Who Finds Time Conning?
Behind the dole door of Westminster that shows the number of unemployed, there is a bigger door that takes the flak which deploys an immeasurable poverty that has ‘New Labor’ written all over it. Working Family Credits is a tax that credits the poor with sums of cash, basically, credits are dished out to those people who know of the benefit system well. The actual number of families claiming this benefit is climbing. You may feel that in this climate the Tax system is in place to stop poverty, but alas I think differently.
The system is in-place to en-sure the growing poorest workers to vote Labor. This is a biggest social group sector, by handing out lolly-pop token policies to this group, Labor feels it has done enough for this social group to buy their vote. The estates which these demised lives have been embedded in has been long forgotten. Many of the developments have been left behind along with Labors Manifesto promise of 1997 to get to the routes for Labor supporters. That means this social group. In the UK false politics is breeding faster than visionaries, which has in turn brought misery and poverty to low paid workers who barely survive to support families.
Tax credits actually help employers to realize that they still can take the bottom out of the minimal wage. – Yes you can still pay illegal pay because the tax credit system is there to subsidize claimant’s lost income in economy daily baked bean and tinned Spam. This is still a benefit that the government installed purposefully to keep tabs on this social group and also make them reliant on the hand-outs. By incorporating another tier to the benefit system, this has allowed yet more opportunism into play such as fraud and multiple identity accounts by claimants who are hell-bent in taking advantage of the system.
On the other hand the system hits the pensioners terribly, especially as those who are asset rich, but cash poor. – These same people have already paid into their welfare already, but via casino style banking blunders and been sent out to the trash alley; they are worthy for pension credits but cannot reap the rewards nor want to. The government has failed the growing numbers of pensioners. It is like a zoo Keeper showing the carrot to a starving Parrot and then throwing it to the vultures.
The word ‘Credit’ to me also makes me snicker, because the term itself is used endlessly in the private sector for completely different parables. – Westminster’s term usage themselves, for a benefit assisted system is proof that they have been seduced by the ‘credit culture’. This is also reality as they’re spending to get ourselves out of recession, which baffles Mervin King the BoE Chief. Buying the UK out of the recession certainly derives from what the ‘credit culture’ has left us.
What I can’t relate to is the ample of public expenses going overseas, such as the EU membership and the ‘War on Terror’ and tax credit revenue going off to Eastern Europe to impoverish families in Poland – which in comparison to WFTC is astronomical, even with all the fraud, the public purse should make other expenditure cuts elsewhere without cutting the poorest workers with yet more bewildering cuts in benefits. Not that I’m a fan of WFTC, as it is administered un-fairly and caters for the benefit dependency life-style.
You may not be surprised that nearly 90% of one parent families actually are able to claim for this benefit, yet the statistics show many one parent families do not know or even have an inkling of what is available to them. The governmental system of producing information on WFTC is extremely slack. The mandatory ‘Tax Credit Deadline’ for the 31-07-09 TV advert is the only means of recognition that something exists, but too many ‘it goes above their heads’. Not that they are unable to understand it, but many one parent families don’t know the fundamental facts and like many people I’ve encountered, do not wish to consider filling in complex forms.
The other tail of two cities is the increasing number of duo co- habitable people, both working and also claiming WFTC. The reason the system allows this is due to lack of enforcement officers, combing districts and checking for signs of people co-habiting. Plus the increase of multiple accounts linked to same family members, who change their addresses, just like the MP’s do at a whim; in a similar flipping mechanism that toys with fraud that is a guaranteed prosecution, unless you are a Member of Parliament. After just one month of stating that the laws will be strictly regulated.
MP’s themselves determine whether regulation is required. It is about as useless as handing a jail-bird his own cell keys. So you can claim that what is bred in Westminster it is also allowed in UK’s inner society where even Police do not venture into, without a huge back-up team. The inland Revenue also take the same stance when credit is wrongly worked out and then the claimant is given 28 days to pay back the over payment of WFTC, otherwise interest will be added. For many poor people who are legitimate claimants that is a big ask, and also very stressful.
The Inland Revenue appears to handle the situation very heavily initially, all because some docile pen-pusher in the IR Office was off on a particular day so the forms were not formatted in time. The left arm doesn’t talk to the right arm, and we are in a ‘quick-fire’ digital world whereby communications is as simple as a click of a mouse. Basically, the Inland Revenue works via a last Century part paper-based document format, that is pre-historic as is the staff that time watch and have as much Customer Care ability as a Nigerian Credit Card fraudster who sends bogus phishing emails to their unsuspecting victims claiming to be from Barclays. The TV hit show ‘The FoneJacker’ depicts it superbly.
WFTC reeks of systematic errors along with mass fraud, but comparing it to other matters that cost even more public money; I prefer the law makers to re-invent a banking system, that doesn’t reward fraud, by chasing the ‘real fraudsters who hide in Tax Havens – At present the pen-pushing Inland Revenue staff are up against a huge tide of unsustainable systematic avalanche of fraud. Which our corrupt policy makers and Bureaucrats have taught inner-city England.
The real truth about ‘New Labors’ WFTC is that over the years the allowance has not gone up with inflation nor is even parable to increase of earnings in any of the working sectors ‘public’ or ‘private’. What has happened now is; what was supposedly ‘New Labor’s’ ‘Get out of Jail Card’ is potentially it’s nemesis. The biggest mistake now is if Westminster after their well-earned breaks of ‘feeding their ducks, in a public funded Duck-house’ or ‘working out ways of yet more property flipping’; are going to make huge cuts in schemes such as WFTC. If, matters do take that shape, the true unemployment figure will be unearthed.