[DanaC]

She is scum, yes. She deserves to be punished, yes. Though, if people have a problem with their tax money paying to support people like her then it's worth noting that prison costs a hell of a lot more than unemployment benefits.

My point, rather clumsily made I admit, is that this statement: 'So we taxpayers are maintaining scum like this'. Draws on a false divide. Most people on benefits aren't like her, they're like 'us'. In fact, they are us. They're our relatives and friends, and occasionally ourselves. Most people on the dole are there temporarily. Either side of that claim they are tax payers. Do they stop being 'them' and start being 'us'? When someone loses a job they've worked in for ten years are they no longer 'us', have they become 'them'?

'We taxpayers' are not supporting 'scum like her'. That suggests a whole class of people just like her. It suggests that she is somehow representative of those on unemployment benefits. She is not. She is an aberration.

Had she been seventeen and still in receipt of child benefits nobody would have made this statement: 'So we taxpayers are maintaining scum like this.'

Likewise had she been in low paid work topped up by tax credits. Nor indeed, had she been in university with her course heavily subsidized by the public purse.

Her status as unemployed is irrelevant. We are not supporting 'people like her'. 'We taxpayers' are supporting people like me and you.