Truth is stranger than fiction, and the editors of the Daily Mail and The Express cannot be disappointed at the discovery of Heather Frost, 37, who personifies the caricature of a welfare parasite (although the same can be said of the feckless sperm donors who abandoned their offspring in her). Don't worry, she is in the Daily Mirror as well.
She "struggles" to live at taxpayers' expense, in two adjacent houses in Churchdown, Gloucestershire, with her 11 children, 2 grandchildren and unemployed partner Jake. She would love to have more children, but is sterile (due to cervical cancer), and says she is married.
She also bought a horse and keeps it for one of her daughters, at £200 a month.
She also bought a horse and keeps it for one of her daughters, at £200 a month.
Now none of this would matter if her and her kin were sustaining themselves or other people were sustaining them by choice. I couldn't care less if she wants to breed.
However, this is a family that costs other people money, and not through ill fortune, but by lifestyle choice. In fact, this choice, facilitated by the generous UK welfare state, has given the woman the gall to demand more.
She has been complaining to the council that the housing provided at the expense of others is inadequate, so the Council is now building a brand new house for the family at the price of £400,000.
A true libertarian would cancel her benefits, tell her to get the money from the kids' dads, get a job and warn her that when the house she has asked for is built, it will be sold and the rent where she currently is will go up to market rates.
It is easy to moan about this, but what is needed is answers and a broader reflection on why this happens, when it is blatantly goes against the values of most of the population.
Quite simply, the incentives are set up to encourage this.
Money and housing is offered in exchange for breeding, without employment and without a call upon the other party responsible for the breeding. The more breeding, the more money and the bigger the home. The quality of parenting (which would appear to be at least questionable) is irrelevant.
Defenders of the status quo on the left would hold their hands up and say "what else can you do", and claim these cases are so rare that it is wrong to destroy or reform a system that makes these cases news because they are rare. Yet these very same people will protest and harass companies that legally seek to minimise their tax bills, and wonder why they do so?
After all, if you invested your hard earned money in a business, would you want a penny of it going to the likes of Heather Frost?
The culture bred by the welfare state is this one of entitlement, which isn't just about expecting the Council to give you a new house for nothing, but raising children who expect to never have to work, who are resentful of those who have worked and have things they want, and who believe that it is right to raise kids the same. Her eldest (21) already has a child of 2, who lives with them all.
Consider the effect of promoting this culture has on business, employment, crime and society as a whole. Indeed the left ought to consider how it breeds undying resentment amongst the broad mass of people who resent being the host to the parasitical claims of those who choose to be unproductive.
The only answer to this culture is to stop guaranteeing people every growing income for breeding and housing to accommodate it. Would Heather Frost have kept breeding if she knew she wouldn't get more money or a bigger house to accommodate the children? She claims that if she could have more children, she would. Maybe she would have named the fathers and they would have had a portion of their income taken to help pay? If she had been denied more money and housing for breeding, would the social services system let her raise the children in such poverty or take them away so they could be fostered or adopted?
There are some relatively gentle responses that take us down the path of more individual responsibility.
