Friday 28 March 2014

"Crackdown on Wasted Welfare" - ACA

A Currant Affair, that bastion of tabloid TV entertainment journalism, has had a report last night entitled "Wasted Welfare". Here it is:


Apparently there's going to be a "crackdown" on people who "fritter away" their welfare payments. Eureka! Let's just tell everyone how to spend their money? 

It's actually a good service for people who genuinely need such intervention and who decide themselves to use the service. But the idea of a blanket system like that across all welfare payments is an affront on the integrity and capacity of sick people to manage their own lives. Yes, people can have problems and the services are there to help them, but we're not all alcoholic chain smoking fuckwits. Many times in fact ill people will cherish their ability and capacity to control their own money, as it can be one of the few things left that they can control. To rob people of that capacity is to strip them of their pride.

How would Gina react for instance, if the gov suddenly announced that they were going to tell her how to spend her money?  

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