I’d stick to foreign affairs if I were you Craig. It’s clear that you haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about.

Bullshit, eddie. Maybe you should speak to someone who works for the Welfare Rights Agency, who’ve mopped up the mess at the sharp end for years, before blindly declaring your absolute faith in your NuLabour puppet masters. The system is full of pitfalls and loopholes that only people within the claimant culture know how to avoid or exploit. Many deserving people have their claims unfairly denied, and have to wait months to win a backdated award on appeal; the stress experienced in the meantime can damage their long-term employability. Some very talented people fall through the gaps and end up on the streets.

Keep at it. It’s important to encourage the present government to move away from the target-driven culture that New Labour created, and a return to discretion and liberty is what many professionals need.

Just look at the shit you are creating again Murray.You got Eddie and the lot of ‘em going at it.

Murray ?” you are guilty of speaking the truth to power.

Remember the words of Zbigniew Brzezinski::-

“For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination.” New York Times ?” Opinion piece published on the 16th December, 2008

So ?” damn you ?” be quiet Craig!

Well drawn picture; important view, thanks Craig. It’s true.

One point: in the many areas where it can take years to get a real job, far too few people end up treating the whole process as a joke, despite the fact that it’s necessary to do so to survive mentally. It’s not quite fair to describe these people, who aren’t entirely crushed by the system as ‘scroungers’, I think.

Otherwise, v interesting piece by Ken Livingston in the Morning Star.

Absolutely spot on. I worked in a JobCentre as a Peronal Advisor for over two years and can confirm what you write. It was sad to have to impose a one size fits all service on everyone. There was just too wide a spectrum between illiterate, innumerate unskilled short term workers and graduates with decades of career experience for a decent service to be provided for the better qualified who were, in effect,expected to find jobs themselves. The system of sanctions for claimants who abused the system was a bureaucratic nightmare, staff training was poor and loyalty to co-religionists by management was blatant.

technicolour

I agree, ( I really do) but you also have to avoid the opposite trap of failure to admit that some people really are terminally workshy and will play the system to get everything they can.

Ou est le chainon manquant?

As someone who was unemployed for most of the 80s and 90s, I can exclusively reveal that the benefit claiming system under Thatcher was a stress-free regime of dignity compared to the humiliating grind of idiocy which Major introduced and Blair perfected. To be frank, I care less about unemployed people gaming the system to gain some extra cash (which gets spent very quickly), than I do about the wealthy and the bloated rich who have their accountants and stockbrokers make them great wads of money which sit around not being spent. Or, if they do get spent, its usually on mickey mouse derivatives rather than real things.

‘play the system to get everything they can.’

Tony Blair

Goldman Sachs

J.P. Morgan

The House of Commons

The House of Lords

Arms companies

You want more?, I got lots more.

“Absolutely symptomatic of New Labour’s Britain.”

Actually, it was no different under John Major, when I was one of the millions unemployed. But sure, imply that it was different, don’t let truth intrude.

@Craig – I think you’ve pasted the wrong link – looks like a link to your blog editor screen?

@Eddie – I suggest, with all respect, that with each post you appear to be increasingly attached to the New Labour project — to the extent you are unable to offer meaningful criticism.

On topic, this would be a great time for the coalition to institute changes that reduce the target-driven culture. But I fear the right-wing of the Tory party is in control here, and they intend to make matters much worse for genuine claimants.

@kingfelix – I’ve no experience of unemployment, so I can’t offer a view on it. But personal experience is a statistical test with a sample size of one, and so is a terrible indicator of trend.

I am inclined towards Craig’s view because the form-filling and lack of discretionary powers smacks of the target and market-oriented processes instituted in the health service, which were also strongly supported by New Labour. But if you believe New Labour *were* more sympathetic to genuine claimants, then it would be interesting to hear why you have that view, or to see some statistical evidence that supports it.

Very few people are ‘terminally’ workshy.

eddie

You have put on a good post.

He is right Craig you haven’t got a clue what you are talking about. It goes much deeper then you say, much deeper. I would have to say you are very ignorant on some topics.

The benefits system is dreadful and demoralising. It HAS become far more oppressive since Thatcher’s time.

In the ’90s I was signing on, doing part time work and declaring it. Nightmare. On the whim of a manager I could be signed off, which took effect instantly, and halted my housing benefit. Several pages of form filling later would start the process of resuming those benefits, which took between four and six weeks.

I complained about this, and was told, off the record, that I should work for cash and not declare it. But I refused to be a benefit cheat.

Is it really worth penalising the “terminally job shy”? Probably not, unless there’s really a job they could be doing. If you have someone who wants to work, and someone who doesn’t, it’s pretty obvious that the former would be a better worker. So the question becomes, should the terminally job shy be given money to live on? I’d say “yes”.

Capitalist financial institutions are the enemy of ordinary middle and working class people. It’s they who are making wars in far-off lands and then making profits from those wars, it’s they who are throwing people out of work, it’s they who have taken over our elected institutions.

Most of the politicians who rule – whatever party they say they are from – are in their pockets.

The ‘foreign’ and the ‘domestic’ spheres cannot be hermetically-sealed; they are indivisible. The same bunch of criminals is driving policy in both arenas. They robbed us all and they continue to rob the world. Everything they say is a lie.

Solidarity, and a mass uprising is the only way.

What the benefits system really does is determine a baseline in the employment market. Just think what would happen if there was more work available than workers to fill the posts; employers would have to buy labour by offering higher wages.

And excuse me, but now that the financial institutions are making massive profits (‘again’ – did they ever stop?), can they not begin to fund public services – oh, sorry, that’s called TAXATION. Well, perhaps, rather than cut 40% of public services (or is it only 25%) and tossing all those ‘useless people’ (that’s you, me and the next-door-neighbour, people) out of jobs and onto the dung-heap so that even more become of us become ‘parasites’ and ‘scroungers’, perhaps we could toss those useless bankers out of jobs and make them fill in endless forms justifying their existence. What purpose do they actually serve? Apart from fleecing billions of their hard-earned wages? THEY are the parasites. The parasites are running the body politic. Time for very strong medicine. Time to boot them all to Kingdom Come!

Work is a four-letter word. Try pronouncing it as such.

Just how much work is there that is non or counter productive? How many desk jockeys, people formulating and enforcing pointless rules, people generating the paper spam for our letter boxes, people researching how to addict people to new products, people manipulating money for the sake of manipulating money (very “profitable” this one), etc? There is probably more “work” being done now than ever before, and at the same time, due to technology, less that actually needs to be done.

The point of it all is not to increase productivity. It is to keep people busy, so that they’re exhausted when they get home and fit only to “consume”, and in no fit state to build genuine society for themselves or to take an interest and become active in important matters like politics.

The System requires that the majority are kept either overworked, or utterly disenfranchised and demoralised.

My view is that the intelligence services, the arms-security industry and financial institutions now form a single plexus, a cancer, if you like, which is engaged in all manner of practices on a massive scale, both domestically and internationally. In this sense, the spectre of ‘fascism-by-the-back-door’ becomes very real.

I think that semi-overt and covert foreign policy objectives are being pursued as much or more through people at high levels in financial and other related institutions as via the old channels of state intelligence services. Indeed, it is my view that the players between these sectors have become virtually interchangeable. Is it Blunt or Blount? It makes no difference.

I sense also, on another, but related, track, that through such dynamics, a de facto control of civil societies and the channeling and disbursement of massive amounts of ‘charitable’ monies via foundations is being exercised – not just here in the UK, not just in the USA, but globally. Billions on the wars, billions on control. Paper elections that change nothing. Is this not fascism?

I absolutely agree, Clark (@09:56pm).

Thanks, Suhayl. I agree that much of the financial sector needs to be recycled.

“if there was more work available than workers to fill the posts; employers would have to buy labour by offering higher wages.”

That is exactly what happened after the black death, here in the UK.

Good point Clark.

Technicolour,

sorry, I’ve been ranting. You’re very right about the need for the unemployed to maintain a lighthearted attitude towards the benefit requirements in order to preserve their sanity.

Does anyone remember that scandal when unemployed women were admonished by a Jobcenter for not applying for jobs as prostitutes?

http://thecurmudgeonly.blogspot.com/2010/07/if-youre-not-working-you-should-be.html

Back to the food lines and the workhouses soon.

If you really want a solution to the ‘work-shy’, then stop saving jobs for women and minorities, and offer them to the long term unemployed first.

The social problem that you will face is: what is worse, unemployed men, or unemployed women?

ZanuLabour chose unemployed men.

Clark said it.

It’s social engineering. Schools are also full of this dispiriting bollox…..like about everywhere else, I’m sure.

Banker-funded think-tanks invent this rubbish to disable any possible opposition and condition us into a state of complete helplessness, which is how most people feel.

We’ll change nothing till we change this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiBSdBDeucU

How long before the condem government say, anyone unemployed for more then six months will no longer be entitled to access the NHS.

I know that the condems are talking about doing away with all benefits. They are talking about employing 5,000 dedicated coordinators around the UK. They would be in charge of volunteers to run church halls, allocating food aid to people, disabled, unemployed, etc. The food would be donated by good hearted people, supermarkets (out of date food cans),etc.

Clark and Suhayl are spot on, my feeling says just about the same,its about 2/3 Orwell, but in a more insidious, underhand way.

I never been to the Dole office until 2007, the whole queing was alien, those characters who knew their way round came in and did their thing with ease, I was a virgin and as such played with, they knew it and some of them enjoyed it.

The first words I heard from my advisor were’ you’ve got 5 minutes’.

Lucky me, I managed to get an interview with a firm of environmental consultants( didn’t get the job)and had another prosepective one in the pipeline to show for that day. She was not interested. I ask when I woudl receive benefit support and she answered that due to my wife earning just over the threshold, that I would not be eleigible.

Two weeks later I did not sign her papers and ask for themanager starightaway, only to hear the same, reasoned so he said, explanation for not getting support, though I would get my national insurance paid as long as I signed on.

So I told him that it costs me more in bus fares to come into the City and sign on, then the NI was worth, and that it would be much cheaper for me to pay it myself…

He stood up and left me sitting there, by nbow ready to pull him over the table. Calm got the upper hand, these offices are stacked with security officers, and I just left, never to return.

AND THEY KNOW THAT!

But should, for one reason or other, the national benefit computer fail, as well as the back up in Runcorn, lopcated just behind the bus station in a massive building with loads of cameras everywhere, all hell would break out in days, all over the country.

Those who will not get paid would be up in arms, no need to formate or organise.

feel better now, thanks for the link into your signing up procedure.

Suhayl: “Solidarity, and a mass uprising is the only way.” Sounds like you are recommending a Communist revolution. To which I can suggest a number of responses:

1. The joke a Soviet emigre told me. Question: Can we bring socialism to Armenia? Answer: Yes, but why? Another joke from the USSR: A woman walks into a butcher. “I want some sausage, but it must be finely sliced.” “Certainly, bring me the sausage and I will slice it as finely as you want.”

2. Read in “This godless Communism” what happens when people actually implement such a thing:

http://www.archive.org/details/ThisGodlessCommunism

(I have also seen Sergei Eisenstein’s film “October” and “Battleship Potemkin”, BTW).

3. Last but not least, “KGB: The sercret work of Soviet secret agents” by John Barron.

Ha!! Good one, Abe. Sounds like Borat! “You like Pamela…? Is this cheese? You like picture?”

But seriously, it doesn’t have to be a dualistic choice b/w totalitarianism and plutarchy. All I’m saying is, maybe it’s time for ordinary people to call the shots, instead of the big-shots. To reclaim, or build, real democracy – Tom Paine and all that.

@anon [at at July 4, 2010 9:05 PM] – like eddie’s post, accusing someone of ignorance without any indication of why you feel this way is not helpful – it generates heat but no light. In what way does the issue (making life difficult for claimants) go deeper?

Really, readers here are generally open to other views on this blog, but a civil tone and a willingness to supply reasoning or evidence do go a long way.

Jon

These days I really can’t be bothered with people like you and Murray. But I will answer your question. By the way, I do have every right to call people like you ignorant. For you not to know what I am going to tell you, goes to show that ignorance.

A lot of these people have had barbarism practised upon them, poor housing, poor education, brought up by parents who have had the same done to them, as did their parents. A never ending cycle of despair for so many. I could say so much more, but I just can’t be bothered with the likes of you Jon.

“They are precisely the ones who are not discouraged. They know how to fill the forms, happily send off a quota of hopeless online job applications every week,”

It’s a job, see ? A fairly skilled one. You spend your time filling in pointless forms, you take it seriously and do it well, and you get paid for it. Why is it _not_ a job in its own right ? It certainly takes skill.

I don’t say it’s worth anything, produces anything, does anyone else any good; but if people can get paid for it, there’ll be people doing it. Of course there will, they need to be paid for doing something. And it’s not everyone who could do it …

What I’d like to know is exactly how many billions the parsites have fleeced from our taxes in their covert operations under the guise of excise and carousel fraud? How many poor buggers have they locked up so as to pretend that it’s not them stealing our money?

I’ve been out of work for just over a year. Jobseeker’s Allowance runs out after six months and after that there are no benefits – none whatever, not even concessions on health expenses. I’m now no longer counted as unemployed as I am not ‘in receipt of benefits’.

I would not like decisions about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ or ‘job-shy’ to be made on a whim by someone working at a Job Centre. Sorry, but I think the system has to assume everyone is playing by the rules. And as has already been pointed out, if someone is clever enough to game the system, how is that any worse than a ‘gainfully employed’ worker in the ‘financial services industry’ who earns a huge salary?

We’ve all seen – and/or experienced – the direct consequences on communities of corporatist capitalism over the past 35 or so years.

Generational despair, right enough. But one can see, when enough of the people who are not completely lost within those communities are given some power in their communities, that they can turn matters around.

But it needs changes in the macro-economics.

Btw, I do agree that cheap, imported labour is used by the lords of corporatism as a means of keeping people divided, manintaining a permanent pool of unemployed and of maximising profits for themselves.

The fact that they have achieved the former of these aims is illustrated, Jimmy Giro (@10:48pm), in your comments wrt “women and minorities”. Instead of constantly railing against “women and minorities”, as though you can play only one note, would it not be more accurate to direct your symphonic – or even three-chord, punk-rock – fire at those really responsible, at those who play one off against the other and then laugh all the way to their offshore tax havens?

Fascinating discussion. I quite agree with pretty well everything said about the banks and parasitic financial services industry and their huge rewards.

But I am fascinated that my mates on the left apparently believe that the greed of bankers in some way disproves the existence of a group of people who would rather avoid work and claim benefit.

I think, as I used to be a diplomat, people make entirely false presumptions about my background and life experiences. I grew up poor. In my teens I almost never had any clothes, bar underwear, which were not second hand. I even had second hand shoes. I arrived at university with everything I owned in the world in one small cardboard box. I still have my friends from my original milieu. It is the Polly Toynbee type rich socialists who are unrealistic in their views about the mores of poor people, not me.

To be plain, those who don’t want to work are a small but significant minority – probably around 10% – of the unemployed. That percentage goes down as the nmber of unemployed goes up.

Torture under another name – forced repatriation. The comments below this distressing account, especially the methods of restraint, could easily have come from readers of the Sun.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/abused-humiliated-and-abandoned-what-really-happens-when-the-uk-deports-failed-asylumseekers-2018387.html

“I would not like decisions about whether or not someone is ‘deserving’ or ‘job-shy’ to be made on a whim by someone working at a Job Centre. Sorry, but I think the system has to assume everyone is playing by the rules.”

Why? What if it’s clear that they’re not?

It’s a fact that some people ARE more deserving than others. If someone has a genuine disability and can’t work would you think they are just as deserving as me if I were to were to lie through my teeth saying I can’t work because I’ve got some disability or something and want some money.

You’d be quite happy paying for my disability benefit even though nothing is wrong with me as with someone who is genuinely unable to work?

“And as has already been pointed out, if someone is clever enough to game the system, how is that any worse than a ‘gainfully employed’ worker in the ‘financial services industry’ who earns a huge salary?”

So what? If they’re ostensibly employed by a financial company then who cares if it isn’t tax-payer funded.

RR:”It’s a job, see ? A fairly skilled one. You spend your time filling in pointless forms, you take it seriously and do it well, and you get paid for it. Why is it _not_ a job in its own right ? It certainly takes skill.”

You’ve only underlined that it IS done. Not that it should be done or should be rewarded if it is.

“-RR:”It’s a job, see ? …”

“-You’ve only underlined that it IS done. Not that it should be done or should be rewarded if it is.”

True. I wasn’t arguing “should”, I was saying “is”. That is what the current system does, that is the activity that the setup actually does reward.

(This is all anecdotal, derived from second-hand reports; I am lucky enough to have no immediate knowledge of the subject since the days when the DHSS paid Supplementary Benefit (Eee, £11.90 a week and change for t’busfare home …). I’m drawing conclusions from other peoples’ descriptions).

If you want “should”s …

* From any perspective wider than the individual filling in the forms, it’s all wasted work. Unproductive of anything of any use.

* the implication seems to be, some sort of dishonesty ? “Gaming the system” tends to be said. They’re not playing the game the way they were supposed to, naughty them ? So it’s a badly designed system that has such exploits built into it. It’s like blaming sparrows for discovering they can get a drink of milk by pecking holes in milkbottle tops on the doorstep (I’m showing my age, eh ?)

@anon at [July 5, 2010 12:35 AM]. It would really help if you could use a pseudonym.

Your response to me is a most conflicted one. My views in this thread are defences of the poor, and I am in complete agreement with your perspective about the cycle of damage.

Your accusation of ignorance is baseless, therefore, and is strange considering that we appear to (mostly) agree with each other, as far as I can tell. I should think Craig agrees broadly with this too, which leaves me wondering why you are insisting on being incivil towards me.

I wonder whether the thing that most irritates you is criticism of New Labour; like Eddie, you appear afraid of discovering that what you thought was a genuine social-democratic party was in fact a scam, a right-wing coup perpetrated by Blair and his ilk. Perhaps the devastation of Iraq should have made that clear?

Given that you “can’t be bothered with the likes of [me]“, I will open out the good point you made with everyone else. On the topic of the welfare cycle, there is a very good and sympathetic British paperback out at the moment, called “The Spirit Level”, which looks at this phenomenon in depth. It argues using research that the wealthy classes benefit across a range of health and happiness indicators when social disparity is reduced – something the Labour party would do well to learn from. I recommend the book wholeheartedly.

Some people seem to think that certain unemployed people should not be given benefits. What are the alternatives? I can think of begging, stealing and other crimes, suicide, starvation, and extermination by the state.

Maybe someone has a better suggestion. Preempting the suggestion that “they should be made to work”, I argue that those who *want* to work should be offered work ahead of those who don’t.

Oh. I forgot. There’s also the alternative of fundamentally restructuring the economy and the labour market to offer employment for all. And pigs might fly.

Jon,

the hostility directed towards you and Craig in the anonymous comment, and Eddie’s uninformative remark, both mystified me, too.

Me too! I liked your ranting, Clark btw. And The Spirit Level sounds good, thanks Jon.

‘Your accusation of ignorance is baseless’

Hmm, why then did you ask in the first place…..”accusing someone of ignorance without any indication of why you feel this way is not helpful”

and then say…..

“that we appear to (mostly) agree with each other”

What you are now saying is you already knew the answer. Read my post above again.

You also assume that I support New Labour. I have never in my life voted Labour or New Labour, or given any support to them.

Anon: you might have gathered from my post that I didn’t understand your point. What is it that I have said that means that you “cannot be bothered with the likes of [me]“? That is a genuine question, to which I seek a genuine answer.

I am not saying that I know the answer to the above question at all. But I felt that your point about the terrible spiral of welfare was correct, and that was what we agree on.

I would love to have a proper conversation with you, but as you can see I am not sure what you are saying. If you genuinely want a conversation with me, then please elucidate. I am, incidentally, happy to be corrected on your voting preferences, but then if you are not irked by my criticism of New Labour, what is it that has irritated you so much?

“There’s also the alternative of fundamentally restructuring the economy and the labour market to offer employment for all. And pigs might fly”.

Clark, I’m not sure why you’re so dismissive of this idea because, when you think about it, we’re almost there as it is.

The great majority of people not in work are entitled to benefits; we are therefore paying people a ‘wage’ not to work. I can’t see how anyone truly benefits from this system, particularly when, as always, there is so much work that needs doing.

I think a case could made for replacing unemployment benefit with a job guarantee scheme, paying the minimum wage. Unemployment would be virtually abolished overnight; everyone would be guaranteed an income; much-needed public work would be done. I don’t think the restructuring of the economy to which you refer would be that fundamental.

Ah, MJ,

you must know what is wrong with your suggestion. The wages are but a small proportion of the cost of employing someone. You need managers to manage them, consultants to work out what they should do, training, uniforms, tools, premises, vehicles, insurance, inspectors, and if you employ them, they get employment rights.

But my real reason I’m dismissive is that the present (im)balance of the labour market is to the benefit of the employers. It won’t be changed because the Powers That Be don’t want to change it.

‘what is it that has irritated you so much?’

Your humanity or lack off. You knew what I was meaning, yet still made out you didn’t. I should not have to explain. Most know of (as you put it) the “cycle of damage”. You then went on to the record of New Labour and eddie, why?, what reason?, because I think eddie (at last) put one good post on. You seem to make a lot of unfounded assumptions. I would not spit on New Labour if it were on fire.

“…the present (im)balance of the labour market is to the benefit of the employers”.

Indeed. The real objection is a political one.

All the objections in your first para are easily surmountable details. Organisation and administration? Sure, but we already have a vast bureaucracy administering unemployment benefit claims. Tools, premises, vehicles etc? Investment capital. Employment rights? What’s the problem?

‘Sure, but we already have a vast bureaucracy administering unemployment benefit claims. Tools, premises, vehicles etc? Investment capital. Employment rights? What’s the problem?’

They are mostly just a front.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10159717.stm

@Anon – Despite my patience with you, you still insist on being rude to me. I am entirely unclear how I have demonstrated a lack of humanity. I have already explained why I thought the original post was a typical New Labour issue, and that target-led systems with no local discretion or flexibility have, in my view, failed in the NHS too.

I insist that I didn’t know what you were meaning – an incorrect assumption that you’ve made now – but we’re just going around the roundabout in circles. I think I will exit!

Jon,

don’t worry about “”; you seem human enough to me. “” seems to have a bee in the bonnet, though I can’t work out why.

In other countries with no welfare system people are hired by private companies to do menial tasks for a subsistence wage. Lots of ‘em sit around doing nothing all day, but they have to turn up or they get nowt. The ones who with a good work ethic are trusted for higher paid jobs. Those who show initiative and drive get promoted to higher responsibilities. Wage slavery, maybe, but it’s an effective way of sifting through the labour pool, giving keen workers a fair chance, and stopping lazy arses from lying around entertaining themselves on benefits all day.

‘Despite my patience with you’

Say’s it all about you Jon.

@Royston – it sounds like an effective incentive, doesn’t it – work or starve? But statistically, the countries with the worst welfare systems have a strong correlation with high crime and high levels of mental and physical ill-health. The US is a prime example, and is exacerbated by a privatised healthcare system (which goes hand-in-hand with low levels of welfare provision). The system keeps the poor destitute and the rest of society fearful of crime.

The book I mentioned earlier in the thread is really quite relevant to precisely this topic – do grab a copy if you can

@JOn – “Work or starve” is not what I meant, and I’m not talkin bout the States – more like Asia and Africa. These folks actually have an easy time of it, some sit in gardens guarding flowers all day. The companies don’t really need the work done, they’re being socially responsible and engaging the jobless, who get some choice in what they do. It helps people who are really keen to work bcos they get a chance to prove themselves. Otherwise as in the UK they’d just languish on the dole getting turned down for every job they applied for bcos they got gaps in their CV. The terminally workshy get pushed by there families to get one of the sleepy jobs so’s they can pull their weight. Don’t know if the Wilkinson book deals with that kind of thing.

I would rather pay someone to sit on their ass and do nothing than run the risk of cutting off benefits to someone whose children might go hungry as a result. Soak the rich sufficiently and this would be possible.

Craig, if you get this far: I’m not denying there are some people who don’t want to work at appallingly low paid and exhausting jobs just for the sheer pleasure and nobility of it. Even so, what would you do to them? As others here have pointed out, there are simply not enough jobs to go round as it is. I can’t blame anyone for giving up, even if it does mean eking out a miserable and debilitating life on the edge of society, which is the reality of the benefit system (the people you read about in the Mail claiming thousands a week are fantastical, not representative). Seriously, are the ‘scroungers’ not a red herring, and often a deliberate one, floated by the right?

Added to that others, as the churches reported in the rosier days of ten years ago, simply cannot afford to work, especially if they have children, because then they would have to pay out of rock bottom wages for childcare. They choose, in a sense, to stay on the dole, and suffer there too: are they scroungers?

and finally, I wonder what being left wing (or not) has to do with it? These are facts, I think?