Down with this sort of thing - benefit claimants, welfare queens etc.

Submitted by Daniel on Mon, 23/02/2009 - 10:32pm

I've put this forum topic in as a placeholder, and will move comments that derail discussions elsewhere on the site to this location. This seems a better solution than deleting comments altogether. Note that comments moved here will not appear in the 'latest comments' box in the left hand column.

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Submitted by intuition_stream on Mon, 23/02/2009 - 11:16pm.

i dont like that term welfare queens i have never come across it. Opposition to welfare to work doesnt make you a welfare queen. i think i am going to stop posting on this site. The government have not listened to criticism from experts made about fnd and w2w.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 24/02/2009 - 1:24pm.

I have heard of the term 'hanger queen'

Submitted by intuition_stream on Tue, 24/02/2009 - 1:39pm.

i have never heard of it. What does it mean? Which anonymous. Dont bother telling me i am not interested in what it means. i have had a productive morning and i am not interested in negative stuff.

Submitted by Donna (not verified) on Tue, 24/02/2009 - 2:33pm.

Welfare queen? I find that term highly offensive. Is he calling you gay?

Submitted by AnonymousMe (not verified) on Tue, 24/02/2009 - 2:57pm.

Apartheid

Submitted by Daniel on Wed, 25/02/2009 - 9:48am.

This discussion topic is a repository for comments that denigrate benefit claimants and benefit dependency, which will be moved out of wider discussion as they have no place there. It acts as a counterpart to the anti-welfare to work topic, which in turn holds offensive, repetitive or otherwise unconstructive comments advocating better welfare, lower conditionality, and the hanging/drawing/quartering of providers. Evidently some of the terminology would benefit from further explanation.

'Down with this sort of thing' is a phrase used in the popular 90s television show Father Ted, and implies poor quality or vague protestation.

For reference, 'welfare queen' was a 1980s / early 90s characterisation favoured by US Republicans, which took an example of a single mother who could afford a house and nice car on benefits and used it to argue that unemployment benefits were overly generous and encouraged idleness. It's roughly equivalent to the UK 'dole scrounger' in both offensiveness and lack of accuracy.

There are three amusing aspects to the comments in this topic thus far:

  1. Either of the two phrases above were handily explained by the very first result in Google for them. Jumping to the conclusions that welfare queen is racist or homophobic completely misses its true offensiveness, and betrays an ignorance of the history of welfare reform that is unfortunate if you're looking to engage in serious debate about its future
  2. There has to date been only one comment in the entire history of the website that would fit in this topic - a commenter some months ago told 'benefiters' they should get a job. While it's arguable that right-wing tabloids and many comments sections on other websites are prone to negative and unhelpful characterisations of the unemployed, all of the unhelpful and abusive content on this site is being posted by anti-welfare to work advocates
  3. Threatening to stop posting on the site only works if one's posts are adding to the level of debate in the first place. As feedback from various people has pointed out, posters need to be well structured, argued and concise, and not carpet bomb the entire site on a daily basis, if they're not going to just drive people away from discussions instead
Submitted by intuition_stream on Sun, 22/02/2009 - 1:42pm.

What chance do you have of getting another job? LOL