Sue has it back to front

About the welfare system Sue Bradford said yesterday,"Those in need deserve the dignity of having enough to live on so they can participate fully in society without being treated as second class citizens by the department whose job it is to serve them....The Green Party would ...start again with a much simpler system operating on principles of sufficiency and universality."

I would reword that opening phrase to say those who are deserving need dignity.

Some beneficiaries are absolutely deserving and none of us would deny them help (not even diehard libertarians who believe in supporting genuine cases, just under a private system).

But many are in need due to their own relentlessly stupid actions and they give beneficiaries in general a bad name, thus robbing the others of dignity.

I may have used this analogy before but it's one I expressed when speaking to people at the Laura Fergusson Community (for people with disabilities) last year. People who misuse the welfare system are like people who park in disabled carparks. They park themselves on benefits making it that much harder for those who really need them.

Universality is the cause of the problem - not the solution. Any welfare system, state-run or private, needs to be able to handle people as the individuals they are.