Working your way out of poverty (and let's not use that word lightly, because there are some very successful people who came from literally nothing, which is a lot less than even the longest term unemployment benefit claimants have) to be able to purchase a few Royal Mail shares is a lot more admirable than not bothering.

It was another thread where Nick Gusset contested the assertion that the left are anti-business but there you go. If Delboy and Rodney had become millionaires most you lot would be calling them cnuts.

We all know that capitalism has highs and lows. If someone has worked and paid tax and then a low sweeps in and they are unemployed they should be afforded dignity rather than just a meal.

There is a growing case list of companies that take advantage of state handouts every bit as much as the scapegoated unemployed. If we have a decent welfare system based on contributions through work - like the one Maggie removed - then we can go back to the principle that while the sun shines people work and pay in to the welfare system and when it rains and global forces push up unemployment, then they take out.

The myth is that there is a large group of welfare claimants who are perpetually taking the piss. The truth is that work is less secure and lower paid and there is a large group of people claiming welfare because of poor wages (to subsidize good profits at the shareholder end) or experiencing intermittent bouts of unemployment.

I think that people who have shares in the railways who earn a dividend for investing in a company that is bailed out by the tax payer every year, are scrounging far more than anyone who doesn't want to work. Its the same with people who bought post office shares cheap and then quickly sold them. Its just a state handout to someone who has a bit of spare cash.

Because replacing people who are paid for a job with people who do it for free is a symptom of the problem.

The problem of cuts isn't resolved by 'free workers', that just encourages laying people off, and replacing them with cheap or free labour.

Work should be paid, and paid fairly. It shouldn't be cheap migrant labour to keep wages low, and it shouldn't be volunteers. People who work should be fairly rewarded for doing so, not racking up debts to make ends meet.

No one who works 40 hours a week should be in poverty.

Quite agree with that as well. This problem however has been created by pandering to the desire of corporate interests through the provision of cheap migrant labour. Whilst benefit payments are linked to the cost of living, wages aren't. As such welfare payments increased, wages didn't.

Cutting benefits isn't a solution - because it just creates more poorly paid workers. The only real solution is to ensure that wages paid by employers are directly linked to things like inflation or costs of living.

Cutting benefits will just create more poverty, given the maximum cap on benefits of 26,000 per annum amounts to just 1% of claimants. The problem has always been with the idea of a free market on wages.