Middle Class Outraged By Government Attack On Middle Class Benefits

A typical thieving family of scroungers

Daily Mail readers were spluttering with indignant rage this morning to find themselves being lined up by Treasury officials as the next lot of scrounging benefit claimants to persecute.

Strangely, however, no tabloid papers ran front-page stories of wealthy professionals who flagrantly defraud the state out of billions of pounds in child benefit to which they are entitled, or comfortable retirees on generous private pensions who cynically abuse the welfare state by accepting hundreds of pounds each in winter fuel payments, year after year after year.

“How dare the government threaten to apply a means test to me!” shrieked James White, a 37-year-old accountant and father-of-three living in unabashed comfort in Clifton, Bristol - who shamelessly helps himself to £47.10 every week of your hard-earned cash, despite a joint income of nearly £63,000. “I’m not some common bloody criminal, like all those lazy bastards pulling sickies for years on end, or the population of Liverpool. I’ve got a Land Rover Discovery to run. Did they consider that?”

His wife Jessica, a part-time teacher, agreed vigorously, adding that it wasn’t easy bringing up three horrible, demanding children on just two incomes.

“Young Emily is coming up for three, and she says she won’t stop crying until she gets an iPhone4 like her brothers have got,” she whined. “And now they’re six they want proper laptops, because they’ve outgrown their notepads. They shouldn’t be taking away my child benefit, they should be paying me a higher rate. Have you seen the price of an iPhone contract? Well, have you?”

Her mother and father, meanwhile, who have retired to a nice little village near Weston-super-Mare, complained bitterly about the threat to withhold their winter fuel payments until they reach the age of 66.

“That’s two bloody winters in which I could well freeze to death,” pointed out John, a retired police inspector. “And my poor wife Helen will have to wait until 2014 for hers. What are we supposed to do until then? Pay for our own heating bills? Bloody cheek. This is what happens when you put a Liberal in charge. Cameron hasn’t been on holiday a week, and this is what that bloody trot Clegg gets up to.”

“If they keep on like this, I’ll be voting Labour next time,” he warned. “Say what you like about Brown, we never got hammered like this by him. He knew how to look after decent people like us.”

A spokesman for the poor said he sympathised deeply with the plight of middle Englanders, and welcomed them to his world.