Haven't managed to find any similar threads. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I thought it might be fun to share examples of government "welfare" spending that leads to laughable common sense blunders. Sure we can get angry when the govt continues to pay a sickness benefit to repeat offence drug dealers on the provision that their Canadian addiction is an employment preventing illness etc. Or we could laugh together, collect news reports of these various obscurities and feel better in the knowledge these idiots can't run the country for ever; we mightn't see change until they crash the ship, but at least they're clearly not even looking where they're going. If there's no one listening to common sense bring on the crash. Today's news that made me laugh was this story of an 83 year old pensioner convicted of $215, 000 in benefit fraud. Quote "She doesn't have much of an explanation for the benefit fraud. It was an accident, she reckons. "We finished working, no jobs, everybody moaning and somebody said to me 'you can get a benefit'. I said 'no I can't' and [they said] 'yes you can', because they knew me as Strauss. "So I go in, no ID, no nothing, and get a benefit. I'm not going to say no." She also had an unemployment benefit in her real name, and says she tried to stop the benefit when she gained the pension in 1993. "I went to see them and said 'look, I don't really want this money any more. [They said] have you got a job?' 'No.' By the time I'd finished talking to this idiot I was getting more money, he convinced me I needed it. He increased the benefit and gave me more. "What I did was wrong, I know it was wrong, but if somebody is going to keep giving me money, I'm going to keep taking it." http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8171834/Benefit-fraud-hero-at-83
Sounds like she's worth at least an extra $215, 000 to me. She talks like she's straight out of a Raymond Carver short story. I've been cheated of more than that by the swindling managements of ASX listed companies. Nothing ever happens to them, they just keep on truckin. Source: http://louisey.wordpress.com/2009/11/21/it-takes-one-to-know-one/
Pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS) includes Oxycontin and alternative MS Contin, as well as Xanax. Get a prescription from a bulk billing inner city doctor (more 'free' government spending) and the prescription is what just $9 or $12 thanks to it being on the PBS? These drugs, especially Oxycontin is meant for people post surgery. It is available up to 80mg size, meant for pain relief for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Crushed boiled and injected Oxycontin has a similar effect to heroin. And every heroin and ice user who is on the dole anyway gets it easily for $9, often doctor shopping so they can onsell it to make enough to buy real heroin. Theres no name for this process, but it's basically taxpayer supported endless drug use. And I would argue that it is taxpayers financially supporting those who are then predating upon us through burglaries, shoplifting and petty street crime. Even worse, after these people have destroyed themselves almost to the point of death they then go on to get disability pensions for life and more welfare in the form of methadone treatment that can be life long.
