Features Lounge

Plans to pin photos of benefit cheats to lampposts

Be honest smokers, how many of you out there have looked at those pictures on cigarette packets time and time again as you reach for a crafty fag and totally ignored them?!  you've seen them so many times you don't even notice that they are there anymore do you and the fact of the matter is that they probably aren't going to stop you smoking anyway.

So why do the government think that pinning photos of benefit cheats to lampposts is going to stop people trying to diddle the system?

It is hoped that the scheme will help to curb the £192billion per year that Britain pays out on benefits (this includes £60million paid out in bogus disability claims and £10million paid out in false sickness benefits), but as those little warnings on cigarette packets have proved - if you want something bad enough you're probably going to do it anyway. Not only that but pasting benefit cheat mugshots onto lampposts is only ever going to start a whole world of trouble that will inevitably end up costing the tax payer even more.

Firstly of course, there's the cost of printing out pictures and sending some poor soul out in the rain to affix them to said lampposts. Not going to be cheap is it? We must however look at the bigger picture.

I for one detest those that play the welfare system, particularly because I was brought up to work hard for my money and work hard is what I do. At any given time since I've been 13 years old I've juggled a number of jobs to try to pay my way and I'd never claim for anything that I wasn't entitled 100% to - I'd certainly never fake a disability. There have been times when I've heard stories about people committing benefit fraud that I've simply wanted to drop kick their faces to the floor and stamp on their heads....particularly after a bad day at work! Obviously of course, I would never do this. I'll rant a little and then move on. I'd never start a fight because I'd never win one. I'm mild mannered and would never want to cause another person any harm no matter what they'd done.

But that's just me.

There are those out there who haven't the ability to control that red mist when it descends and picking out fraudsters is simply sending out an open invitation for violence, harassment and worse. Who then picks up the bill for the police time, the jail sentence....you see where I'm going with this?

We must also consider that while benefit fraud is dishonest, sickening, detestable and all those other words that mean really really bad, it is not however on the same scale as say, rape or paedophilia or murder. Rapists, paedophiles and murderers get protection under crazy human rights acts and yet those are the crimes that truly make your stomach turn. How can the government treat stealing - which probably won't tear families apart and devastate lives half as much as a rape or murder, no matter how utterly frustrating it is - worse than these other crimes? It almost seems to soften the severity of them.

I applaud the government for finally trying to do something about bogus benefit claims - it really is about time - but there are ways and means of going about tackling issues as big as this one and lamppost mugshots just simply isn't one of them.