The Brits have been enjoying the spectacle of the family from hell, the Blacks, whose daughter Leighanne got arrested and then convicted for driving under the influence without a license. What’s the fuss, you ask? Leighanne is only 14, and this is her second driving offense.
The fair Leighanne is a bit young for driving and drinking, it’s true. But that is not why she became famous.
She got famous because of the forcible manner in which she expressed exception to her sentence: she shouted abuse at the magistrates and then threw a carafe of water over them, before punching the prosecuting counsel.
That’s more like it. And then her mother “mooned” the journalists attending upon this solemn occasion.
But that is not the point. The point is that, according to Ron Liddle in the London Spectator, her parents, Nora and Maurice, are both disabled.
Nora and Maurice are on benefits on account of his cancer and angina and her lung trouble and high blood pressure.
Oh well, Nora is 54 and Maurice is 62. Maybe they need to slow down a bit. It’s all perfectly harmless. But there are 2.7 million Brits on disability, around nine percent of the work force of 30 million. Only about 900,000 are unemployed. A pretty sickly lot, those Brits.
Here in the United States, things are far different. Out of a work force of 150 million a mere 8.1 million under 65 are drawing benefits under the Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income programs. That’s a mere 5.4 percent.
Let us put this in perspective. In Britland, there are about three times as many people getting money from the government for disability as there are people unemployed. In the ruthless United States, the ranks of the disabled are about the same as the ranks of the unemployed.
What does that tell you?
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