Feckless?

Two blogs in a day? Excuse the excessive blogging. I must be on holiday. This is a response to a man I started a debate with in twitter. He was talking about benefits being wasted on the feckless. I said that I hoped the truly disabled were not included in this title.
This got me thinking. The people suffering some sort of disability are I think deserving of what ever the state can give them if they are unable to work. The feckless are different in that they may be unable to take care of themselves but that surely is a sort of disability too, either in lack of brain or motivation.
The ones who are labelled scroungers are the real problem for me. I used to believe they did not exist. that they were the products of a mean minded attitude towards anyone not capable of earning their own crust.
Unfortunately I have learned better. I now know of people who use the system and have learned how to bend the rules, sometimes even brag about it. Sometimes they have had a problem to start with, got recompense and then realized that if they played it the right way they could go on getting money from the state.
This just makes me angry. I know of people who have deliberately made themselves very fat in order to get a car. There are people who make a condition worse by not following medical advice. Over the last few years I've met several people in this category . Any attempt at getting money by false pretense is nothing short of stealing and it deprives those who are really needy of the support they rely on .
I do regard it as a privilege to pay my taxes. Taxing those who can afford it is a civilized society's way of looking after those who can't fend for themselves. But those who abuse that societies generosity put everyone else at risk.
Khalil Gibran put it well. " Work is love made visible. ". Yes.


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