Subject:  No ambition for kids in a country which punishes success.

Date:  Tue 26 August 2009

Dear justice4victims.org

Is it any wonder that many of the teenagers in this country finish education (or don't) with little more ambition than gaining recognition (Re: "A generation of attention seekers" - 7 Jun 09).  We live in an extremely mediocre culture, in which individuals become celebrities for achieving so little, and in some cases nothing at all.  What we do recognize as talent in music, literature, pop culture etc. is now so average it would have been considered mediocre by past standards.

I agree with Ms. Mott completely that the general ambition of this generation is celebrity, and would like to offer an answer to her question of why.

The fact is we live in a country which blatantly rewards idleness and scrounging whilst simultaneously penalizing hard-work.  Many young school-leavers (most notably pregnant girls) know they are literally better off financially claiming handouts than working.  When a young person or couple who are both in full-time employment concede to the reality that they are better off living on benefits, and the state continues to endorse syndromes and conditions with disability allowances to permanently justify their choice, what kind of message does this give to their kids?

Many of the young mothers-to-be do not want to raise their children, but see them as a convenient way to be housed for free then kept in every way for life; for many this becomes the only ambition they have.  The willingness of this society to submit to that decision is a huge mistake.  I do not subscribe to the Human Rights position that we have a duty to support these people - like Mr. Matthews of Finchley (Re: "Amend Children's Act Section 20" - 30 May 09), I fully support the view that people have an obligation to support their own children; I believe unhesitantly that if we as a state stopped offering these housing and money incentives in the first place and informed teenagers that they were responsible for bringing up their own kids, they would simply stop getting pregnant in huge numbers.  This, I believe, would happen instantly.

Of course, I am aware this vision is pure fantasy because Human Rights is an irreversible development, so in my bitter futility will just say this piece: THE CREATION OF AN INDISCRIMINATE WELFARE SYSTEM COULD BE THE WORST THING EVER TO HAPPEN IN THE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY, and I would suggest possibly all of the social problems we live with in Britain have their roots firmly embedded in it. 

Ms. Mott, in such a culture as this, where people can choose to spend their lives out of work, what other ambition is there but to be recognized, even if for the wrong reasons?  Professionalism?  Success?

Does this country reward professionalism, success and hard work?  Undoubtedly not.  Professionals who have reached a certain level of their career now find themselves walloped by a new 50% tax rate "to pay for the poor".  The cost of education, dentistry, prescriptions, property prices, fuel and utilities are higher than ever, while those that choose not to work recevie most of this for free!  Additionally, to virtually ensure the continuation of this culture into the next generation, the kids of the unemployed are now given explicit educational advantage over those of the successful, for no apparently fair reason.  Our own government appears to bemaon the "unfair advantage" of the wealthy over the poor, with little regard for the hard work which made the wealthy wealthy.

And its not just professional workers who are being penalized.  The average full-time employed person may be struggling himself to stay above water and find himself forced into taking an extra job; does he get rewarded for this?  No!  Staggeringly, he gets punished by an even higher rate of tax on his second job than on the first.  Additionally, it may be necessary for him to borrow from the bank just to support his family.  Is he himself not "the poor" then?  When "the poor" are more solvent than the working classes, something is paradoxically wrong.

It seems that one half of the population of this country is now working its fingers to the bone paying for the other half which simply chooses not to; the more one achieves professionally, the more one is punished.  Meanwhile thousands upon thousands of new homes are today being built right in front of our noses with our own money, to be given to social housing.  I don't know about your other readers, but as a lower-income working professional, I find this truly sickening, and it even makes me question the wisdom of my choice compared to theirs.

Is it any wonder that this generation, which is characterized by a lack of self-respect and dignity, aspires to the easy path?  There are no rewards for achievement in this country, though perhaps some for achieving slight celebrity, albeit on one's own housing estate.  Simultaneously, the rewards for choosing not to work and live free off the state are infinite, thanks to the evolvement of Human Rights culture.

I can tell you this, justice4victims.org: if Ms Mott is right and violent crime is a form of attention-seeking behaviour, you will never achieve your dream of preventing violent crime.  Its roots, I'm afraid, like most of this country's social problems, are too firmly embedded in the welfare state.

Matt McAvoy

Exeter

justice4victims.org