old_windbag wrote:TC, my morals and your morals may both be set at quite a high level....... but rest assured the general population of the UK does not reflect that. If it did we'd have hardly any benefit claimants, disability claims and so on. The mindset of people in large companies to seek loophole is not different to the individual figuring how they can get a little extra cash buy using the tax system "efficiently" or altering circumstances to claim a financial amount.
I'm sorry but I do not accept that we would have 'hardly any benefit claimants' if the population had higher morals. For one thing, the vast majority of money paid out in benefits is not disability or anything like that. It's in stuff that most people use, like child benefit, NHS, state pensions, etc.
Secondly, the number of fraudulent claims is actually quite low, and while I would prefer that there be no fraud, I think that it is entirely acceptable to pay for a few fraudulent claims so that the people who need benefits can get them.
I have known many people on benefits, and not a single one of them did anything unethical, even stretching the truth that I am aware of, with one (understandable) exception. I know several people who could have claimed disability benefits and did not; one was in a quite serious RTC that will probably affect them for the rest of their life.
I also know quite a few people who have good jobs and make loads of dosh that I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them.
I don't know who your friends and acquaintances are, but if my sample of the population led me to believe that everyone in the UK has no morals, I'd look for different friends.
“In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom