To the young chap who says ‘work’s not in my psyche’... me neither! But 40 years’ labour has given me a life to be proud of

WHEN Matt Allen says that full-time work is ‘just not in my psyche’, he speaks like a man after my own lazy heart. I know this will sound ungrateful, since I’ve been blessed throughout my adult life with a job that thousands would envy, paid a decent wage first to report on the events of the day and more recently to sound off in print about almost any subject of my choosing.

But although Mrs U will hotly deny it (I’ve long lost count of the number of times she’s told me, ‘Oh, you love it really’) the truth is that I’ve never enjoyed work. Like countless others, I’ve always longed for holidays and weekends off, and I’ve never been happier than since my six- days-a-week retirement when I reached 65 last November.

So, no, full-time work has never been in my psyche, either. Yet in spite of this, I worked full-time for more than 40 years — and there lies one of the many differences between Mr Allen and people like you and me.

Eccentric

He is the part-time yoga teacher, aged 36, who was featured on Wednesday night in a documentary series called Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, aired on the pay TV channel W — of which I confess I’d never heard until I read the story in yesterday’s Mail.

Apparently he lives ‘mostly on benefits’ with his wife Adele, 35, in a council house in Brighton where they bring up their three children — Ulysses, eight, Ostara, four, and baby Kai.

Among the couple’s eccentricities, they shun mainstream medicine, they haven’t had their children vaccinated and they don’t send them to school.

By the sound of it, home schooling doesn’t seem to be going too well, since young Ulysses is still unable to write his name at the age of eight (it’s ‘absolutely fine’, says his mother, for her son to ‘take his time’ picking up literacy skills).

Meanwhile, Ostara is still in nappies at four. In the documentary, she is filmed making herself a meal of Monster Munch corn snacks and broccoli, while Ulysses helps himself to raw mushrooms, Brussels sprouts and crisps. Not your average family, then.

Mr Allen also appears to have eccentric ideas about accountancy, arguing that though he lives mostly off the state, he saves us all money by shunning the NHS and the education system. ‘So in our own unique, weird, wonderful way, we balance the books,’ he says.

As for why he doesn’t get a full-time job, well, his psyche won’t allow it — and, anyway, he believes it’s more important for him to be at home with his children than providing for them by working full time. But he’s not abusing the system, he says, oh no. ‘I really don’t think we are, because we have a minimalist impact on society in many respects.’

Mercifully for the health of society and the economy at large, most of the rest of us still believe we have other responsibilities beyond following our own inclinations and the diktats of our psyches. Indeed, even I — as lazy a man as ever whiled away a morning off, staring out of the kitchen window at an unmown lawn, ignoring the pile of dirty plates in the sink — have always shrunk from the idea of living at others’ expense.

I discovered this more than ten years ago, when I was offered a job by another paper. In a flattering bid to keep me at the Mail, my then boss made me the most generous offer of my life. I could give up my full-time job writing daily comment articles, he said, and produce just one column a week for the same money as before.

I leapt at the offer — and for my first few days of liberation, I revelled in my new-found idleness. There I was, not yet 55, being generously paid to do not very much. But as the weeks went by, I was tormented by a growing unease.

Malaise

It just felt wrong to be doing so little, living on the fruits of my colleagues’ labours as they toiled in the office from morning to late at night. And though I told myself I was still the family’s main bread-winner, I found it increasingly hard to look Mrs U in the eye when she came home from work.

By week three, I could bear it no longer. Finding myself in the lift with the boss, I told him I felt I wasn’t earning my keep. The following week I was back in my old job, working all hours for the same money as before.

Call it Catholic guilt or the Protestant work ethic, but whatever it was it had won the battle against my idle nature.

No such feelings appear to trouble Mr Allen, as he picks up his benefits while the neighbours go to work and pay their taxes to finance his ‘unique, weird and wonderful’ way of life.

All right, this eccentric family comes a very long way down the league table of parasites on the public purse, a million miles behind such overpaid leeches as university vice- chancellors and serial quangocrats.

It is also true that since the birth of the welfare state, a work-shy few have lived on benefits by choice, rather than necessity. Indeed, a friend told me yesterday that someone he knew in the mid-70s had solemnly declared: ‘With so much unemployment around, it would be unfair of me even to think about looking for a job!’

But what worries me is that the Allens’ attitude is an extreme example of a more widespread malaise among a ‘me, me, me’ generation, brought up to believe their own inclinations matter most, the state owes them a living and never mind about anyone else.

As for the work ethic, it appears to be withering on the vine, along with the older generation’s sense that we all have a duty to be self-reliant and to support our own families if we can possibly manage it.

Virtuous

You see this in employers’ reports of the extraordinary demands made by jobseekers straight out of university, who insist on working hours to suit them or time off for travelling to Peru.

I’ve also noticed myself a tendency among the healthy young (by no means all of them, I admit) to take sick-leave at the first hint of a sniffle or a hangover, while older, frailer colleagues battle to the office half- dead, rather than let their workmates down.

Meanwhile, welfare benefits have come increasingly to be seen as an inalienable human right, to be claimed by the ablebodied without a hint of regret or shame, rather than a safety net for those who are unable to support themselves through no fault of their own.

Claimants are almost always portrayed on TV as virtuous victims of callous Government cuts, while those who pay the highest taxes are dismissed as selfish fat cats to be milked for every hard-earned penny that can be extorted from them. Isn’t this the road to national ruin?

Yes, I know I’ve been lucky in that I’ve never been out of work, and never had to rely on the state to support my family. Nor have I ever been luckier than today, drawing my state pension and working just one day a week, in perfect tune with my psyche.

But perhaps the happiest thought for oldies in my position, who have been net taxpayers all our lives, is the feeling that we’ve reached the finishing post of fulltime work and have earned our retirement. Will the likes of the Allens ever know the same satisfaction?