Britain has always harboured particularly vindictive attitudes and meted out, often disproportionately long sentences, for those who commit crimes against property. Sure, we lock away people who perpetrate crimes of violence. But, woe to he who would rob, for instance, the Royal Mail.
The Great Train Robbers were handed down sentences of thirty-years+ for having the temerity to rob the state. Yes I know that an innocent person, the driver of the train, was brutally beaten by one of the robbers; however, the sentencing wasn't a reflection of this deed, no it reflected their crime against property.
This propensity to give greater importance to property over the person obviously stems from the capitalist theology that permeates through all layers of society including the judiciary and penal system.
Thus, those that seek to cheat on benefits are bound to fall foul of a capitalist system that views their crimes as most pernicious. Forget that the perpetrator stooped to committing these heinous crimes in order to make ends meet. After all, what is the greater crime, allowing yourself or your dependants to starve, or making a few pounds extra from claiming benefits falsely - under our system the false claim is a far greater evil.
Even if we accept the twisted logic to which we're bound by capitalism; there is then the question of the greatest property crimes ever envisaged by man, tax cheating.
While benefits' cheats escape with less than £1bn annually (the DLA element of which is 0.5% [less than the 0.8% the DWP admits to making in error]), tax cheats are ripping us off for sums ranging from £70bn - £120bn annually.
Yet, if you look on sites such as fullfact.org and 'search' 'tax cheats', lo and behold in search results up pops issues around benefits fraud, http://fullfact.org/search/node/tax%20cheats. The natural default for the word 'cheat' on search engines throws up benefits' fraudsters.
One can only come to the conclusion that cheating on taxes is not a crime against capital, thus doesn't excite the wrath of Middle England which is far too preoccupied seeking out the feckless unemployed; hounding single mothers into dead-end jobs that force them to abandon their kids; or, hunting down disabled people who, on a good day, raised a smile and managed to potter around the garden, when they should have been lying prostrate practicing for the grave.
Tax cheats should be rounded up and pilloried for their crimes against society. By cheating HMRC out of scores upon scores of billions of pounds annually it is they who have driven this country into deficit. It is the actions of these greedy parasites who deny our children a decent education; it is their selfishness on an industrial scale that forces our elderly and disabled people to make life-threatening choices between eating or heating at this time of year; it is the rich City neo-lib tax cheat who has hoovered-up the resources from around the globe, for whom the world is not enough.
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