Banging on in the style of Caitlin Moran with lots of love and some bad puns
As someone open about growing up on benefits and a great advocate for paying taxes, Moran really just gets ‘doing your bit’. It isn’t hard – you aren’t “put upon” as Boris Johnson’s out-of-date-as-soon-as-it-was-published 2013 article suggests, and to fill out a few forms every month should be seen as a duty that we have to other members of our society that are less able to make a living (but Moran that later). Tax avoidance is, as Moran puts it, the c*** test – if you are willing to sacrifice morals for money, then by all means go ahead … but don’t expect my tiny violin to play because you got bored by your third private jet.
Living on benefits is painted as a tragedy – in her article for The Times, Moran laments how those on ‘Benefits Street’, one of the very few depictions of its kind in the media, are portrayed “like animals”, never given any philosophies, political stances or individual personalities of any kind, merely shuffling about from one breadline to the next. Benefits allow those less fortunate to succeed, evening the playing field and paving the way for new talent in the British industries. ‘Those less fortunate’ smacks of a waffling Victorian patron, someone who might also while away the hours colonising America or being fitted for hats in the Strand, but it encompasses everyone – single parents struggling after divorce or bereavement, the elderly with no-one to look after them, a child just learning to read – people who you’ll never meet, but whose lives you have the power to transform.
Maybe one kid in ten spends an extra pound of their travel bursary on a chocolate bar every now and again – when you, at age 17, are the carer of a paralysed parent, life becomes about the simpler pleasures. If you support the unemployed being taxed to ‘incentivise’ them to get off their arse and get a job (because its that simple), then you should be totally behind taxing the richest 1% to ‘incentivise’ them to have compassion for others. If you still think that your hard-earned money is going to waste on these people, then perhaps consider changing who looks after it – the middle man, the government, not how much you pay.
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