villafc2000, for someone complaining about other peoples post you are racking up the number of useless ones yourself.
on the other hand i dont know how the inner workings of the UK welfare system works so i cant really comment on that.
Where im from we were lucky enough to have one of the better welfare systems in the world, and IMO the only way of actually getting a system like that to work is by having the nations population showing some solidarity, which im afraid to say you brits arent to good at. You are all easy to get behind a footie team, and you will all say the UK is the best country in the world etc etc. But when there is talks about raising tax, not frauding away billions of pounds making the revenue of taxes ALOT smaller then they should be, when the people that have it better off gets the question if they would give some of it up for people in greater needs, do you think that they will?
We dont get people who are as filthy rich as you do over here, or well, it happens but its rare. But on the other hand, id say most people live a resonable life, everyone has free health care, welfare, free education and it would take quite a few intentional cock ups before you would end up on the streets as there are "safety nets" so to speak. But it comes at a cost for everyone which is high taxes and so forth, but id say most people are more then happy to pay it as the returns are of good enough value.
the people i really do feel sorry for are not the teenage parents, its their grand children which will be absolutley shafted, growing up in a council flat with parents and grandparents which probably are unemployed, uneducated, poor and im guessing their parental skills arent even close to what they should be, and to be honest you cant blame them, they have undertaken a job which most 25 - 30 year olds arent cut out to do, im not sure on what kind of information and/or aid they get in learning how to raise their kids but im guessing its nothing worth mentioning?
Most teenage parents today still have a relative or grandparent etc that helps out raising the kid, but in a generation or two the teenage parents of today are the ones that will be trying to help their children raise their own kids, which doesnt sound like to much of a good idea to me.
ofcourse there are exeptions to everything, im sure there are some 14 year old mothers out there that do a better job then a 30 year old one.