A mother’s choice: kill oneself or be ‘forced to work’

I suspect that you were as appalled as I by the plight of young mum, Marie Buchan, from Selly Oak in Birmingham. She has eight children – called stuff like Latoya and Tia – and currently claims a meagre £26,000 per year in benefits to feed them all. But now the government’s benefits cap has started to bite and Marie will see her income reduce to £23,000. She said: ‘I am being forced into work. You’re going to get similar cases as to what happened with the bedroom tax – people taking their own lives due to the financial pressures they are feeling. It will hit people that hard.’

You and I can only guess at the trauma facing Marie and her lovely children. A choice between killing herself and being ‘forced into work’. That’s something completely alien to the rest of us, being ‘forced into work’, isn’t it? Someone send her ten thou, quick, or my heart will burst. Or maybe twelve thou, in case, in between writing this and it being published, she conceives another ‘love-child’.