Iain Duncan-Smith is taking an awful lot of flak from bishops, the liberal media elite and hand-wringing Liberals, such as Paddy Ashdown, about his plans to cap benefits at the median take-home wage of working families – £26,000 per year. Why have we become trapped by this materialistic concept of child poverty, itself a remnant of the now discredited premiership of Anthony Blair? Child poverty is not knowing who your Dad is; having parents who don’t care where you are at night (riots, gangs, etc.); parents who don’t help with homework; parents who don’t feed you properly; parents who drink, gamble or do drugs with the money meant for your five a day; parents who fail to provide decent social or economic role models. Frankly, whether your family has more or less than £26,000 p.a. is much less important than these things. Right now, our social security system incentivises bad, lazy behaviours and punishes those who prioritize their children and work.
It is easy to talk bollocks from Hampstead and Primrose Hill but cantankerous really wonders how many MPs or journalists understand the realities of life – it is the same kind of mentality that liberalised gambling and licensing and believed that casinos were the way to regenerate poor areas. Any sane person, brought up in a working class neighbourhood, knows the damage inflicted on children by gambling and drinking parents. We also know the damage done by a welfare system that punishes the working class. Enough is enough. £26,000 p.a. is enough.
