Gloomtown Rats
There’s no honour in snitching on your neighbour for diddling the dole, no matter what Mary Hanafin and Margaret Ritchie say.
Eamonn McCann, 24 Apr 2009
I never had any time for snitches.
South of the border, Social and Family Affairs minister Mary Hanafin has been showering them with praise. In the North, social development minister Margaret “The Snitch” Ritchie holds them up as model citizens.
I can remember the days when being talked of as a snitch could get you tossed into the river. But, sadly, standards have since declined.
Hanafin has been gloating about the number of stool-pigeons she has persuaded to back-stab their neighbours for blagging a bit extra from the social welfare. Apparently, more than 500 finks ratted out fellow citizens in the first two months of this year.
Ritchie boasts of a record rate of convictions in 2008 as scoundrels squealed on neighbours trying to make ends meet by topping up their entitlements. “It’s heartening to see that professional thieves are being brought to account,” she snarled.
Professional thieves? Many of my best friends have diddled the dole in their time. Some still do. None became rich. It’s impossible to become rich doing the double. The best you can hope for is an easing of anxiety, a little bit of slack.
One reason for the rise in the incidence of treachery is that both ministers have installed telephone tout-lines which allow anonymous wretches riven by resentment to make malicious calls against citizens who have done them no harm.
There’s no hot-line for touting on the shysters, skunks and Seanies who have been robbing the plain people blind for decades.
I’d say that any family man or woman on basic benefits or minimum wage who doesn’t at least try to fiddle a bit extra is behaving in an irresponsible manner.
There should be a hotline set up for exposing the lowlifes recruited by Hanafin and Ritchie to do the dirt on decent people. Name them and shame them, say I, so society might shun them.
Make poverty history. Out a tout today.
The main threat to peace in the North isn’t dissidents but deprivation.
If the anger of those left behind by the peace process finds no other outlet, it will be siphoned into support for groups with a presence on the ground and which promise to hit hard against authority.
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