Want to work instead of get benefits? That's a criminal offence!

This is a short blog to expand on a point I was making elsewhere.

One of my closest mates at my crappy comprehensive school had entered the school planning on being a doctor or surgeon - his primary school report said he was 'the perfect pupil' he had played cricket for the county juniors and was a top geezer. His family were as 'salt of the earth' as it is possible to be - rock solid working class grafters - running a newsagents/sweetshop with three teenage+ boys (he was the youngest) living above the shop - and with an outside toilet. Sleep overs (and even visiting for the evening) would be a revelation to many...

The crappy comprehensive we attended crushed any such expectations and leaving at 16 he became a bricklayer for British Rail...

Having lost touch I later heard (from his father who had become a cabbie who happened to get me as a fare) that my mate had been short of cash and had let the insurance on his motor bike lapse - he got caught by the police on the way to work and charged. He lost his licence. But he needed his motorbike to get to work so went on using it... eventually he got caught again and was 'done' for driving while banned, not having insurance etc...

Yes, I know 'its the law' and all that... but this was a young bloke trying to earn a living, a bloke with no interest in benefits, from a family that had no interest in benefits...

These events actually pre-date the Blair/Brown fiasco of a government, but I see the influences persist right thought to this day.

Relying on the state is 'easy' - but if you want to leave and be independent you need a massive escape velocity, because at every turn there will be people and institutions poised to take what you have earned so far, and throw you back down into the black hole of welfare dependency.