Good on you Grandad! You tawt me all what you know and Im prowd to follow in yor footsteps. At 29, why shuld I work neither when I get all what I want with no efort and pay no taxis or rent? (Donnot pay insurence on Corsa neither cos social donnot give me enouhg money – not good.) The recesion is great excuse to stay at home – takes presure off of me at job-centre cos they no that theres no way Ill work so life is good, no probs at all. Thank you Gordon Brown, Ill vote for you next year, for sure bro, best choice for working class like me! (Pls donnot raise price of cider or ciggies like they said in the Sun thouhg please – this wuld haver bad affect on lifestyle.)

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Teach your children about pride and working for what you have. Glad you also have a nice social life, seen as most of the time we cant even afford days out with our children!

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Fab letter, it’s given me a good laugh – you have got the scroungers’ attitude off to a T!

(Jake, I’m assuming it’s a cunningly observed satire)

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It’s obvious that this a satire, but I think if the author is looking for the origins of our burgeoning underclass he/she needs to look a little further back.

We are now certainly into the second generation, and in some cases, the third generation of a group of people who have no ambition to work.

They have not seen that work ethic in their parents/grandparents, and the sort of unskilled manufacturing jobs which would once have provided employment for them have long gone, thanks to the ‘Pandora’s Box’ of Globalisation which was opened a couple of decades ago.

Once ‘The Market’ became the sole arbiter of where, geographically speaking, jobs should be carried out, we lost all prospect of ever having large numbers of low-skilled manufacturing jobs again.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing in theory – after all, we can go for the better quality jobs can’t we?

That would be all very well if there was a desire within our society to regard education as something with real value – unfortunately, we’ve seen that it’s apparently alright to regard being thick as being ‘cool’ whilst being bright is regarded as ‘geekish’.

The rise of ‘The Cult of the Celebrity’ has ensured that far too many young people go through their school lives harbouring unsupportable ambitions, and sneering at the idea of getting real qualifications, settling instead for the easy options too often.

This, coupled with the mistaken policy of branding any establishment capable of handing out so much as a Cycling Proficiency certificate as a ‘University’ has given many young people an inflated view of their value to the jobs marketplace.

Thankfully, we are now seeing a shift back towards better vocational training, and we have seen a massive investment in primary schools, which appears to be having positive effects on literacy and numeracy levels in that age group.

Greater investment in Secondary schools is also planned, which will benefit those coming out of the rejuvenated Primary schools, so perhaps we will see a workforce whose ambitions for and expectations of themselves are set a little more realistically over the next few years.

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I think this article has been printed by mistake.
Was it orginally intended for April 1st?

But seriously – Peter has a very valid point.

I spent the majority of my working life in electronic design/production – and there were many hundreds of people employed at places like Decca, Plessey, GEC, Marconi, Racal etc.

Those companies employed people of all skills, from the highly qualified design engineer, to shop floor assembly workers – Who it must be said were just as important, if not MORE SO – becuase they MADE things.

Sadly it’s all gone. – and I don’t ever see it getting any better.

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disgacefully this is the norm in much of england and wales today

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To borrow a line from one of the best films of all time:

“Nail some sense in to them!”

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Parasite!

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i cant believe what you brag about and teach your kids, you are a leach to society and dont think about hard working parents trying to keep a roof over their familys heads and food on the table .i also cant believe the shropshire star pubilished this in the current crisis but i suppose its media and it gets peoples backs up .have a nice life you low life …

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HERE HERE TO THE ABOVE .
incoherent ramblings of a cowardly ignoramus.
Exactly i cant believe people take it as this is what it must be like on benfits.I for one would hate it accountable to some oik in a welfare office who is probably not very bright . Living on what i spend on my dog and kids treats a week. Trying to grocery shop on 40 odd quid compared to my usuall 100 quid yep must be a great life????.AS STATED IF IT IS SO GREAT WHY DO THE CRITICS NOT GO ON BENEFITS??? OH YES THEY ARE TO PROUD TOO mmmmmmmmm yes im sure.
Truth is they just want a section of society to look down on .
I remember an MP telling me council houses were built to create a middle class and give them the impression they had achieved something.
Ok some have learned to live on benefits that is true but what they get etc etc is over egged it makes great news and gets peoples knickers in a twist. What was i saying about not very bright people??

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if you don,t believe this isn,t true then youved never lived in the real world.this way of living was a way of life for many in the late 1950,s when i starte work in Manchester as its true now inWelshpool where i,ved lived for 38 yrs.its great now cause they can even easily submerge into the mass unemployed.i,ve gone into pubs on Sunday afternoons in Welshpool and the only people drinking are the long time idle.If they used their brains they could be lecturing in 6th form colleages on how to live life supplied free by MUGS.this type of person would also have evaded conscripsion in wartime somehow

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Spoof or not good luck to you grandpa. personally I would rather rip the country off by getting a big fat bonus and 650k a year pension for life.

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Oh, and whilst I’m at it Stuart you’ve also made the rookie error of mistaking a criticism of woolly thinking (as in the original post and many of respondees) as being a wholesale acceptance of the behaviour of scroungers. They are not one and the same, nobody is condoning the misuse of the Welfare state but I am saying that wild swipes that miss their mark are nothing more than woeful ill-thought out examples of scaremongering. Still not to worry, to err is human.

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Certainly the benefits for most of those losing their jobs in the current global recession are not great.

If you’ve received any sort of decent redundancy payment, or have a spouse or partner still in work you’ll receive only about £60 per week for 6 months – regardless of the decades during which you might have been paying in to the system.

Once you’ve spent all of your savings and can plead real poverty you’ll get support with rent or mortgage interest support and a number of other services such as prescriptions, for free.

Whilst that level of support is useful in the short-term, in the longer term it becomes a constraint upon getting back into work, especially when companies are determined to pay minimum wage wherever they can get away with it.

The ‘freebies’ disappear once you’re back in work and there are a significant number of people who find themselves worse off through being in work, regardless of the benefits to self-esteem and mental health derived from working.

We need to support the working poor with better benefits, and slowly shift the money away from the hardcore minority who simply exploit the welfare system – this is not a new problem – it’s been going on for decades, but the effects of uncontrolled globalisation of the job market have had the double effect of forcing down living standards here, and increasing the number of those who no longewr see the value in work.

Of course, the fat cats who are the cause of all this just get richer and richer…

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To number one, You probably didn’t go to school either! I’m just glad I’m not living in your country.
have nice day.

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Stuart, I hope you’ve got a very small coach and some tiny horse. You may think you have a deep understanding of the financial crisis, but I doubt you have a fuller one than someone who works in the industry. The Root (and that word is key) cause of the financial crisis is exactly as I have stated, banking regulation is high, regulation of hedge funds/investment banking is considerably lower and the rules around how much a bank can lend (in comparison with the amount of money actually in deposit) was bypassed via the insurance loophole mentioned. The issue is not a UK based one alone although it affects us greatly, it is a global one because all banks are global and trade globally, hence lending in the US (to people who frankly shouldn’t have been lent to) impacts UK banks. When it comes to trading in the insurances that went belly up the banks are in each and one another’s pockets. Once the balloon went up they fall like dominoes as they’re in it together.Your insistance on blaming Brown for the cause of the Credit Crunch is wrong-headed – and more importantly it points the blame away from the guilty. Whilst you can question Brown’s decisions when it comes to banking in the UK and what he has chosen to do since (and probably should), you have singularly failed to understand the answer I gave was not to that question but rather to the one you asked – “give us the benefit of your knowledge of the … CAUSES of the credit crunch.”
I stand by my comments – the letter makes these points :-
For the ‘Ignoramus’;
People who don’t have a lot don’t have a lot to lose (well Duh!)
Benefit abuse is bad (well Duh again!)
Brown is to blame for the Credit Crunch – No he isn’t although you can argue his intervention is just a drop in the ocean of the Ponzi scheme the banks have been running
Brown is to blame for the Welfare State – No, at least no more than any of the other incumbents of No10 since 1945.
For the ‘Cowardly’;
Hiding behind anonimity
To scared to follow suit despite apparent envy.
For the ‘Incoherent Ramblings’;
Please refer to original letter, although maybe I’ve over stepped the mark, perhaps I should just have put ‘Gibberings’.

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Ticklemouse,you said, “I hope you’ve got a very small coach and some tiny horse. You may think you have a deep understanding of the financial crisis, but I doubt you have a fuller one than someone who works in the industry”.

With a nephew who is the Manager of a very large Hight Street Bank in Swansea with whom I am in regular contact and also his father (my brother) who has lost thousands out of this little lot – again with whom I have many tete a tete’s, I prefer to stick with my version of events rather than the ones you mention.
Essentially, the banks “ran amok”, it matters little about “loopholes” etc, the fact was that there was little or no supervision of the regulations – if indeed regulations existed.
Are you another one that prefers to disregard the fact that Brown totally reorganised the regulatory mediums of banks etc when he took office and, having done that and brought about the FSA with the express intention of regulating banks/banking, both he and Blair told the FSA to only “lightly” and I emphasise that word “LIGHTLY” regulate etc. That is a matter of record, indeed, Blair said that “over regulation would stifle the economy”.
Had those regulations been enforced, or drawn up with a heavier hand, banks would not have been allowed to be so irresponsible. An example, one bank, I will stand corrected as to which one it was, I think it was The Bank of Scotland put 40% of their total invested capital into the American sub-prime market. Don’t say loopholes allowed that, lack of enforcement of regulations allowed that and Brown was responsible for the “LIGHT” touch regulations.
All the remainder of your comments are wide open to argument, you also said,

“For the ‘Cowardly’;
Hiding behind anonimity
To scared to follow suit despite apparant envy”.

I notice your pseudonym, “Tickelmouse” rather than your proper name. By your token, “cowardly”, would you agree.
Then, one is automatically to be labelled an envious “coward” for having the audacity to criticise something, albeit obliquely, that many millions of other people are just as likely to criticise. I would not imagine the writer to be in any way “envious”, scared to follow suit or cowardly. In my opinion, I would imagine he is a somewhat angry person who in no way wishes to “ape” the welfare abusers in our midst but merely has a somewhat eccentric way of bringing his anger and frustration to notice. He is entitled to do that without abuse, albeit, it totally threw some of the less “bright” who couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
You will forgive me if I end our our little chat here, we will never agree and I prefer to remain with those who think an apology from Master Brown is long overdue for the disaster he has caused.

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