre which we have come to expect from the Tories and their wretched lapdogs the Libdems.

There is another side to this business of deliberately cheating the system for financial gain and it dwarfs the activities of those whom the Govt. is targeting. I refer to the super rich whom I referred to earlier as “the Tory/Libdem’s Friends Club” Tax Havens-Tax Loopholes- Tax exiles-we are all familiar with the names and no doubt you could add some. The seriously rich are the biggest crooks in our society not the guy who cleans your windows while on the dole: these people who BTW usually masquerade as patriots of one kind or another employ batteries of lawyers to find loopholes which allow them to avoid tax. This means in many cases that a multi millionaire pays less than a cleaner, welcome to Capitalism, some people love it! Some of these shysters like to influence the way we live and make laws for us to observe. Some like the patriotic Lord Ashcroft even lied to his own Party about his status while chairing the Party and sat in the Lords like a Ruritanian flunky making laws. The last Labour Govt. started to tackle this seriously and set about bringing new rules and laws etc, you can forget that now with this Govt. of millionaires.

The third part of what I consider to be a national scandal unaddressed by the Govt. when it talks about social security is the vast amount of money, far greater than that obtained by cheats which is not being paid out to those who are entitled to it. Those who do not get what they are entitled to are generally the old and vulnerable who fear the system and it’s complications and tend to make do with what they have despite their lives being made difficult because of the lack of help which they are due. Many of these people are of my parent’s generation who are reluctant to claim because they do not want to be seen as a burden, they will invariably say “I don’t want charity, I will manage” nowhere near enough is being done to reach such people and the money unclaimed runs into billions.

The Condem Govt. are pulling a massive con trick here, our Social Security/Tax system is grossly unfair and the rich are as always the winners while those in need suffer. This dishonest reactionary mob of privileged chancers will continue to pull every trick going to protect themselves and their rich friends and will avoid tackling the very real inequalities that the system allows; they are beneath contempt and have a cheek to call anyone crooks.