Was the Daily Mail right to call Mick Philpott a vile product of the Welfare System?

[Notsoyummymummy1]

Can we say that benefits create this kind of man? I don't think so!

But we are talking here about Philpott and it is on record that he was partly motivated by money which was provided by the state, seemingly unendingly, generously and increasing with each child. At one point he was producing two babies a year between the two women

I can see that Tunip. But realistically, what chance what a man like Philpott have of attracting a woman who earned good money? Instead, he turned to uneducated women who could have his children and get money through welfare instead. The motive is the same, I agree: his desire to manipulate women (and in this case the welfare system) to achieve his ends.

would a man like Philpott

They didn't have money Tunip! They earned the minimum wage for part time cleaning!

There was no way those earnings would have supported their lifestyle.

The benefit system did that for them.

I'd agree with that reallytired but knowing that no matter how many you have, all will be provided for helps clarify your appetite for sex, I'd say.

Plenty of people NOT reliant on benefits also like sex but they choose to limit their families because they have to.

it wasn't just liking sex though was it, how he made his wife give the other bloke a blow job even though she didn't want to is just repulsive, despicable. It sounds more about control than sex

I have only just realised though that the other bloke looks like philpott, I kept thinking they were showing MP twice in the bbc articles and putting mairead in the middle

He was a controlling, abusive, violent scumbag and would have been one regardless of his financial status.

It is more likely the reality shows, Daily Mail itself and Closer magazine that convinced this rotten excuse for a man that he was central to some dramatic story, that is life was sort of surreal and he was important. He could sell his story and people lapped it up, they might disagree with him but he had a platform.

I also think quite apart from the money received on account of the kids, the fact that Philpott was able to turn down work (despite no obvious medical reason for not being able to work) would also have facilitated his warped ego. " Look at me, other people need to work, but I can turn a job down if I think I'm too good for it"

Developing country I'm talking about has unemployment levels 50 to 95% in the timeframe I'm talking, lemon. No welfare state at all. Charges for even basic healthcare and (iirc) all education. Access to land and water are both constrained.

So children are an absolute cost, are unlikely to earn a huge amount for "looking after parents in old age". A very small family will be more than enough to utilise any land available to them.

Men are not having these big families there for rational economic reasons...

But the philpott trial used evidence from witnesses that he was motivated to an extent by the welfare he would receive for having children. This is about an individual not a general comment. The problem with the DM is that it's using one specific case to try to tarnish benefit claimants- which of course it would do wouldn't it- hardly a surprise.
The point I (and others) are making is that the two things are separate: yes, in philpott case the welfare system enabled him to live like he did, it facilitated it. But that doesn't mean everyone on welfare is like that, nor does it meant there aren't multiple killers elsewhere who would do it regardless of the welfare issue.
This thread is specifically about one man, where the evidence suggests he was facilitated by the system

A ten minute This Morning debate between Sun columnist Paul Staines and Indy columnist Owen Jones:

Debate: Is Mick Philpott a product of the welfare state?

shows.stv.tv/this-morning/lifestyle/220164-debate-is-mick-philpott-a-product-of-the-welfare-state/

The HateMail have also conveniently overlooked that most (all?) of the money he was receiving was not in benefits meant for him.

He was forcing the 2 women to pay their wages, and the tax credits they legitimately got (and needed) to supplement their low pay, into his bank account. (As an aside, I am interested in how it was possible for him to be paid their benefits - would they have been receiving them in cash, or what?). And as for the child benefit, that was obviously meant to be paying to help support the children.

However good your welfare system administration, you can't easily force people to spend the child benefit on the children, or prevent them from handing over their own cash to someone else once it's received, without becoming very intrusive.

Unfortunately, a man like him would take advantage of anything he could, including this fact. But trying to prevent that by cutting back benefits would a) only penalise the people who actually need the benefits (like those who ARE working but don't get a living wage, or children) and b) would almost certainly just lead to him taking other, equally nasty paths* to get money - if he hadn't been creaming off their benefits, I could just see him taking up a new career as an armed robber or something - or even more likely, taking the safer option of forcing some of his women into prostitution (anyone wondered whether Mosley paid for their services?).

*to clarify, with "equally nasty" I am talking about what he was trying to do, i.e. getting his mitts on all the benefits, not the children's deaths of course which was obviously much worse but not what he intended (even if he should have been able to foresee the risk...)

Thanks Tunip: yes my point was that men like Philpott (sociopaths who would rather leech off other people than work themselves, on the whole) might also see targeting independently wealthy (but vulnerable in other ways) women as a good choice, eg the rich woman who has been abused in the past or has low self esteem etc.

He was a controlling, abusive, violent scumbag and would have been one regardless of his financial status. Exactly.

Though I do think this extreme case raises some useful questions how we can better protect women and children from those who exploit them for their benefits.

The "scrounging" aspect of all this was merely a happy by-product (for him) of his abuse - the icing on the cake, if you like.

It's not like he'd suddenly see the light and change his ways if the welfare net weren't there.

Bear in mind he is not a "normal" person so you can't assume that he has the mindset, sense of decency, morality (and so on) of a "normal" person.

znaika I read today that Philpott was a drug user, and bet he was also very fond of the pub, so a lot of it may well have gone on his indulgences. I suspect he did not deny himself much that he wanted... shame about the rest of the family.

"it's not like he'd suddenly see the light and change his ways if the welfare net weren't there."

Why not? How else would he pay for his house and car and food and drink and drugs?

I doubt anyone here is going to know the answer to that.

Well we could say the very broken system let him abuse it over and over again, I for one do not pay my taxes so vile "people" like him can sit on their lazy alcohol drinking drug taking backsides all day getting free money, a free house and having 17 bloody children

It would be fairly easy to run through a lot of money if you have 11 kids, just by being undisciplined in your spending, I would think. Eg if you got takeaways for the whole family a lot or lived on readymeals because you couldn't be bothered to cook, if you weren't organised about handing clothes down but just bought new ones from Primark whenever the kids needed something, if you randomly bought them expensive presents so you could show off about what a great dad you were (and we know that one of the children had a Derby County season ticket, another had a computer).
I'm not saying I know anything whatsoever about what he spent the money on, just that I don't think there has to be a particularly interesting explanation for where it all went.

George Osborn is suggesting similar

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22025035

Just came to see if anyone else had mentioned it