Sporadic Tic-Tac-Toe

I'm on my way to Truro to collect No.1 son while this is being published.

The Conservatives are proposing 3-strikes-and-you’re-out with respect to benefit fraud as a means of saving money. To me that sounds a bit like the Daily Mail solution.

Benefit fraudsters form only a very small proportion of our population, and they are invariably the type of people who, for one reason or another, are beyond redemption. Take away their benefits and what happens to them – especially if they have vast numbers of children? Because they have children, the chances are they won’t be sent to jail, meaning they will revert to other forms of criminal activity with the economic consequences to the rest of us.

Should they indeed be put in jail, then the cost of keeping them in jail will far outweigh cost of the benefits they were claiming – especially if their children have to put into care – never mind about the problem that children in care bring in later years.

If the Tories think this will save money, then I think they have another think coming. In my opinion, we as a society have to accept that the vast majority of the population is honest, and only a small percentage would indeed resort to benefit fraud (including politicians) – and consequently it’s something we just have to accept as a modern and civilised society.

It’s the Grand National horse race today. Why do racing horses have such stupid names? I keep looking for one called simply Neddy or Trigger. One of the horses running is called Comply Or Die, which could easily have been trained by a few women I’ve known.

Did you know that tic-tac men now use radio communications?