Vodka & Seledka 🇬🇧@seledka_vodka
Earlier today, I posted about overhearing someone in a café - enjoying a full English breakfast while complaining to the owner that their housing association wasn't fixing problems in their social housing fast enough. I implied that someone on benefits shouldn't be dining out. I want to clarify my position.
I fully and completely stand by it.
If you are getting paid not to work, I am paying for you. You are reaching into my pocket and taking money I earned and made available to the government as part of my obligation as a taxpayer. That creates an obligation on your end - to spend as little of that money as possible.
This is exactly the same standard I apply to government itself. Every public body, from the NHS to the council fixing potholes, owes the taxpayer the same duty: extract maximum value from the budget you're given. I see no reason why individuals receiving benefits should be held to a lower standard. They are spending someone else's money.
If you can afford to dine out, you should not be on benefits. You should not be in social housing. To me, that is a clear signal that you are receiving too much and abusing the system. I am not willing to fund someone's restaurant meals while also housing them.
Benefits and social housing are meant to be a bridge, not a destination. They exist to carry people through hardship until they can stand on their own. Social housing is temporary accommodation - it is not a home. At least, it shouldn’t be. The moment it stops being treated as temporary, the entire logic of the safety net collapses.
This brings me to the part people will call draconian. The moment public funds begin flowing into your bank account, you should expect zero privacy into your family's finances. That should be the deal - stated plainly, signed away upfront. You get the money. We, the taxpayers whose money you are spending, get full visibility into how it is spent.
Cash withdrawals should be disabled by default from any account receiving benefits. If cash is needed, invoices and receipts should be uploaded promptly. If they don't reconcile, if dates are wrong, if there is any suspicion of luxury spending or wrongdoing - benefits stop. Simple as that.
I know people will invoke human rights and privacy. My answer is equally simple. You take my money, I take your privacy. If you spend that money without taking the mickey, you have nothing to worry about. And I think a great many people would think twice about abusing the system if this contract were real.
Because here is the truth: if you are in genuine hardship and you know the money you are receiving belongs to someone else, you are not dining out. You are not buying luxuries. You are spending the bare minimum to keep yourself going until you find the next job and get off the benefits. That is what genuine hardship looks like.
There are plenty of countries in the world where this safety net does not exist at all - where individual families bear the entire burden, and where those without family simply fall. We should never become one of those countries. We should always help those facing hardship through no fault of their own. But the point of a safety net is that you bounce back. If you cling to it indefinitely, it becomes impossible for those of us maintaining it through our taxes to keep it standing.
For anyone facing genuine hardship, this system - this social contract - will work just fine. It is only a problem if you are abusing it. And that is exactly the point.
