According to pretend farmer (he became a farmer to avoid inheritance tax) and newspaper polemicist Jeremy Clarkson, those of us on state benefits should be forced to write a genuine thank you email to a random worker every week. He says it should read: “It is SO kind of you to go to work every day so that I don’t have to. Thanks to you I was able to buy an even bigger television this week,” he said. Ha ha! Good old Jezza, multimillionaire man of the people. He’s so funny and what’s more you just know that behind the harmless joke that everyone on benefits is a bone idle shirker, you know he 100% means it. As a benefit claimant, which random worker shall I sent my email to?
“Wait“, you ask. “You are on benefits? I thought you had simply retired from full-time work 14 years ago. You’re a benefits scrounger too?” The honest answer to that is that yes I am. I am a benefit claimant.
The state benefit I claim is known as the state retirement pension. I know a lot of my fellow doddery old pensioners are a little touchy about being referred to as benefit claimants but that is literally what we are. The state pension is, to all intents and purposes the ultimate state benefit. It is largely, though not solely, a contributory benefit to which we are entitled by way of paying National Insurance Contributions during our working lives. Some of us are sensitive about being referred to as benefit claimants because of the way state benefits are framed by the ugly right-wing political parties and of course the right-wing media, which is of course most of the media these days. But the idea that old folk have that somehow there is this state pension pot we have paid into that we are simply getting back is delusional. There is no pension pot. While we did pay in for our pensions, the money we actually get is paid for by today’s taxpayers.
So, maybe the 13.2 million state pensioners should be writing to a random worker – for the sake of argument, let’s call him Jeremy Clarkson – to thank him for working so we don’t have to? Personally, I am not inclined to do this and neither should anyone else.
There is no doubt in my mind that the benefits system needs reform. I say that on the basis of knowledge and experience I have accrued working for the Department for Work and Pensions over nearly 40 years. I happen to believe that the current system has abandoned hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people who could do some kind of paid work, but because of bureaucratic and practical obstacles placed in their way they feel they are unable to fulfil their potential. Undoubtedly, there are those who have settled for a life on benefits, the rates of which are far from generous, by the way, but I cannot accept that they are all scroungers. My experience, enhanced by years of volunteering in a food bank, is that very few people on benefits live anything other than frugal, often miserable, lives. Powerful bullies like Clarkson help no one by belittling people with nothing, or next to nothing. Bullies punch down. Why not punch up against a system that works against the poor and sick? I guess that kind of thing attracts less readers?
Given that the vast majority of people who buy newspapers are pensioners, or about to become pensioners, I wonder how they feel about being called upon to write letters of thanks to those who are still in work? The elderly person with dementia in a care home? The person suffering from terminal cancer? Those with Huntingdon’s and MND, perhaps? Clarkson didn’t differentiate when making his comments. Maybe, like his friends on the right like Nigel Farage, he believes that the state should step aside and allow people, especially those with no legs, to stand on their own two feet? But that’s what happens when you are a powerful, populist ‘personality’ who makes a very good living by peddling hate because – let us make no mistake – attacking everyone on benefits is a version of hate speech.
I have decided not to write a letter of thanks to anyone, even the sainted Clarkson, for the state benefits I enjoy. Neither will I be writing to thank him, or anyone else, for the small state benefits my mum and stepfather received when they were dying, in the case of my mum in great pain and my stepdad as his life ground to a shocking conclusion by way of the heady combination of Parkinson’s and dementia. Neither claimed a penny during their working lives, not even my mum, who brought me up in poverty, some days going without food so I didn’t have to, but increasingly infirm in old age, they had no choice. That’s how stupid the levels of ‘debate’ have become on the subject of social security benefits. And why blanket criticism of anyone who is on benefits is frankly so disgusting.
In the past, I was able to put Clarkson’s more extreme and provocative behaviour to one side and enjoy his shows Top Gear, The Grand Tour and more recently Clarkson’s farm. No more. I’m no cry-baby snowflake but frankly my heart is simply no longer in it. I’ve really enjoyed Clarkson’s Farm and it’s not as if I have made a conscious decision not to watch it when I actually rather want to, but for now, at least, I’m giving it a wide berth, as well as everything and anything else he does.
Ironically, Clarkson himself is about to become a benefit claimant himself given his age (66). Perhaps he too should send thank you letters to everyone who is working to top up his vast income which will now include his retirement pension?
