Letter: Good luck trying to tackle our benefits

Lord Beveridge envisaged the welfare state as creating a fairer society and it has been successful in providing support for the less fortunate and those who fall on hard times.

We have been an example to the world in showing what a civilised, caring country should look like.

When it first started most people had a certain pride and self-respect and the poor only asked for help as a last resort. A lot of older people still have that attitude, that's why they leave so much benefit unclaimed.

Now attitudes have changed and many use it not as a safety net but as their right to sit back and watch the telly while others go to work to keep them.

Successive governments have failed to tackle this issue, afraid of losing votes.

Over generations it has created a class of people who are virtually unemployable and it has done them no favours, now they can't even get out of bed in a morning. This has led to us importing millions of foreign workers to do the work.

Is it fair that honest, hard- working folk should be saddled with the task of keeping a roof over the heads of those who are capable of earning their own living?

Why should they assume it's their right to expect the rest of us to keep them in beer and fags and all mod cons?

It's going to take some doing to change things but I wish Ian Duncan Smith all the luck in the world.

Ron Jones

Oswestry