Recently I saw a programme on television about benefit fraud. None of the people highlighted as being fraudsters had been prosecuted at the time of going on air. It was plainly evident that they were all long term fraudsters and the 'authorities' had been collecting evidence for some time.
Even though the frauds were painfully obvious, the authorities still felt unable to take the cases to court through lack of evidence. The overwhelming conclusions of the programme were: a) a fraudster was extremely unlikely to be caught/prosecuted; b) there are nowhere near enough investigators; c) benefit fraud is very difficult to prove; d) denial and lying are the best ways to ensure the fraudster will get away with it.
What does this have to do with politicians you ask? Both Labour and Conservative/Lib. Dem. politicians have said they would make it a priority to reduce benefit fraud. Well they are being very economic with the truth. Virtually nothing is being done to reduce benefit fraud because it is too expensive and time-consuming to be viable. But it does sound good if you state categorically that you will be doing something about it even though it's not true. It is what the great British public want to hear and it attracts votes, and for some bizarre reason we believe them!
There is of course another issue that doesn't help: incompetent management within Local Government. Most so-called managers would not last five minutes in private industry; they can't manage their way out of a paper-bag. Most are not interested in dealing with difficult issues that require management decisions and staff motivation - actually, most wouldn't even know what either of those involve!
So what is really being done about benefit fraud? As far as I can see, very little and with the current level of political clap-trap and management dis-interest very little is going to be done. So the naive majority of us will continue to pay our taxes largely because we are scared of the consequences of being caught doing something illegal. So really we have only ourselves to blame for all the money which goes to these nauseating parasites, particularly when we could all be doing it with an ever decreasing chance of being caught!
