Having a Laugh

I think the country's welfare system must be 'having a laugh' in light of news reports about a criminal grandmother - Christine Fitzgibbon (60) - being paid benefits worth £1,500 a month or £18,000 a year,

While enjoying a lavish lifestyle including - I kid you not - long holidays at her second home in Spain.

Now call me daft, if you like, but that's what I would call a hand-out not a hand-up - particularly when you take into account that Granny Chris acted as a banker to her criminal family whose empire was built on the sale of Class A drugs in Merseyside.

Various members of the family - including Christine - have now been sent to jail following an investigation by SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency).

When police raided the family home in Liverpool - they recovered £180,000 in cash hidden below the floorboards and in the leg of a dining table.

Apparently the Fitzgibbon family had terrorised their local community for many years - no doubt while thumbing their noses at their apparently powerless neighbours.

So I take my hat off to SOCA and just wonder why more police time and resources are not focused on mercilessly hounding these criminal families out of existence.

By changing and targeting the law, if necessary - and by ruthlessly recovering the proceeds of their lucrative lives of crime. 

The fact that they are able to claim state benefits while ruining other people's lives - just makes the whole business that much more difficult to swallow.

But you would think that a modern 21st welfare system would be able to deal with this kind of behaviour. 

Christine Fitzgibbon received just two years in jail (not nearly enough in my view) - her son Jason (40) 16 years in jail - and his younger brother Ian (39)  were jailed for 14 years and six months for drug charges and money laundering. 

Another two gang members, Daniel Smith (26) was jailed for ten years for supplying drugs - and Neil Williams (32) received 21 months for money laundering.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.