Now Mr Gumooschmitd and his dynamo son, serve as a genuine, living analogy for the British benefits charity system. When his son, aged 42, became unemployed 80 year old Mr Gumooshmitd came in to help his son make a benefit claim. On the return visit the son did not even come along, just his dad. Now apparently, his son had been made unemployed because his employer was wanting someone with a more ‘go-getting’ attitude. On the second visit I asked Mr Gumooshmitd whether he thought sorting the benefit application for his adult son was going to help him develop a ‘go-getting’ spirit that would impress future employers, I told him directly that he would be helping his son more by leaving him to make his own benefit enquiries. That recommendation was met by a blank look. The next day Mr Gumooschmitd returned, again without his son.

I am somewhat reminded of baby-bouncers, a child in elastic reigns suspended in the middle of a door way, so that they can bounce up and down without getting into any harm, while mother is doing a little housework. In short, the benefit system encourages reliance; I believe in a welfare state, but a welfare state that helps people to help themselves, unfortunately the benefit system excuses self-irresponsibility rather than re-educating self-irresponsibility.

Talking of Eastern Europeans, now, I wouldn’t want to be insulting and say that an Eastern European equivalent of trailer trash came into the office today with his landlord to query his benefit, because some readers may misunderstand and think that I am criticising all Eastern Europeans, which is certainly not the case.

Anyway, this Eastern European man, whose country of origin I will not elucidate upon, came into the office with his landlord to query his benefit. The problem in a nutshell:

He works the usual 16 hours, as do most of our claimants - enough hours to ensure that they don’t have to visit the Job Centre every fortnight to report on how many jobs they have applied for, but not too many hours that they can’t get any benefits - also, he receives tax credits to top up his income. Now, because his income from his 16 hour job combined with tax credits was quite high, our calculations showed that he could afford to pay some of his rent out of his earnings. Housing benefit would contribute towards his rent, but this claimant would have to pay the rest and he didn’t like that, and nor did his landlord, because the landlord was only receiving the value of the claimant's housing benefit and hence the claimant was not paying him his share of the full value of the rent for the home.

He sat there with a look on his face that I know well, a defiant glare, which when verbalised says, ‘I want what those people have.’ First he tried negotiating with my colleague, attempting to appeal to her better nature in order to receive more benefit; eventually the penny dropped and he realised that we could only pay the amount that the benefit regulations say we should pay, and so he turned to his landlord and said, “I’m not giving you a penny of it, try and evict me if you don’t like it!”

That was the moment that the landlord realised just how big a mistake he had made in his choice of tenants - the last drop of wax was burnt and the candle flame disappeared into a puff of smoke, all hope was extinguished from this landlords eyes.

Tales from Swedish Iraq or Iraqish Swede, ...

Tales from Swedish Iraq or Iraqish Swede, and, oh what a bunch of turnips we must be.

Today, an Iraqi born, Swedish person … Actually, let me start from the beginning:

A Little History

• ‘The Iraqi embassy in Stockholm has issued thousands of passports based on false information, Swedish immigration officials have said.' www.BBC.co.ukWednesday, 31 January 2007

Now I can’t be certain, but perhaps this is related to the fact that an observable proportion of people claiming benefits at the office where I work, are Iraqi born Swedish nationals.

Anyhow, that is not the problem, if they had come directly to the UK, not bothering with Sweden, sooner or later they would have been given British Nationality; however, what I do not understand is the sheer contempt that they display towards us when they are claiming benefit - I was always against the Iraq war, perhaps I was wrong.

Back to the Present Time

• ‘In Sweden, they took 40 thousand Iraqi claims for benefit at the same time; and all of them were assessed within one day. You have taken over 3 months, and still I haven’t received any benefit,’ said my claimant with great annoyance (or perfectly acted annoyance.)

Well, it is good to see that we have so far made all the right decisions on at least one person’s claim, but I fear that sooner or later he will get all the money he wants, and when his children have grown up, and got their western education, he will move back to Iraq. Most asylum seekers, whose claims that I have dealt with, move freely back and forth to their homeland once they have secured their permanent leave to remain in the west and hence their slice of western wealth - which I understand, but I only wish it were the wealthy western business-people that they would take it from, and not us struggling tax payers, who are not due to retire until we are 70 because the national insurance system cannot cope with all the handouts that are being demanded.

Each day something happens, I feel like a galley slave waiting for the whip to fall on my back again after again; but what was my crime, when was my trial?

A man sits opposite me, he has just moved to the UK two months ago and is getting in to the cut and thrust of neo-British life by making his first benefit claim.

‘Do you have a worker’s registration card?’ I ask.

‘Yes, but I don’t have it with me, ‘ he replies.

‘I will need to see it,’ I say.

‘Why do you need to see it?’ he enquires.

‘I need to establish that you have a right to reside and claim benefits before I can assess your benefit claim,’ I reply.

‘But I am an EU citizen, of course I have the right to claim benefits in this country,’ he responds with an indignant confidence, which leaves me questioning whether or not I am being unreasonable when I try to establish the rights of a person that is claiming benefits from an economy that they are yet to contribute towards.

I am so looking forward to working until I am 70; as we have been told, the welfare state cannot support us now that we are living so long, particularly since all our national insurance contributions are going straight into the pockets of those that do not add to our economy.

End of rant.

Just Painting a Picture

Take your savings out of the bank, walk up to a blind man holding a charity tin, head-butt him, turn and throw your savings into the nearest bin; we have a National Insurance System.

‘Housing benefit payments will soar by 15 per cent to £20.8 billion over the next year.’ Daily Express, 4th january 2010.

Why am I quoting this?

My name is Blob, I work for a benefit organisation, following the regulations set by our members of parliament. Day in day out I refuse benefit applications from people that have worked their whole life and fallen upon hard times, and I accept benefit applications from people that have never paid a penny in tax to this country. And why?

You might justifiably think that I was some kind of twisted bureaucrat,a Sir Humprey Appleby on acid, yet the opposite is true. Perhaps you should ask your MP for the answer to that question, I just follow the rules that they set in order to appeal to the widest selection of voters. We all have to earn a living, particularly now that we are having to pay for those that don't want to work and those who are too busy procreating to work.

I am sickened by my job, I would quit but there is no national insurance system to help me out when times are hard, because I have made the mistake of trying to support myself.

Please read my blog, where weekly, I will try to update you with some of the gob smacking things that I see, hear and do.

Today, with a benefit claimant who works only 16 hours a week – just like 50% of my claimant’s, allowing the tax credits and housing benefit systems to fund his family with a wife and two children, my colleague commented on this person’s job of only 16 hours and the man said, ‘the company I work for won’t employ any person for more than 16 hours, because otherwise they will have to pay taxes through the PAYE system, which would require additional book-keeping expense.’ In short, we have to pay benefit to people, because their employers want to save the expense of taking on full time earners. There is a culture developing, amongst certain people, who plan to live in a manner permanently funded by benefits.