I work for a living. I always have and sometimes I'd rather not, but if I don't work I don't eat. Plus, the good old Protestant work ethic keeps my nose to the grindstone. It's how it is. One day I'd like to retire - at the moment that's looking increasingly unlikely. And unless I win the lottery I may will end my days doing increasingly menial work to subsidise a meagre pension.
I can turn my hand to pretty much anything. I can read and write and count, sometimes without even moving my lips. I can cook and clean and sew and fix things up; a wall, some shelves, a kitchen... I could easily self-build a house. I have even managed the allegedly impossible Ikea assembly methodology. A Jack of all trades and master of some. I'm not 'fortunate' I have striven throughout my life to acquire skills and knowledge and fully expect to keep on striving.
I loathe those who do nothing. Those whose existence is catered for by the rest of us. Those who no more need to get up on a Monday as on a Sunday. Those who, having a 'bad day' can simply stay in bed and shut out the world. They can pity themselves as much as they like, but if they're in the system it IS piss-easy living on benefits. We workers cannot just coast along - a life on welfare includes an abundance of one luxury we will never be able to afford; time.
In pursuit of a reliable income,I had to move in 2008. I spent the thick end of £20k making my little house safe and warm and clean and new, knowing it would need to be just so to rent to the private sector. I'm no Rackman; I have to rent down here and on balance it costs me considerably more each month than I receive. But that's the economy, which I fully accept.
After proposing just one, wholly unacceptable tenant, the letting agent mislaid my details, didn't market the property and some weeks after the move the house was still empty. I accepted the entreaty of my former neighbour who loved what I'd done to the place and let it out to her. She paid the rent and yes, she was in receipt of Housing Benefit. She looked after the place and three years on, when she found a council house, she proposed her sister to take over mine.
I didn't set out to be 'social landlord'. I don't have a string of shitty little sub-standard slums to exploit migrant workers and cynically extort from the public purse. I made no money whatsoever from the deal and in fact over four years I am out of pocket, even taking into consideration the partial coverage of my mortgage liabilities during that time. If I could have sold I would.
So why should I tolerate the taunts of the pissant little commie wanker who last night revealed the true extent of his blind hatred for anybody with a job who doesn't want to support a welfare economy? His argument? That is was hypocritical of me to slag off welfare dependees while simultaneously accepting the socialist shilling in the form of Housing Benefit. Bollocks.
How many workers despise the people they work for, while accepting their wages? How many taxi drivers are repulsed by the objectionable, drunken scum they depend on for their Friday night's takings? Should every hard-working business owner, shop keeper, doctor and bin man refuse to deal with 'clients' who don't directly earn their income, or with whose preferences they differ? I rented out my home because i couldn't afford to run two houses. They [sometimes] paid rent; it was a business arrangement that allowed me to continue paying taxes.
How they earn that rent is an entirely separate issue and I reserve the right, without hypocrisy, to find welfare dependency objectionable and many of its recipients sub-human scum. The state in which MY home was left gives me no cause to change my mind or alter my principles.
