Where Some Of OUR MONEY Is Wasted/Mis-spent

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3498074/Balance-books-Not-pay-feckless-mums-eight-legal-aid-businessmen-lead-millionaire-lifestyles-writes-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN.html

Name things you would stop our tax money going to if you could.

And then there's you, the antithesis of sassy and didge who gives us nothing to read!!

Balance the books? Not when WE pay for feckless mums-of-eight and give legal aid to businessmen who lead millionaire lifestyles, writes RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

Boy George was banging on in his Budget about the need to reduce public spending still further and balance the books. Good luck with that.

For all the Government’s best intentions, so-called public servants keep doling out money hand over fist.

Let me elaborate with the help of two seemingly unrelated stories this week from the Mail. At first they appear to have nothing in common, but all will become clear.

The first concerns a former lap dancer Marie Buchan, dubbed ‘Octomum’ because of her eight children, who has escaped eviction from her four-bedroom housing association home in the West Midlands, despite running up rent arrears of £4,000.

She blames the Government for not deducting the rental money directly from her welfare payments.

Birmingham’s answer to the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe is receiving £26,000 a year in benefits and, although she’s had a hysterectomy, says she is considering having another baby via a surrogate.

She recently treated herself to a puppy because she was feeling ‘broody’, so she doesn’t seem short of a shilling. But she’s worried that, with further Government welfare cuts looming, she could be forced to look for work.

Buchan, who employs an agent and came to prominence on a television ‘reality’ show, called On Benefits: Cashing In For Christmas, has no reservations about living off the taxpayer. She’s now 33 and started having children when she was 19.

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Our second story comes from the opposite end of the social spectrum.

A stay-at-home mum who gave up a career as a recruitment consultant has been awarded 90 per cent of her family’s assets in a controversial divorce settlement hailed as a victory for ‘conventional housewives’.

Jane Morris, 52, spent 19 years bringing up her three children and supporting her husband Peter, a software tycoon. When they split, she discovered she had been out of the workplace for too long and no longer had the potential to earn the kind of salary she had commanded before her marriage.

I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of this case, but the sums of money involved are substantial. At the time of the split, Mr Morris was earning £240,000 a year, the family lived in a £1.2 million home in Buckinghamshire and the children went to £30,000-a-year public schools.

Following the separation, Mr Morris went on a spending spree, burning through tens of thousands of pounds in fancy restaurants and on birthday parties and gifts for his new girlfriend. He enjoyed six holidays in nine months, including a week-long break in Italy costing £4,000.