Standing on your own two feet.

I was brought up to 'stand on my own two feet', to 'pay my way' and go out in the world and win self-respect and the respect of others by earning a living.

'No-one owes you a living' was another cliche which resonates from my childhood to the present day.

The thing is, these views invariably came from Conservatives, who believed that the welfare state should be kept severely in check, lest the feckless take advantage of taxpayers' generosity.

Yet within the last two weeks, something very odd has happened. The Conservative Party has abandoned any pretence that people should 'stand on their own two feet'. It has become the party of the expanding state, the party of subsidies and crutches.

The Tories want the taxpayer to subsidise the unemployed for up to two months while they go on work experience schemes. Participants are not standing on their own two feet, they are standing on the feet of the taxpayer. The Tories also want to subsidise big private companies by offering them free labour. So the big companies are not standing on their own two feet on this one either. They are relying on state handouts.

What Conservatives fail to realise is that being paid is what gives workers self-respect and the respect of others, not simply doing work, especially if that work is menial.

Let's have a look at this in more detail, step-by-step, as recent research has identified a strong correlation between right-wingers and the educationally sub-normal.

1. Get paid.

2. Pay your bills - you know, like rent and other stuff.

3. Job done, you have 'paid your way' in the world and deserve to hold your head up high.

What is further baffling is the attitude of the big companies. Given that there is actual work to do for the people on these slave schemes, why is that work not paid work? Why are the skills of Workfare shelf-stackers zero-rated when compared to workers who have successfully applied for a real job and may be on their very first day?

Given the almost incalculable profits of the companies involved, why can they not spare six quid an hour to pay people who are working for them?

As today's Guardian points out, there is a huge underbelly of unsavoury slave labour in Sussex, with unsuspecting benefit claimants being forced to clean private houses - for no pay at all.

The blame for the near-collapse of Workfare is being laid at the door of left-wing paper-sellers, whom I happen to know are relishing the limelight, and expect today's shopping centre sales to treble.

But all these people are doing is pointing out that the central part of 'work experience' or 'the experience of work' is the experience of being paid. Pay packets are seriously addictive to workers, they literally can't get by without their monthly or weekly fix of pay. Once you've been paid, you never want to stop working in favour of going on the dole.

Is Cameron's Cabinet simply a bunch of class-prejudiced, Bullingdon Bullies hell-bent on grabbing as much free labour as they can for their millionaire mates? Surely not?!

But what else are people to deduce from this abandonment of traditional values. I think the damage this could do to the Tory Party is immense, and yes, I am one to give this particular dog a damn good kicking when it's down.