Thoughts from an apparent scrounger

At breakfast time today I heard an interview with that Osborne man, you know the one, he lives in cloud cuckoo land. You know the place where everyone is fit and well, working hard, looking after themselves and their families with no assistance from anyone. These people are bright and ambitious and pay taxes and do their bit for this country.

What about the bankers who brought this country to its knees?

What about the MPs with their fraudulent claims for expenses?

What about the companies we allow to trade here paying next to nothing in tax?

What about the immigrant’s we allow into the country, give them benefits and homes?

What about the billions we give away each year to countries where they don’t chose to look after their own.

But no, the big bad, despicable, nasty, lazy, people  draining the life out of this country are those who do not work and claim benefit.

While I accept their will always be people who play the system, what about the majority of people, those who through no fault of their own are unable to work? I am one of those people. I worked Friday nights and Saturday night’s washing dishes in the local Wimpy bar, and all day Saturday in Woolies, as soon as I was old enough, this was so I could go on school trips. I left school at 18 and apart from a break when I was recovering from serious spine surgery; I have never been out of work. When I was ready to go back to work after recovering from the surgery, I signed up to retrain and learn skills to enable me to have more choices when I went looking for a job. I learned all they had to offer and went on to run the training centre till they closed down. It was a very short time before I got another job, it was 1994. I stayed with this firm, in its various guises, despite suffering from a long term chronic disease, and various other health issues, till I retired.

The last stage of my employment was after a merger and the new premises were a considerable distance from where I live, the conditions were dreadful for me. It was quickly apparent that those in charge were mainly not from my side of the merger and did not care to have a woman in her 50's with health issues – despite a sickness record which could stand up for comparison to any one they might choose. Life was made difficult,, intolerable. With the additional stress I ended up having to go off sick and find out how to go about retiring early because of my health issues.

I did finally manage to get it all sorted and retired early (4 years before my state pension was due to begin). I pay tax on my small pension, and now that my state pension has started I will pay more. I receive DLA, as I qualify; yet this morning I hear that my neighbours who are 'go getting' and working will have  apparently been looking down on me, during those 4 years as I lay in my bed when they were setting off for work! The fact that I was laying my bed was because I had not yet managed to get out of it, because of the pain and stiffness, was of no concern. I assume I was thought of as leaching off the state, I was partly responsible for bringing the country to its knees, I have let the side down, I am worthless, invisible, beyond contempt.

I pay tax, I have paid tax all my life, now I have no real life, I rarely leave my home, I certainly have no social life, I have not been out to the cinema, a meal in the evening, in fact I cannot remember when I was last out in the evening. Had a holiday, partly because of lack of confidence due to my mobility, difficulty in being comfortable and being a nuisance , and because I would need to take taxis and this all adds to the cost, sadly I am certainly not living the easy life. I have barely enough to live on. I have some savings and some money from the lump sum part of my pension (being 4 years early very much less than I would have had if I retired at the full time). This is all being spent on getting my home made safe for me, making it as easy as possible for me to maintain – yet I am sure there will be those questioning how I am able to do all the work I am doing – because I am using money I earned that’s how, and because I spend the vast majority of my time in my home.

It is a desperate situation when people like me, every day, are being put through the inquisition to enable them to get benefits - that there are people walking miles to get a  hand out of food as they are starving -  that elderly are dying in their homes as they cannot afford to eat or heat their homes properly. This is 2012, people starving, freezing, dying because they are treated as the lowest of the low, that man Osborne saying we are despised…..oh wait….is that the plan, kill us off or make life so bloody unendurable that we take our own??? I f so, give yourself  a pat on the back Osborne – you are succeeding. I hope you can sleep at night, as many many people cannot.