What can we do about it?

There is no doubt about it, a lot of the money that comes from taxes in the UK goes on providing people who don’t work with benefits. Recently the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, called for an end to a benefits culture, especially on council estates. He has unveiled proposals to give tenants who pay rent and make a positive contribution, help in buying a stake in their homes.

Mr Duncan Smith said he wanted to see a major overhaul in the housing policy to reward social housing tenants, who make a positive contribution and look for work. He was speaking on GMTV and he said the report aimed to change the aspirations of people living on estates. He said that social housing should be seen as part of a back-to-work process.

He feels that the Government of the country shouldn't lock people into benefits for life, because it takes away all incentive for people to seek work and change their lives. He wasn’t blaming the Labour Government either which was so refreshing and he said that all governments over the past 30 years were to blame for a benefits culture, in which children growing up on estates were less likely to see adults in work.

His remarks were made as his think tank, known as the Centre for Social Justice, abbreviated as (CSJ), set out a stark assessment of the decline of working class areas over the past half-century. It calls for an overhaul of housing policy to put an end to the cycle of destructive behaviour of poverty, family breakdown and crime on council estates which have deteriorated into ghettos. Most towns have these ghettos and usually they are plagued with crime, anti social behaviour and drugs; although as is usual, the crimes are caused by a small minority.

So, the CSJ’s proposals include new incentives to discourage social tenants getting into a downward spiral of benefits dependency; and jobless social housing tenants who try to find work, could be given an equity stake in their homes under the proposals in the report. There has to be some reward for working, as usually especially with people with large families, the benefits are more than people from socially deprived areas can earn.

The CSJ also calls on a future Conservative government to consider rewarding people who demonstrate a desire to get back on the path to self-sufficiency with stakes in their own homes. That could include people who pay their own rent, rather than relying on the state, and make contributions to the local community.

The overriding problem is that jobs are becoming so scarce; people from socially deprived areas might not have qualifications etc to get a job; especially those who have got themselves criminal records through one crime or another. Plus we manufacture so little in the UK in relation to the population and the only jobs that seem to be available nowadays, are those in local government or government sponsored charities etc who deal with social care. All of these jobs require qualifications that most of these people will not have. The sad thing is that most of the people will have born into this culture and they are suffering for the problems carried over from previous generations.

I’m afraid I can’t give the answer, so Good Luck Iain.