- In the years of plenty
- it was easier to placate
- and complicate
- than simplify.
- The argument for welfare reform
- is not just one of affordability.
- In too many cases
- welfare has entrenched poverty.
- Get a job tomorrow
- earning between ten
- and thirty thousand a year,
- you’ll only take home
- thirty pence out of every extra pound
- after the first ten thousand.
- Twenty pence
- will go in income tax
- eleven pence
- in national insurance
- thirty nine
- in lost tax credits.
- Our poverty trap is deep.
- A strange legacy
- for a government
- that wanted to
- make
- work
- pay.
- The fear
- of not being able to scramble
- back on to the lifeboat
- if you fall off
- is a huge disincentive
- to change your circumstances.
- One in seven
- working age households
- is dependent on benefits
- for more than half its income.
- More than half
- of lone parents
- depend on the State
- for at least half their income.
- The safety net
- has become a trap.
- It has also created
- a glut
- of unemployed
- unwanted
- unmarriageable men.
- Men who can find
- neither work
- nor a wife.
- These men were overlooked
- during a decade of prosperity
- that did nothing to change their lives.
- They stayed put.
- In the Welsh Valleys
- in Liverpool
- in Glasgow
- in Birmingham
- Strathclyde
- and Newcastle
- they stayed put. While
- Eastern Europeans
- travelled a thousand miles
- to pick up work
- on construction sites in London.
- Immigration
- reduced the opportunities
- available to
- white
- British
- men
- men
- whose poor education
- made them less attractive
- overlooked by society,
- irrelevant to employers,
- unwanted by women.
- The man
- who has no work
- or a series of short-term jobs
- is a problem.
- Without steady work
- he will struggle
- to acquire
- a family.
- Without a stable relationship
- he is less likely to grow
- into a good
- family man
- less likely
- to raise
- good
- sons.
- The government
- must start to question
- the feminisation
- of education
- and the workplace.
- It is no solution
- to say that women
- don’t need men
- or that men
- should become
- more female.
- Nor is it any good
- waiting for growth
- to dig them
- out of poverty.
- These men need a chance
- not a benefits system
- that undermines them.
- One in four mothers
- is single,
- more than half
- live on welfare.
- A lot of these women,
- who can raise families on benefits
- without their help,
- describe
- the real
- fathers of their children
- as ‘useless’
- or worse.
- The State
- has helped to create
- a class of jobless
- serial boyfriends
- who prey on single mothers
- on benefits.
- The men have no role.
- The taxpayer has become
- the father.
- Poverty
- and benefits;
- if the Government
- is going to make inroads
- it will have to declare war
- on both.
[The Times, 28/05/2010, Editorial: Useless, jobless men – the social blight of our age]