Ireland: Where girls collect welfare in pajamas

Brenda Power

The Times (U.K.)

There’s a new trend among Ireland’s urban youths, said Brenda Power: pajamas in public. Young women in deprived areas have adopted pajamas as the hippest of fashions, presumably because wearing them during the day implies that you have been up all night with an infant. And, as we all know, single motherhood carries quite the cachet among the unemployed set. It’s a simple equation: “You’re in receipt of enhanced benefits + you have a new status among your peers + you’ve moved up the housing list = Respect.” They even wear pajamas to pick up their welfare checks. We know this because last week a welfare office actually put up a sign informing supplicants that they are required to wear real clothing if they wish to claim benefits.

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Something is seriously wrong when “able-bodied young women” go around “flaunting their indolence,” especially considering that there are so many people who have recently been laid off, people “who abhor idleness and would give anything for a decent day’s work.” It is high time today’s youths got the message that sponging off the system “is not a lifestyle worthy of aspiration.”