Let’s all bash single mothers, then…

Right, folks: time to get your favourite minority-bashing weapon out of the cupboard and give it a few preparatory swings. Another year, another budget… and, oh, look, it’s open season on single mothers yet again.

Ah, joy! Finally, something we can all agree upon for a change. Nothing better than a good old-fashioned witch-hunt for spongers and social parasites to unite us all as a nation, now, is there?

And of all the vast categories of different social welfare beneficiaries out there – for let’s face it: is there even a single Maltese citizen who has never benefited from any form of State welfare programme whatsoever: free healthcare, pensions, university stipends, etc.? – what better subcategory to pick on than one which is predominantly female, and whose contribution to the benefit fraud drain is almost negligible? 

That’s it, then. It’s been decided. The scapegoat of the month, elected for the umpteenth year by the union of disgruntled online social network commentators, is… drums rolling… Malta’s single parent. It is this tiny subcategory of 3,400 people which is to blame for all our nation’s economic woes, by daring to claim a State hand-out amounting to just over €100 a month.

Never mind that the same nation, in its entirety, spends untold millions on a raft of social welfare services that are considered too luxurious for even the richest European countries to afford. Never mind also that the same government that has vowed to ‘eradicate social welfare abuse’ has also employed a staggering 3,000 more people in public administration in the last year and a half – thus dramatically increasing the government’s recurrent wage bill. And let us also close an eye to the fact that VAT evasion alone has reportedly cost the country €240 million in just one year (2013).

None of this is important, because we now know that around 3,400 spongers are availing themselves of a government programme that cannot (by my admittedly tentative calculations) cost the country much more than €4.5 million a year. And this, naturally, clogs up the entire welfare system.

But what is so irksome is not the obviously deleterious impact such a negligible percentage would have on Malta’s national recurring expenditure. It’s the sheer cheek of these single mothers to actually accept an offer that was made to them by the government in the first place. By what right do these scroungers expect the hard-working Maltese taxpayer to fork out enough money for one, maybe two grocery shopping sprees a month? Go out and get a job, you lazy bums…

And no, having children is simply no excuse in this day and age. Put them up for adoption. Dump them in a shoebox on the doorstep of the closest nunnery, or something. Nobody asked you to inflict your unwanted progeny onto the nation, you know. It’s not exactly as though we needed any more babies, anyway, in a country with a sharply declining birth-rate and a steadily ageing population.

The bottom line is that you can’t expect the nation to keep chipping in towards their upkeep until they’re of an age to actually contribute to the coffers themselves… and maybe one day even shore up the precarious national pensions fund. It just doesn’t make economic sense…

Besides, hard-working Maltese taxpayers already have enough on their plate paying for a wide variety of other useless and capricious luxuries that (by way of contrast) don’t contribute to anything at all. We have to pay our hard-working members of parliament for the sterling services they render the nation… even when they are hard at work skiving their parliamentary sessions. And what is the actual contribution of an ‘MP’ who doesn’t attend the ‘P’ of which he is an ‘M’? Nothing, as far as I can see. So of course, we have to not only pay them salaries for work they don’t actually do… but also a full pension, when they retire after a career of not actually doing any work.

Then there are little other bits and bobs of recurring expenditure to take into account: for instance, €54K salaries to be paid to former journalists for the sole purpose of organising around one rock concert every 10 years. We regularly pay out millions in consultancy fees over projects that never actually materialise; not to mention millions more in cost overruns when these projects do materialise, but in a shape and a form unlike anything previously envisaged in the project brief.

So you see, dear single mothers, there are just too many other completely pointless and counter-productive issues that have to take precedence when it comes to prioritising public spending. You can’t realistically expect us to also cough up a measly, almost negligible annual fee, just to achieve a tiny improvement in the standard of living for one of Malta’s most vulnerable categories.

Besides… just think of all the things we could do with those €4.5 million when we’re no longer using it to feed and clothe your children. Why, we could pay off one 18th of Renzo Piano’s fees for the new House of Representatives… you know, so that our MPs can have a state of the art work environment, designed by the best (and most expensive) architect in the world, not to do any work in…

It could also go towards covering just over half the expenses for next year’s CHOGM event... or, to put the same general idea a different way, it could fund the next four years’ Eurovision Song Contests on the trot (unless we win… in which case, it wouldn’t even pay for Conchita Wurtz’s personal facial hair-stylist…).

Heck, we could even just donate it to the two main political parties themselves, as a small token of appreciation for their selfless dedication to Malta’s poor and underprivileged. I’m sure they could find a use for €4.5 million. They might finally settle their outstanding €1.9 million debt with ARMS Ltd; as well as (in the case of the PN) possibly pay a few backdated salaries to their former Medialink employees, too.

Or we could just pump the money into any of a number of other State hand-out schemes which – unlike the single parent one – affect tens of thousands of beneficiaries all over the island, and thus translate it into a healthy bonanza of votes for the party in government.

We could finance the installation of more smart meters at the illegal Armier boathouse shanty town, and have enough left over to set up a local police station and a polyclinic. Or we could raise the expenditure on University stipends in 2016, too (it’s already been raised in this Budget… though strangely I have yet to hear any complaints about that).

Last year, Malta spent more than €23 million on an €80 monthly stipend given to post-secondary students. The Dean of the Faculty of Engineering – who I assume is slightly better at mathematics than myself – calculated that this figure is likely to exceed €30 million by 2020, as the student population rises in line with EU targets.

And it’s a tough life being a university student in Malta, you know. Parking on campus is a nightmare. Maltese students have to pay more per capita on petrol than their European counterparts, in part because they can actually afford a car (thanks to a nice little government hand-out which takes care of their other expenses); and in part also because they have to drive around on low gear in slow traffic, as they endlessly circumnavigate the ring road in search of elusive parking places. And what’s a measly €30 million a year to the generous Maltese taxpayer, when we all know it’s going towards such a noble cause?

So spare a thought to those more deserving than you, before complaining that you can’t afford to buy diapers or baby food for the unwanted brat you begot off an unknown father, and had to drop out of school as a result. Stop playing the victim, you femi-nazi, you…

Ah, but wait: I guess if you did drop out of school owing to an unplanned pregnancy, that would make you a ‘genuine case’. So you might still get your measly €100 a month anyway. After all, Muscat is not a monster: he made it very clear that it is only those who are abusing the system who pose a direct threat to Malta’s bank balance and inherent sense of social justice.

So the Budget includes ‘new measures’ aimed at detecting and removing this abusive category from the endless list of spongers and parasites. Never mind that such measures already exist – one of them is called the Benefits Fraud and Investigation Unit of the Social Security Department, and has been fairly active over the years. Clearly, if even a fraction of the €4.5 million spent on single parents each year is being abused, any ‘new measure’ could be expected to save the government of Malta…

… erm… how much, exactly? Let’s see, now: in 2010, the Benefits Fraud and Investigations Unit uncovered 19 fraudulent cases out of 101 single parent benefit claims. That can be rounded off at roughly 20%, and used as a benchmark to calculate an estimate of the extent of benefit fraud.

And 20% of €4.5 million is… €900,000. The government will be saving less than a million a year by clamping down on single parent benefit fraud; while increasing government expenditure on a wide variety of other social services by tens of millions.

Small wonder such a puny and insignificant budgetary measure would be roundly applauded across the entire blue-red spectrum of Malta’s increasingly ugly political landscape. It is just the sort of thing that appeals to the macho bully in all of us.