Myth 1: ‘They’ are lazy and don’t want to work Amanda* says: “My husband worked for many years when our two children were young. I too worked part-time. In 1998, I became ill with a long-term and life-threatening heart condition. Due to the stress, my husband had a nervous breakdown. He still has depression and anxiety to this day. That greatly impacts on his quality of life and ability to work (his condition varies in severity on a day to day basis).” “Currently, apart from being a carer to my husband, I have trained and qualified as a counsellor, and currently work voluntarily within a local mental health charity. I also am a befriender to a person with mental health issues, within the same service provider. I have also applied to volunteer at a local foodbank. My point being, is that I believe ‘I give back’ to society. I do not sleep in until 2pm and mooch around in my pyjamas watching Jeremy Kyle as the media portrays.” * Not her real name. Case study provided by The Anti-Bedroom Tax Campaign www.facebook.com/#!/groups/antibedroomtax/
There has been a resurgence of the idea that many of the UK’s poor have a ’culture of worklessness‘, implying that worklessness is a state of mind, along with a new affliction called ’welfare dependency‘, portraying the benefit claimant as a perpetual child forever taking from the parent state. The idea of a culture of worklessness bears the hallmarks of the age-old prejudice that the poor are poor because they are lazy. In 1753 John Wesley said, “So wickedly, devilishly false is that common objection, ‘They are poor, only because they are idle’.” History points to Wesley being correct then, the evidence points to Wesley being correct now.
‘Poverty only affects those who are old or don’t work’ The perception that most people in poverty owe
In the last 20 years the proportion of pensioners
their situation to laziness runs counter to the most basic of facts. The majority of families that live in poverty do so despite being in employment. Excluding pensioners, there are 6.1 million people in families in work living in poverty compared with 5.1 million people in poverty from workless households.
living in poverty has more than halved: in 1991 they were the age group most likely to experience poverty. Now 16% of pensioners live in poverty, which makes them the age group least likely to experience poverty. This welcome decrease in the pensioner poverty rate has been achieved in large part by substantial increases in welfare spending on that group.
The bottom end of the UK labour market is characterised by a large number of people (1.4 million) who work fewer hours than they would want, and a large turnover of people moving from an insecure low-paid job with minimal employment rights to unemployment and back again.
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