Wednesday, May 09, 2007

We've Been Expecting You......


The funniest thing on the radio news yesterday was the story of thousands or millions of people who have been 'over-paid' tax credits.

For the uninitiated, tax credits are supposed to be a way of boosting low incomes when people start a family or if they have a family and don't make a lot of money.
They have resulted in an estimated 50% of the population relying on some form of government hand-out, ie of their own and other people's money.

Apparently there is 'incompetence' in the administration; many people received 'too much' money and now the government wants it back.
So a struggling father might now find that far from being helped, he now owes several thousand pounds of debt which he cannot possibly afford.

The point I wish to make is this; debt turns us into clients.
Owing the government money makes people into the government's bitches, sorry, clients, and leaves them totally at the mercy of the civil service(which takes £450 per year from each working adult in Britain to pay for it's pensions).
I want to ask: was this situation incompetence?
Or was it deliberate?

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