Welfare Reform - Cameron

So PM Cameron is going to get tough on £1.5 billion in benefit fraud. Firstly this figure contradicts the official figures from the DWP. Benefit Fraud is £330m, down from £850m ten years ago. So where is the PM getting his figures from? Where does the figure of $1.5b come from and why is it 5x the official figure?

According to a report in City Wire (Jan 22):

At £30 billion per year, fraud in the UK is more than twice as high as thought, with tax evasion costing the public purse over £15 billion per year and benefit fraud just over £1 billion.

... Tax evasion is around 3% of total tax liabilities, while benefit fraud accounts for 0.8% of total benefit expenditure.

Apart from the £1b figure (from where?) where is all the hoo-ha about tax evasion?

Again I ask why ordinary people, and people living on benefits are paying for the excesses of bankers and their reckless clients? I don't have a mortgage I wasn't involved in property speculation, or financial mismanagement. I wish the government would leave me the fuck alone and target the people who caused the problems in the first place!

What in reality has happened to the people who caused the financial crisis? Not a fucking thing. They are free to do it all over again, and on past form they will do so.

On the other hand will there come a time when they say "OK, we've cleaned up the system, and we'd like those people who genuinely qualify for benefits to relax and concentrate on getting well, or living well"? No of course there never will, because people everywhere hate the idea of charity which enables a person to live without working. People with that attitude should visit India and see what a society with no social welfare looks like. I'd be a beggar in India - begging for money on the street and living in cardboard boxes.

I don't get a huge amount in reality - just £9200 per year. It's enough to house, cloth and feed me and not a lot more. For which I am more grateful than I can say.

But the news is all about people on benefits being undeserving cheats and thieves. I'm not a thief. I'm genuinely unwell. I get so stressed listening to all this hard talk about people on benefits, it's so upsetting because the distinction between those who genuinely need help and those who don't is blurred. It makes it shameful to rely on the government, even when you have no choice. What David Cameron is saying is that receiving handouts is shameful. But he's a millionaire from a millionaire family - with every privilege provided. He has no idea what it is like to be chronically ill, or to lose the ability to work. He doesn't even need to work.

So watch out everyone on benefits. You are now being pursued by private companies paid to catch you out. You may say that if I'm honest that I have nothing to fear. But unlike an ordinary member of the public I am a suspect merely for claiming what I am entitled to claim. By accepting a benefit, I sign up to allow these private companies to investigate my life. Ordinary people have a right to privacy and are presumed to be innocent, even though there is a lot of crime in the country, the fact that they have possessions does not automatically make them a suspect in all robberies. As of today I am suspected of fraud, just because some people commit fraud. If all people were suspected of tax evasion because some people are guilty of tax evasion, and had to open up all of the bank accounts to private companies paid to expose them, how would they react?