EVERY few months the national papers expose a family of super-scroungers. You know the sort of thing: Woman with 18 children by 13 different dads is given £100,000 of your money to live a life of luxury blah blah blah.
The one thing these families have in common, apart from an amazing ability to milk a system that just confuses everyone else, is that they always, always, always, pose for the Press photographs.
Why on earth do they do this?

They are about to be abused by the papers, denounced as lazy cheating good-for-nowts, become pariahs locally, but there they are, in the papers, smiling compliantly for the cameras, all with their hair brushed, as if it were a commemorative picture. Ahh, the memories.
‘And this one was when we were in the Mirror as the Finchley Freeloaders. That was the same year as our Eddie won Couch Potato of the Year Award in the Daily Mail. Happy days.’
The latest to be so featured are a couple who have no intention of getting off their idle backsides for any other reason than to sponge more money off the state, and have been given a £500,000 house for themselves and their 12 children.
Twelve? Has no-one told them what keeps causing it?
And, of course, there they are, lined up for the snappers like a championship-winning football team – or the turkeys selected for the Christmas promotional pictures at Bernard Matthews.
Are they daft? Certainly not. But what kind of brain is it that can work out how to claim £2,000 a month in 10 different benefits and remember a dozen different names and birthdays, yet cannot figure out what kind of a story the papers just might be planning.
Or maybe it goes with the territory. Perhaps they are showing a fine sense of social responsibility? They see their role in life to satisfy our need to feel morally superior and be angry with bureaucracy. It’s tough, but hey, someone has to do it.
‘The Sun have been on love. They want to do an exposé about us being the biggest spongers in Britain - they’re going to call me Lenny the Layabout.’
‘Ooh, that’ll be nice for you, but they can’t come for the photographs until you’ve had a haircut. Down to the barbers this afternoon - and throw that old mattress on the lawn, you’ll have to do all your malingering later.’

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit