Latest news with #WhitneyAinscough
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Telegraph
Reform welfare or become a failed state: that is Britain's only remaining choice
Whitney Ainscough boasts that she makes £500,000 a year through her social media posts. Those posts essentially tell people what to say to exploit the welfare rules. The mother of three from Rotherham walks her subscribers through the buzz words and correct answers to give in order to be awarded benefits. In one post, she revelled in the fact that she was herself being given £1,151.90 a week by taxpayers. 'Why would I get a job?' she asked. 'I get your monthly wage in a week – so why would I put myself out and get a job? I mean, I'm living my f***ing best life!' Ms Ainscough is one of an army of online 'sickfluencers': people who make a living out of coaching others on how to qualify for benefits. In his recent Channel 4 documentary, Fraser Nelson met a consultant who charged £750 for a three-hour session on how to qualify for the maximum allocation on incapacity or disability payments. That is an hourly rate not far off some London KCs. Yet, such are the perverse incentives created by our benefits system that, for many would-be claimants, it is a reasonable up-front investment. If you have paid taxes throughout your working life, you may be shaking with anger as you read. The realisation that middle-men – or, more often, middle-women – are getting rich by steering people towards undeserved payments is infuriating. But sickfluencers are the by-products of our rotten system, not its authors. If we don't keep the kitchen clean, we can hardly blame the bacteria. As Charlie Munger liked to say, 'Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome'. Like the Channel people traffickers, sickfluencers are facilitators. They service a demand created by perverse incentives. In the one case, a benefits system which, according to the Centre for Social Justice, will soon let people earn £2,500 more than the minimum wage; in the other, an asylum system where judges seek always and everywhere to overturn deportation orders. We blame the people traffickers because we don't like to dwell on the fact that the migrants who pay them are criminals. We think of ourselves as compassionate, and so don't enjoy asking why genuine refugees would be desperate to leave France. In the same way, blaming sickfluencers allows us not to insult claimants – some of whom are indubitably disabled, and all of whom vote. Why, then, did I begin the column with Ms Ainscough? You, after all, are a reader of the nation's leading quality newspaper. His Majesty's Telegraph is not a sensationalist tabloid. Should I not be persuading you with facts and figures rather than making your blood boil with stories of a benefits claimant who holidays in Cyprus and films her posts from behind the wheel of what looks like a Range Rover? Maybe. But here's the problem. The numbers don't stir people to the pitch of emotion which, on their merits, they should. Perhaps they are simply too large. I always found, as an MEP, that telling people that the EU was wasting £10 billion on this or that project would elicit a resigned shrug, whereas telling them that I could pay my wife £14,000 a month prompted purple, choking fury. We can all imagine what we would do with £14,000. If people truly understood what the figures implied, there would be no more immediate issue in politics. Those Labour MPs who voted down the mildest attempt to slow the increase in incapacity benefits would, instead of complimenting themselves on their big-heartedness, be fending angry mobs from their constituency surgeries. Consider, one more time, some of the statistics. Around 3,000 people a day are signed off as too sick to work. The total number of claimants is forecast by the government to go from 3.3 million to 4.1 million by the end of this parliament. According to the NHS Confederation, in 2021-22, 63,392 people went straight from university onto long-term sickness benefits. The fastest rise is among 25- to 34-year-olds, an incredible increase of 69 per cent in five years. (Incredible in every sense: such a sudden and cataclysmic explosion in disability would surely be visible on the streets.) In Birmingham, one in four working-age adults is inactive. One. In. Four. Even at the height of the Great Depression, the proportion in our second city never rose so high. Then, mass worklessness was treated as the most important challenge facing the nation; now, we barely notice. Behind each of those numbers is someone trapped in the system, scared to find a job and paradoxically lose income, possibly bringing up children in a household severed from the rhythms of a working day. If the waste of human potential does not bother you, consider the viability of the British state. The total cost of benefits has risen from £244 billion a year on the eve of the pandemic to £303 billion (adjusting for inflation). No other country has seen anything like it. In Europe, as in the Anglosphere, claims fell when lockdown ended. If we look, not simply at benefits, but at state salaries, too, there are as many people claiming money from the government as supplying it: 28 million in each category. But that does not mean that the sums are in balance. To meet its obligations, the government is borrowing £150 billion a year. At the same time, it is spending £55 billion a year on disability and incapacity benefits – a sum that will rise to £70 billion by the end of this parliament. What went wrong? The baleful one-word answer, as so often, is 'lockdown'. The pandemic brutally exposed the inadequacies of the British state, its poor analysis, its safetyism, its authoritarian tendencies. But the government turned out to be good at one thing, namely giving money to people. A lot of workers who had never before been in contact with the benefits system learnt how easy it was to make claims. Some began to see work as a lifestyle choice. At the same time, face-to-face benefits interviews were replaced by telephone assessments, where claimants find it much easier to lie. This was supposed to be a temporary measure but, across the civil service, officials have continued to work from home and, five years on, over 70 per cent of benefits assessments are being made remotely. Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. The surge in long-term benefits under Gordon Brown was tackled after 2010 by a combination of benefits caps and tax cuts. When work paid more, more people worked. This time, though, taxes and unemployment are rising, creating very different incentives. Meanwhile, as predicted in this column, figures now confirm that the economy shrank in the last quarter. In the dry language of the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government 'cannot afford the array of promises that it has made to the public'. Is anyone proposing to do anything about it? Actually, yes. Kemi Badenoch made a thoughtful and serious speech on Thursday explaining how she planned to cut the bills, including bringing the legal definition of disability into line with what most of us understand by the word, and ending claims by foreign nationals, which currently cost a billion pounds a month. The rise of Reform means that the Conservatives have little option but to position themselves as the only party that stands for fiscal responsibility, enterprise and limited government. Although that position may attract less than 50 per cent of the electorate, it attracts more than the 18 per cent that the Tories are currently polling. In any case, it is the right thing to do. Labour's inability to slow, let alone halt, the rise in bills is dooming Britain to a full-scale budgetary and currency crisis. The Conservatives need to provide the diagnosis now so that, when the crash happens, the electorate is ready to gulp down its medicine.
The Sun
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I let my 12-year-old get her tongue pierced – trolls say it's ‘disgraceful' but I don't care, she wanted it
A MOTHER has revealed that she let her 12-year-old daughter get her tongue pierced. Whitney Ainscough, 31, a mum from Rotherham in South Yorkshire, claimed that people will 'judge' her for it, but she isn't bothered, as it was something her daughter Cora wanted. 6 6 6 Posting on social media, the influencer, who has three children - Cora Bentley, 12, Addison Squires, seven, and Adley Christopher, three - shared a short clip of her and her eldest child whilst in McDonald's. Alongside the clip, the self-professed 'bad mum' wrote: 'Cora got her tongue pierced last week. A lot of people will judge but she wanted it. 'It's been cleaned properly and it's something she wanted.' As the pair tucked into their fast food, Whitney said to the youngster: 'Cora, show us your piercing then…why have you got that done?' To this, the 12-year-old stuck her tongue out to show off her new bling, as she responded: 'Because it looks nice.' In England and Wales, there is no specific legal age to get a tongue piercing. Despite this, some studios may have their own age policies, often requiring parental consent for those under 16 or 18. The 12-year-old then confirmed that the piercing hurt and the swelling was bad, but she would recommend it to other youngsters. To this, Whitney explained: 'Mum tried to talk you out of it and I told you how bad the swelling was. 'You couldn't talk properly, couldn't eat.' My daughter's school put her in isolation for getting her nose pierced but we couldn't care less so I pierced the other side on a Sunday afternoon too The content creator, who has previously been accused of posting rage-bait videos online, then asked: 'Are you happy, though?', to which Cora simply beamed: 'Yeah.' But it appears that Cora doesn't want to stop there, as she shared: 'I just want my thirds done next, then I'm done.' Different parenting styles explained There are four recognised styles of parenting explained below: Authoritarian Parenting What some might describe as "regimental" or "strict" parenting. Parents with this style focus on strict rules, obedience, and discipline. Authoritarian parents take over the decision-making power, rarely giving children any input in the matter. When it comes to rules, you believe it's "my way or the highway". Permissive Parenting Often referred to as "soft parenting" or "yes mums/dads". Permissive parents are lenient, only stepping in when there's a serious problem. They're quite forgiving and they adopt an attitude of "kids will be kids". Oftentimes they act more like friends than authoritative figures. Authoritative Parenting Authoritative parents provide their children with rules and boundaries, but they also give them the freedom to make decisions. With an authoritative parenting style, parents validate their children's feelings while also making it clear that the adults are ultimately in charge. They use positive reinforcement techniques, like praise and reward systems, as opposed to harsh punishments. Neglectful or Uninvolved Parenting Essentially, neglectful parents ignore their children, who receive little guidance, nurturing, and parental attention. They don't set rules or expectations, and they tend to have minimal knowledge about what their children are doing. Uninvolved parents expect children to raise themselves. They don't devote much time or energy to meeting children's basic needs. Uninvolved parents may be neglectful but it's not always intentional. A parent with mental health issues or substance abuse problems, for example, may not be able to care for a child's physical or emotional needs consistently. But to this, Whitney clapped back and confirmed: 'I was 31 when I got my tongue pierced. 'You've got your belly, your tongue, two [sets] of ear [piercings], you've had your rook and your helix.' Social media users react The TikTok clip, which was posted under the username @ itsmebadmom, has clearly left many open-mouthed, as at the time of writing, it had quickly amassed 598,500 views, 14,400 likes and 931 comments in just two days. Social media users were horrified that Whitney would let her daughter get her tongue pierced and many eagerly raced to the comments to express this. One person said: 'Your parenting once again is shocking.' Another added: "She's too young.' A third commented: 'All them piercings at 12! That's so wrong!' Meanwhile, someone else wrote: 'I'm shocked a piercer would do this, they are supposed to be 18 years of age.' Whilst another slammed: 'Wow that's absolutely ridiculous.' Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme - Sun Club 6 6
