An Area of Ingrained Waste

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, has been on a week-long finger-wagging tour in order to make sure the little folk are ready to take their medicine. Daveybloke took the opportunity to diagnose benefit fraudsters (Whitehall English for benefit claimants) as the cause of UK plc's malaise, and passionately disagreed that they might be an ineluctable market force like white-collar fraud or City bonuses or Lord Ashcroft. Daveybloke sermonised that "simply shrugging our shoulders at benefit fraud" (as the party of James "We're Closing In" Purnell has evidently been inclined to do) "is a luxury we can no longer afford". Payouts to shirkers and slackers who are not Boris Johnson or Michael Gove is "the one area of ingrained waste that outranks all others"; apparently we waste more on fraudulent benefit claims each year than on - to take a random example - PFI schemes to bribe companies with ex-ministers on their payroll to kill a few less rail passengers. Daveybloke, who by dint of hard work, persistence and some obliging relatives once went on a business training scheme for a year or two before going into public relations for the Conservative Party, compared broken Britain to a failing commercial enterprise: "when spending is rising, sales are falling and debt is mounting - you need someone to come in with energy, ideas and vision and take a series of logical steps". Failing that, you can always kick a few proles out of their jobs, threaten them with eviction from their homes and suggest that anyone who feels matters could do with improvement should simply pitch in for free.