Hmm, Almac, you are posting some very provocative discussions
I find it really difficult to come to any kind of decision on this subject. My income these days is well below the average, but the last time I attempted to claim any means-tested welfare benefit was around 1980. At the time I was entitled to a rent allowance and a rate rebate, which I claimed for a few months. However, the continued requirement to fill out forms and keep on top of every bit of income persuaded me that I should try harder to do without assistance. I allowed myself to be chased out of the system, because quite frankly I had better things to do. I found the system not only demeaning, but also too complicated for my feeble brain. My conclusion was that anyone who tries to live off benefits alone has to be pretty determined to make it work.
This is in contrast to the tabloid press view of the country being drained dry by benefit scroungers. The situation has been made more complicated by increasing engagement with the EU over the decades, resulting in a recent apparent influx of EU citizens, many of whom have come from the newer member states in Eastern Europe. I seem to live close to an area that has been targeted as a good place to live by, firstly, Portuguese and soon thereafter, Poles and Lithuanians, Wisbech, a nearby town, is often referred to by the locals these days as Wisbekistan. I have a little contact with these groups through my work. I see people from these ethnic groups taking on crap jobs at crap wages and working very long hours. I know people who have three part-time jobs, because they can't get one full-time job, just trying to meet the outrageous rents that are the norm. I see families feeling constrained to live in overcrowded accommodation with strangers in the hope and expectation that they will be able to work themselves into better circumstances. The Lithuanian man (and his wife) who have opened a small shop in Wisbech buying up, repairing and selling used household electrical items let slip in conversation that he had a Masters degree from a German university. I don't know whether it is true that many of the recent immigrants would have left their home countries in the expectation of an uncertain future of unemployment and homelessness. I know I would not be tempted to risk separation from everything I knew and understood without some kind of plan.
I am personally at a crossroads and am facing a bit of an unknown future. I have an option to go and live in France to be with the man I love on a permanent basis. I have not made enough effort to learn French and lack confidence in conducting the most basic day-to-day transactions. I know that would improve if I went to live there and made an effort to leave the house occasionally. I enjoy the work I do now, low income notwithstanding, and would not know how to continue doing what I am good at in France. I do not intend to live go and live in another country and sponge off either my man or the state. I could take another kind of job, and I would do so if forced, but I am not being forced so why should I?
I don't understand enough about the arguments as to who is contributing to or withdrawing from the EU budgets, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that the more fortunate should expect to contribute more than those of lesser means if we have signed up to an agreement to move forward in some kind of alliance.
It sounds far too easy to blame "the others" when things get tough. Our governments and press over the past few decades have scapegoated immigrants, unmarried mothers, absent fathers, schools, and goodness knows what else for the problems in society. Such scapegoats are merely Aunt Sallies for anyone who prefers others to do their thinking for them.
Statistics can be spun by anyone ... and they will be. Unscrupulous politicians will use all apparent means at their disposal to advance a personal agenda, be it racist, homophobic or whatever.
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