Back on the Bike

We woke up full of anticipation on Monday since two different people seemed to love our house so much they were about to compete with each other to buy it. Neither of them has been heard of since. I can only conclude that they are freaks who like looking around people's houses just to be nosey. Very frustrating.

Meanwhile I was back in the tribunal court today & although the results weren't as good as last week the experience was much more pleasant, the judge and doctor much friendlier and consequently the whole thing less of an ordeal for the claimants. The doctor doesn't like me very much (we had a fallout in the past) and will not pass the time of day with me but she has the right bedside manner with appellants and that's what matters. She's alright.

The media isn't as anti-claimant as it used to be. When New Labour were in opposition to the Con/Lib coalition anyone on benefit was considered fair game for abuse but these days they've tended to be nudged off the front page by politicians opposed to Brexit. Here's a funny story though:

Should you take the view, as I do, that the media frequently gets its facts wrong and also bends the truth occasionally in order to create an outraged reaction, the reporting of the life and times of one woman claimant from the Midlands in 2017 will cause you no surprise at all.

The Sun reported on 29 June that “Octomum scrounger” Marie Buchan, from Birmingham, “rakes in £37,000” a year. By the end of July Marie was reported to be buying a horse for £3,600 but her annual scrounging was now only making her £26,000 a year, as was the case again when she was revisited in August, although the horse was now a pony and cost her £200 rather than the original figure which had been exaggerated by a factor of 18. Just in case Marie, who is said, with a hint of irony, to be suffering from depression, should derive some from relief a lull in the Sun’s campaign against her, they returned with the same tale again in November.

Also in November, the Daily Mail reported a fact that had apparently escaped their rivals at the Sun when they informed their readers that Marie had undergone a hysterectomy because cancerous cells had been discovered in her womb. Her pony had now become a horse again and this time had cost £500 but been sold for £100 because she was too ill to ride him/her. Marie had been 33 in the Sun at the beginning of the year, and also in the Mail a year previously, but was now 36 years old. The Mail also claimed that Marie is a qualified mechanic but had refused to work in a garage because she considered herself too beautiful to do so, although one might think that being a single mother of eight children might count as a full time job in itself. She should actually exempt from having to sign on for benefits because, according to the photograph accompanying the story, one of her children is a babe in arms. If so, this is an exemption she shares with every other mother in the country who has a child under the age of 3.

Metro told its readers in July that the horse was costing Marie, or rather the taxpayer, £600. The Scottish Sun weighed in with a new estimate, stating that “the Brummie benefits scrounger” was paying £500 plus £140 for delivery after which the cost for stabling would be £70, although whether that was £70 per day, per week, per month or annually was not stated.  The Wolverhampton Express & Star claimed that “ex stripper” Marie had defended her decision to spend “thousands of pounds” on the animal and quoted James Price of the Taxpayers’ Alliance’s caustic comment that “taxpayers will rightly feel that they are the ones being taken for a ride.”

Previously, the Mail had reported that Marie is a former lap dancer. Whether it’s a fact that she used to be either a stripper, a lap dancer or both I couldn’t say; I certainly wouldn’t take the Mail’s word for it but the impression they intended to create about her character is obvious. The word they are too coy to print is tart. In 2016 the Sun had managed to get hold of pictures of her in her underwear; it’s tempting, although maybe a touch cynical, to think that they held off calling her a scrounger till after the cheeky photos had been published. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that they promised her an easier ride if she gave them the photos, and then reneged on the deal afterwards. If you doubt that they would behave in such an underhand manner, I recommend you read Dial M for Murdoch by Tom Watson & Martin Hickman (Allen Lane, 2012).

The Daily Star had a different take on Marie’s refusal to look for a garage job. In their report she was not beautiful but too sexy and was afraid that men might make unwanted advances to her, as she claimed had been the case when she had worked for one day a week in Droitwich. I must say that that sounds like a reasonable kind of fear to me. In 2016 they had reported that her boyfriend had dismissed suggestions that she was two-timing him with a young man I am personally acquainted with,  a fantasist who spends his time trying to feed made-up stories to the gutter press and daytime TV. Sadly, he is frequently successful, with the result that he has managed to appear on both Benefits Britain and Judge Rinder and in tabloid newspapers several times with his bizarre claims, including that he an actor, is autistic, has set up his own political party and wants to be Prime Minister. The lad in question reminds me, in looks, size and aspects of character, of David Bradley’s portrayal of Billy Casper in the film Kes, and I doubt very much that Ms Buchan would look in his direction twice.

If I ever see the little swine again I'd like to ask him for that £500 he owes me from 2 years ago. But for every Billy there is a Jud in the background so I'm pretty sure I'd not get it. A black eye would be more likely. 

Not surprisingly, Marie’s ubiquity in the press has caught the attention of the extreme right. A website calling itself Rightpedia has a page devoted to her, carrying a picture of her children and describing them as ugly mongrels. The text reads as follows:

Marie Buchan, like a large number of white people, hates their own race and works toward white genocide. Buchan, who lives in England, is a bleach-blonde mudshark who by 2013 had shat out eight mulatto spawn from different fathers of subhuman races, mainly negroes. She lives totally on welfare as the state pays her to pump out niglets. She has used her children as a means to evade eviction for non-payment of rent, have the government rid of her endless traffic tickets which she gets because she's so impatient and inconsiderate she drives in the bus lane all the time, In August 2014, she announced her plans to have two more mixed race children through surrogates.

The government of UK which wants to make sure there are no natives in the UK is paying her to reproduce. In 2015, she got £26,000 welfare a year which rose to £31,000 a year. In January 2017, she claimed that she had become a sex symbol and so she can't get a job as an auto mechanic and must keep getting welfare.

Perhaps we should be grateful to Rightpedia for spelling out the misogyny and racism which lies behind the press’s obsession with Marie Buchan and her children. At least their bigotry is blatant rather than being hidden behind concern for the hard working British taxpayer.

The Birmingham Mail’s Facebook page was inundated with criticism of Ms Buchan after she had appeared on the TV. It would soon become boring if I were to repeat the abuse that was typical of those expressions of outrage and, so, instead, here’s what a dissenting voice, Salman Mirza, had to say:

“Wow over 500 comments saying virtually the same thing ... blah blah. I hope she has more. I’d rather spend money looking after her kids and her than MPs’ jumped-up salaries, war and bailing out banks. These kids will grow up and who knows, may end up caring for some of you moaning predicable bell ends on this thread ... I hope they do a bad job as your carers.”

Whether Ms Buchan was working or not she would be entitled to Child Benefit at £20.70 for her eldest child and £13.70 for the rest. That amounts to approximately £114 per week, or, if you prefer, slightly under £6000 a year to which her unemployed or part-time employment status makes no difference. Maybe the Government had her in mind when they announced in the Spring of 2017 that henceforth Child Tax Credit would be limited to the first two children, a policy that introduced the infamous “rape clause.” If a new mother can prove that her third child resulted from her being raped she will not be penalised. How she is supposed to prove rape unless on the rare occasions where the perpetrator is found guilty and sent to prison I have no idea.

Housing Benefit is likely to make up the bulk of the rest of the £26,000, which was the limit allowed by the Benefits Cap introduced by the Coalition government, with the support of pre-Corbyn Labour opposition, till November 2016, when it was reduced to £23,000 for the single parents of Birmingham and everywhere else in the country outside London.  A Londoner in the same boat is allowed £24,000 a year. It doesn’t take a maths genius to calculate that someone paying the capital’s average rent of £665 a week will not receive enough benefit to pay the rent, never mind the other bills and expenses involved in keeping her family alive, clothed and fed.

It’s difficult to know what Marie Buchan could have done to satisfy the Daily Mail. When, in 2016, she had two part time jobs, in a garage and as a carer, the Mail still complained, on 19 May, that she would be entitled to Housing Benefit and that, with benefits and wages, her income would be £37,500 a year, which hardly seems a lot for a family of nine. They also illustrated the story with some pictures of her in a white T shirt with oily handprints over her breasts but I don’t know what that was all about.

What the papers fail to explain, in their tales of scroungers, rake-ins, handouts etc. is why Marie’s children should be made to suffer for the feckless lifestyle she is accused of enjoying. If her benefits were cut then her sons and daughters would have to manage without some of their basic needs being met because of something that is in no way their fault. They might then feel they have no option but to steal food from the local supermarket, in which case the Sun, Mail, Star &c would be the first to condemn them.

Obviously I accept that benefit fraud does exist. On 31 January 2018 at Truro Crown Court, Brian Matthews admitted to 15 years of dishonesty during which, using various false identities, he pretended to be quadriplegic in order to claim DLA, ESA/Incapacity Benefit and Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit. How he managed to get away with it for so long I can’t imagine, but I wouldn’t have agreed to represent him at his appeal, for sure. On the other hand, some perspective was provided by Government statistics reported in the Independent in November 2017, which revealed that benefit fraud cost the Exchequer £2 billion in 2016/7, but that the latest figures for tax avoidance and tax evasion, covering the year 2015/6, came in at £1.7 billion and £5.2 billion respectively. In other words, people not paying tax cost the country nearly 4 times as much as was lost to benefit fraud, and Mr Matthews on his own was responsible for £250,000 of that.  

On 12 August 2012 the Sun began a campaign under the headline HELP US STOP £1.5 BILLION BENEFIT SCROUNGERS, with a dedicated email address and telephone number. No doubt the hotline has been sizzling ever since. If you don’t like the cut of your neighbour’s jib, or have been dumped by your girl/boyfriend or someone’s cat keeps digging in your lawn, the hotline allows to you to be avenged instantly. One quick call is all it takes to guarantee inconvenience at best, misery at worst. The number is 020 7782 1340. What are you waiting for?