The Boy Who Cried Wolf

We all know the BBC is lame in the extreme when it comes to discussing welfare. This morning's fevered episode of the feeble 'Sunday Morning Live' discussion was no less so. God knows why I do this to myself but I tuned in to find Charlie Wolf 'contributing' to a discussion about food stamps and whether the state (you know, that entity the government vehemently abhors) should control how people spend their benefit. The trail to the 'discussion' (despite a spirited attempt by Degsy Hatton to oppose) featured lots of shots of terraces, washing lines outside their windows, pubs drinking and fruit machines. Can't think what sort of message their trying to send, but damn I do feel thirsty!

Now Charlie Wolf is another one of these lunatic rentagobs, but even he excelled the form here. He claimed, straight faced, that without such controls the unemployed end up spending their vast fortune on drugs and pornography! What repugnant bullshit. Of course he later said that plenty of people are playing the system; the usual right wing non-statement designed to provide maximum emotion at the expense of minimum fact.

Charlie is a member of a group called Republicans Abroad UK (we don't need them over here thanks), and a blogger for the Daily Fail, who once called Rachel Corrie 'scum' and blamed her for her death at the hands of the Israeli government. As you can see, he's a compassionate guy; an odious right wing apologist for the likes of Bush and his anachronistic 'eye for an eye' ideologies.

I wonder how many people Charlie boy has reported to the Benefit Fraud hotline. I posed this on Twitter, but I guess he was too busy ringing them up to answer. Obviously as there are plenty of people playing the system - by his own admission - he must have encountered some. As a concerned responsible citizen surely then he has availed himself of his civic duty and reported them.

But wait 96% of such reports turn out to be groundless; the result of bored curtain twitching bitter wankers with nothing better to do than accuse other people of spending their benefit on drugs and porn. Will you be paying for the cost of these frivolous reports and the subsequent wasted time investigating people who should be left alone because they have not played the system? Will you be apologising to the thousands you've just smeared in a particularly vile way?

Charlie Wolf, you are a disgrace. Fuck off back to America and take your odious republican right wing ideology with you.