Benefit Madness!

Well, that is the headline in the Express and the Daily Mail carries a similar story with the headline "boom-time on benefits".

What the article in the Mail highlights is that about 140,000 families get more than £20,000 a year in benefits. The numbers in the Express are 20,000 households claiming more that £30,000 with a further 12,000 claiming more than £20,000 which does not seem to make a lot of sense.

The reports stem from parliamentary questions asked by Chris Grayling, the Conservative party's Work and Pensions shadow minister.

So there are a lot of people living on benefits that are better off than people on the average wage. The average wage being £25,000 a year, and curiously you would have to earn £27,000 before tax to get £20,000 in take home pay.

James Purnell's response? Well he and his department claim that a lot of these families are on benefits for disability. Really? How many? Does he know? Karen Mathews was on £400 a week in benefits, which amounts to just over £20,000 a year and I do not recall any of her children suffering from a disability (other than her mother that is).

This is clearly a patently ridiculous situation which seriously demoralises those of us who do work, have families and pay our own way on less.

The other bit of drivel that James Purnell came up with is that we do not 100% support the governments welfare reform plans. Specifically we don't think it is a great idea to start lone mothers training for work as soon as there children are 1 year old. No of course we don't that is nuts. We also don't support removing benefits from drug addicts if they are not attending treatment. I see. I wonder what they would do if they were not attending treatment and did not get benefits? Answer; crime. So James Purnell is clearly a bit of a pratt.