What is your comment on all this Neville? It doesnt sound like much fun for either group!

According to reports their homes were trashed by police at dawn.Why?

It doesn't surprise me in the least that some of those "grassed on" by the MSC felt suicidal. Few things hurt more than a sense of betrayal and injustice - and when "named and shamed" to boot, for all the world to jeer at, or mutter "no smoke without a fire", the strain must be intolerable.

What does astound me is that against this background Sun journalists remain blithely willing to lend themselves to a campaign by their paper to combat benefits fraud by urging readers to "shop the cheats" (launched Feb 29th and ongoing).

Are these readers no less "betrayers" of friends, neighbours and kinfolk than members of the MSC are "betrayers" of colleagues? Does the woman whose name, address and picture are prominently splashed feel any less unjustly pilloried than a journalist? (Her case is yet to be investigated and she may well be cleared when all the facts are known...)

The time really has come for a radical adjustment of moral compasses, Neville. And if journos aren't capable of doing this for themselves - whether through lack empathetic imagination or gutlessness - I'm afraid they must expect a very hard ride indeed when Leveson finally produces his report.

Susan

Agreed, Miranda.

Miranda, comparing people who report benefit cheats with newspaper executives who roll over on their colleagues is like comparing cars with chocolate. Benefit cheats are criminals who drain resources intended for the genuinely needy eg. the young/elderly/disabled. They are a huge strain on the economy and the taxpayer. Newspaper executives who have reported staff for an alleged lack of ethics/criminal behaviour, are traitors. These are the people who encouraged/suggested reporting methods, benefitted from their successes and then pushed their hard working staff into the firing line when the police decided to take action. Rene

" They are a huge strain on the economy and the taxpayer."...so we are forgetting the £50 billion of tax dodging by the rich and powerful...Benefit cheats cost about £3 billion a year..less than half a percent of budget...and the example comes from the House of Commons...

@Rene Did any of the MSC 'encourage / suggest' these reporting methods? I doubt it.

Believe me, I wish there was more scrutiny with corporation tax, Tony Blair tax etc.
We can't, however, dismiss benefit fraud as ok because it's "only £3 billion." We can't say to all honest hard working people..."invent secret lives/illnesses etc, you'll be better off. And as the rich and powerful avoid £50 billion in tax, your actions will pale into insignificance."
What would happen then? Nurses, teachers, van drivers, builders, shop workers would all sit at home on the make with bad-backs. The very cogs of society would grind to a halt...but it's okay because the rich and powerful are avoiding £50 billion in tax.

Rene

Rene: Corrupt police officers - and those who collude in their corruption - ultimately rip off the taxpayer just as surely as benefit fraudsters do.

Who do you think pays for the investigations they hamper and trials they sabotage in pursuit of a dishonest buck?

Here's some food (of the "chocolate" variety) for thought: So far the corrupt activities of police and private detectives directly employed by the NoW have resulted in five botched inquiries into the axe murder of Daniel Morgan at a cost to the taxpayer of around 30 million quid. And that's just ONE case, remember..

You may not think it's important to bring greedy buggers like these to book, but I certainly do. And if journalists played any part in aiding and abetting their corruption they too deserve to be investigated and punished.

PS - I very much doubt droves of nurses, teachers, van drivers, etc, would trade a healthy living wage for the kind of peanuts people get when they're on the sick. You've got to be either pretty desperate or a full-time-working fraudster for that!

Miranda, There are three issues here rolled into one as the debate has progressed. I would agree with you re: Daniel Morgan and examples like this. Journalists shouldn't be immune from prosecution if they have done wrong. However, there is a culture in tabloids (and possibly beyond) where hard working journalists are used as patsies to get stories, as alluded to in an early post. You can't tell me newspaper executives are oblivious to methods used.
Re: benefits I think you'll find that an individual in receipt of incapacity benefit, housing benefit, and all the extra trimmings has a far greater disposable income than someone on £20,000. Financial breakdowns upon request.
Rene

Rene: I have a lot of sympathy for journalists who are bullied and/or lured into dirty practices by news execs who - I entirely agree - deserve the lion's share of blame.

But that doesn't let journos off the hook when it comes to the moral issue at hand here.

Persuading people to grass is either a valid way to detect and expose crime or it ain't. If "collateral damage" to innocent parties from mistaken or malicious snitches is an acceptable risk to take where fraud suspects are concerned, exactly the same principle has to apply to ALL suspects.

As you may have gathered, I personally find the whole "naming and shaming" approach to crime-fighting pretty repellent. But I also acknowledge that without the help of public-spirited (or coerced!) betrayers, most criminals would never be caught. Finding an ideal balance is by no means easy, but journalists do need to re-evaluate their OWN role in the process before indulging in any further hypocritically skewed self-pity.

Re. benefits: The trouble with official stats is that they're almost always selectively used to support some vested-interest agenda or another. All I know for a fact is that every claimant I've ever met is struggling at best and stoney broke more usually. (One thing you may be overlooking about those "extra trimmings" BTW is that they pay for specific needs which able-bodied people don't need and therefore don't translate into disposable income.)

Miranda, we'll have to agree to disagree. Thanks for the debate, it's a welcome change from Teamtalk or LCFC World. Rene

Dear Rene, you say "Newspaper executives who have reported staff for [...] criminal behaviour, are traitors".

That tells us everything we need to know about your own standards.