Britain's Conservative-led government delivered a one-two punch for more pillars of Britain's social benefits system this week. It announced more cuts to the country's social welfare programs — moving ever-closer to "workfare."
It started when George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, told the Conservative Party's annual conference that starting next April, some 200,000 people who have been unemployed for two years or more will be offered three choices: undertake unpaid community work; report to a job center every workday; or take part in a full-time intensive program to work on the personal issues that have kept them out of the workforce.
If they don't, they'll lose their benefits check.
"No one will be ignored or left without help. But no one will get something for nothing," Osborne told the Tory gathering. "Because a fair welfare system is fair to those who need it, and fair to those who pay for it, too."
Iain Duncan Smith, the country's work and pensions secretary, told the BBC that when similar requirements were enacted on a smaller scale to address the problem of "playing" the system, about 70 percent of recipients stopped claiming benefits.
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