Original post by Picnic1Well in that case up to 30% of benefits are abused in my eyes.
It's just that the 'abuse' has been placed in to 'law', that sludgy contract (that we don't even sign but have to agree to as a consequence of merely being born here) that we sometimes mistake ourselves (because it serves us to) as thinking as being an objectively moral thing, as being acceptable.
Disability - some are born disabled, some become clearly disabled and some are 'signed off' as disabled when they should really be signed off as 'more or less chose to become unemployed either because they permanently don't try to fit in in a workplace, don't have enough skills to ever not feel persecuted for the merest bit of feedback, don't have enough willpower sought out by them or brought out of them to make anything of themselves or have chosen to put their health in jeapordy by their own choices in life'.
Health - children sometimes have no choice over their health. Their parents might only feed them high fat foods for instance or might smoke in the home near to them.
But adults? Unless they live near a toxic plant, what is the reason to give them benefits for health? They are just part of the 'chose to become unemployed' as above.
Child care benefit given to parents. Is this a joke? You had sex, you gave birth. Nothing to do with the state. Oh you did it to bequeath the nation with some great mind did you? Why didn't you try to become that great mind yourself instead of asking for benefit for someone who you chose to bring in to the world? It's like being a begger in the street who sits down, draws a painting and then holds his hand out looking for money. Not so you can HAVE the painting,. Just because he made the painting 'Look how beautiful it is'. If it sounds slightly pitiful then that is exactly what anyone who claims child benefit essentially does.
However- what I firmly, absolutely, believe is that there should be child care benefit in the form of tokens for CHILDREN that the child chooses, at school and in consultation with adults, what to spend those tokens on. They had no choice in coming in to the world. They had no choice over who their parents are, where they live or what their early experiences of the world will be like.
The tokens would be a set amount for each child but that they could divide up according to their own wishes.
For instance, they could spend a third on clothes, a third on UK educational outings and a third on decorating their bedroom.
Or, instead, they could spend a quarter on UK educational outings, half on foreign travel and a quarter on electronic equipment. (TVs and videogames are educational, leisure and artistic tools).
As they are tokens, it would never be possible for either the child or adults to just 'fritter' it away on alcohol, fast food etc. Even if those things are not necessarily bad in moderation they are not something that it is a school's responsibility to provide.
Certainly the possibility that child benefit, under our current system, could be used by a parent to buy drugs for themselves, thus making them a less in control parent, is just awful to think of, no matter how badly that parent feels, through their limited perspective, life has treated them.