About the lady with the 11 kids, a horse and a “mansion”

There’s been a big reaction recently to the press story about “dole queen” Heather Frost, a mother of 11 kids who is said to be having a large house built for her, owns a horse and is hoping to get more – all paid for by YOUR benefits. Rather than become a general Facebook comment pest, I thought I’d reproduce some of my thoughts on the story here. This started as the reply to a Facebook comment decrying the woman and her actions, so please forgive me if it reads like a ramble.

I think it’s important to think objectively about things like this. If the story’s to be believed  — and really sometimes I wonder if such reports aren’t the results of some sort of press exaggeration or political axe to grind – I mean, why would someone who is apparently doing so well from benefits want to suddenly publicise themselves as a so-called ‘scrounger’ in such a blatant way? It doesn’t make any sense) — I think it highlights fundamental flaws in the benefits system rather than in those who use it.

The current political administration is very keen to stick the knife into the welfare state, and so any bad press involving things like Jobseekers Allowance, government pensions, the NHS or any other public service is leapt on and talked-up by that party’s supporting media. If a hospital window is dirty, we read that the NHS is hopeless and must be scrapped. If a parcel doesn’t arrive on time, it means our postal service is on its arse and needs to make way for a profit-making private delivery service. Government pensions are useless now, so get rid of them and make people work harder and longer, well into old age. And if a family takes advantage of the benefits that are at their disposal, they are labelled ‘scroungers’ in the press, vilified to the lowest point and turned into scapegoats who are running the country into the ground. It’s especially juicy if that family happens to have brown skin. If an ex-soldier somewhere in the country happens to have been given an eviction note that week, it’s happy days for everyone: the press gets a double-whammy of a story and the Tory party have another example of immigrants kicking war heroes out of house and home. Never mind that there is an ongoing international fiscal crisis happening throughout the Western world, the cause of which can largely be attributed to years of greed and myopia on behalf of politicians, businessmen and bankers, many of whom also “scrounge” off the system in their own parasitic ways – it’s much easier to point the blame at disparate examples of everyday people who just happen to have done well out of an admittedly flawed benefits system.

So yes, the system is flawed, but that doesn’t mean it should be scrapped altogether. The benefit system needs to be reinstated and fixed. It needs to be less about catching people out and more about helping those who require it. It needs to be less about simply handing out a fortnightly cheque to whoever asks for one, and more about helping and encouraging people back into work. I’ve been out of work before through no fault of my own and I was frankly appalled at how little help I received in getting back on my feet. The amount of money I received was paltry – I couldn’t keep a roof over my head and I’m still in debt from it several years after the fact. More importantly, the guidance I was given by the Job Centre was minimal-to-zero. In fact, I’d call it negative encouragement. All I had to do was write three names of jobs I’d applied for and they gave me my £80. There was no encouragement, no advice and I was treated like a second-class citizen – all because I’d lost my job at the hands of redundancy. The jobs they suggested to me were impossible to travel to and not at all in my skill set. I was also told that if I worked for anything more than 15 hours a week – even if that work was unpaid – I would lose all my benefits. What kind of a system is that to get people back into work? No wonder people stay unemployed for so long!

But it’s also important to remember that the benefits system is not only a good thing – it is ESSENTIAL to the country, particularly in this climate of mass unemployment. Not everyone who claims benefits is a scrounger. There are many long-term unemployed people who would LOVE to get a job, but for one reason or another (redundancy, disability, low employment in their area, a cyclical lack of confidence brought on by time out of work, or even a lack of knowledge about how to begin writing a decent CV or covering letter), they can’t. I actually think the woman in this story should be commended – commended for making an example of just how ridiculous this whole situation is. But sadly she will be held up as an example of why we should blame claimants for stealing off ‘hardworking families’ and demand that the benefits system be scrapped.

The system is flawed, but it’s also in this government’s interest to emphasise those flaws and so stories like this will be shimmied up the hype pipe for maximum shock and awe. Is it the government’s responsibility to get people back into work? Surely we’re all capable of finding jobs ourselves? It’s true – people are responsible for their own actions and situations to some extent, but it’s not always within their control. It is the government’s responsibility to keep the country running properly and that means more oil to the gears, more fuel to the fire. Most of the people I know are lucky enough to be relatively well educated and to live in an area where employment is still fairly robust. Go out to rural areas like Cumbria where there’s really hardly any work at all and you’ll get a different situation. Go to the inner cities where overpopulation, poverty and poor education standards are rife and you’ll get another. Are people really in charge of their own destinies? Can everyone make something of themselves through sheer grit and determination?

In a recession, if something is broken we make do and mend, we don’t throw it away – and that goes for the benefits system too. As long as there is a system, people will find ways to cheat it. People also cheat at football – that doesn’t mean we should ban the sport altogether, it means we must find ways to make it fairer and better.