Welfare State

A week back at work and Christmas seems a long time ago.

January is a depressing month and this  January is no exception although, aided by the  wet and mild weather,  it  feels more like early October than the middle of winter. But cold weather is on its way apparently.

Cold winds have started to blow through the lives of our tenants already. Although I doubt many of them have been affected by the changes to Child Benefit payments, the working minority will be affected by the change to Child Tax credits. Those affected that aren’t working and those that are in low paid part time employment have a reprieve until April when the under occupation charge( bedroom tax) starts.

We have completed 20% of the visits needed to inform people of this change and I have written about this before here. Post-Christmas, as I suspected, it is  a slightly more hostile reception as it now seems more real.

Overall though the reaction has been acceptance and in a majority of cases agreement that something needs to be done to curtail the reach of the welfare State, and these are the people affected by the changes. False consciousness? Perhaps.

My own view, cynical though it is by years of exposure to  people who have manipulated, lied and cheated their way through the benefit system, is that something had to give. With or without the recession we have allowed a dependency culture in some parts of society and an" its ok if you can get away with it" culture in all parts of society ( in my mind the two are linked).

The last Government fostered  this and they were well intentioned but they are/were an elite that that has literally no experience of how ordinary people live, work and react.