A CALLER to a radio phone- in recently pointed out that while they rise at 6am for work each day, their neighbour’s curtains remain closed because they’re unemployed and have their bills paid by the state.
With an understandable tone of bitterness, he said the couple next door both claim to suffer from “anxiety”, but it doesn’t appear to stop them from going to the supermarket, pub and on regular holidays.
Will the ‘working people’ that Labour claims to champion continue to pay the bills of those who choose to stay idle?[/caption]
Common sense dictates that not all of these claims are genuine, and any reform must root out the chancers[/caption]
Words fail me. But it’s fair to say that former Tory employment minister Norman Tebbit, who died recently, wouldn’t have approved.
Following Birmingham’s Handsworth riots of 1981, which some suggested were simply a natural reaction to high unemployment, Tebbit responded with: “I grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking until he found it.”
It ruffled feathers on the Left, but presumably a significant chunk of the electorate quietly agreed with the sentiment as a Conservative government, at the time led by Margaret Thatcher, lasted another 16 years.
And now current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has ventured into similar territory with her assertion at the Conservative Party Conference that the rising level of economic activity is a “national tragedy”.
She suggests that the number of people being signed on to the sickness component of Universal Credit is now around 5,000 a day.
It follows her recent call for a return to a “Protestant work ethic” because “28million people in Britain are now working to pay the wages and benefits of 28million others”.
She added that one in four people self-report as “disabled” and Britain is on course “to spend one in every four pounds of income tax on sickness benefits alone”.
Radical reform
Common sense dictates that not all of these claims are genuine, and any reform must root out the chancers, not just for the sake of the economy but in the spirit of fairness too. This isn’t about those with a genuine disability that makes it impossible for them to work, or those who have suddenly found themselves jobless and need financial help to tide them over.
They are the very people the welfare state was designed to protect.
No, this is about those who could work but choose not to because it’s easier, and often more lucrative, to remain idle.
Badenoch suggests that the number of people being signed on to the sickness component of Universal Credit is now around 5,000 a day[/caption]
You know who they are. They know who they are. And the politicians know who they are.
The question is, will those who currently hold the reins of power tackle the radical reform that’s so desperately needed?
Or will the “working people” that Labour claims to champion continue to pay the bills of those who choose to stay idle?
FORMER S4C TV boss Sian Doyle was dismissed for alleged bullying after saying, “Who the f*** are they?” about the presenters of a programme she was shown and “who is watching this rubbish?”
As she was on sick leave at the time of her dismissal, and therefore unable to fight the decision, she launched a High Court action and ended up settling the matter for £500,000.
But I remain intrigued by the original decision to fire her for merely echoing what the majority of viewers are probably thinking.
POUR SCORN ON MPS
LABOUR bigwig Darren Jones says “most politicians are pretty middle class these days” but still try to out-poor each other.
“You know, like that sketch, ‘I had to lick the road, I lived in a pothole’ or whatever. It’s pretty relevant to the Labour Party,” he says of the Four Yorkshiremen skit performed by Monty Python.
Funny how times change. Me and my single mum lived in my godparents’ council house because we couldn’t get our own, and my “Aunty Janet” would have died rather than describe herself as “poor”.
The milk was always poured from a china jug, meals were served on a freshly washed tablecloth, the front garden pristine so the neighbours wouldn’t judge, and she never left the house looking anything other than fabulous.
But now everyone’s falling over themselves to suggest their perfectly normal childhood makes Angela’s Ashes look privileged.
David has women panting
David Gandy says dads discuss the menopause at the school gates[/caption]
DAVID GANDY, seen here modelling his latest underwear range, says he’s been chatting with other dads about the menopause.
“The dads have had the [HRT] discussion at the school gates,” he confides.
“They say, ‘get the patch.’ Then one dad will go, ‘they’re very horny on the patch’.”
I think we can all safely conclude that, when it comes to David, a patch wouldn’t be necessary.
AUSTRALIAN police searching the Outback for missing four-year-old Gus Lamont are losing hope of finding him.
They have exhausted every possible option, including a supposed photo circulating on social media of a child matching his description being carried into a truck.
Turns out it was an AI-generated forgery by a notorious fake news account known as “Celebrity Today”.
How low can people go in pursuit of clicks?
I hope they’re tracked down and prosecuted for malicious falsehood and wasting police time.
COLD HABITS
IF you’re still wearing flip flops, you could be in “seasonal denial”.
Other signs include sporting sunglasses and shorts and not wearing a coat despite the gloomier October days.
Apparently, 83 per cent of us spend the whole of winter wishing it was summer. I’m a season denier too, but the other way round.
Never happier than when I’m wearing a thermal undergarment, chunky jumper and heavy overcoat, I have been known to reach late June before feeling the necessity to remove even one of them.
ALWAYS OVER MEGS IT
Meghan Markle apparently messaged her designer friend Pierpaolo Piccioli to attend his fashion show[/caption]
WHEN Meghan Markle popped up at Paris Fashion Week, we were told by “her people” that she was there to support her designer friend Pierpaolo Piccioli.
They “have worked closely together collaborating on design for key moments on the world stage”, we were told, and that her attendance at his show “reflects the culmination of many years of artistry and friendship”.
The suggestion being that she was nothing less than his muse.
Except that Piccioli’s version is that they met at some event years ago and she texted him to ask if she could attend.
Why does this, ahem, deeply private woman with her own Netflix cookery show always have to over-egg every pudding?
AFTER branding their newly formed Your Party as a “sexist boys’ club”, MP Zarah Sultana has now made up with fellow left-winger Jeremy Corbyn and announces “the show is back on the road”.
Speaking at the World Transformed conference, she says: “I know that I’m in Manchester so I have to reference Liam and Noel Gallagher.
“If they can do it, of course me and Jeremy can.”
Except that very few are “mad fer it”.
CAT’S CALL IS SO VAIN
CARLY SIMON’S superb song You’re So Vain is rumoured to be about Mick Jagger (who sings backing vocals on it) or Warren Beatty.
But now Cat Stevens, who dated Carly in the early ’70s, has declared: “I never understood the endless hide and seek of finding out who [it] was about . . . naturally, I knew it was about me!”
Insisting you are the focus of a less-than-flattering song about a vain man is perhaps the best definition of vanity there is.
BUZZBALLZ – Gen Z’s favourite alcoholic tipple – are reportedly littering our beaches.
Volunteers in Brighton and Hove say the round plastic containers are being discarded in “large numbers” and are a menace to the environment.
Remember this the next time your supposedly eco-friendly offspring tick you off for leaving a light on.
