MOST of us, I'm sure, would love to escape the misery of winter with a two-week holiday in the tropical sun.

But, then, most of us paying our taxes, mortgages, fuel bills and all the rest would have to save up many a long winter to be able to afford such a luxury - if ever we could at all.

So how come the 12-strong party of British and Irish-born travellers, who have claimed a total of £57,000 in state handouts over the past year for everything from unemployment to £180.30 a week in child benefit for the 18 kids they left behind, were able to afford the £16,000 holiday they would have had in Jamaica if they had not been thrown of the plane three-quarters of the way there for drunken hooliganism?

It is, of course, an eloquent commentary on the foolish generosity of our benefits system - such that we now have enough bogus refugees in Britain to fill Wembley stadium - that people on the dole can afford to have winter holidays in the Caribbean while those working for a living are lucky to have a fortnight in summer at Pontin's. Yet was it not even more maddening that a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Security should say, in reponse to valid questions about this scandoulous case: "How claimants spend their money is entirely up to them"?

What a disgrace!

It's your hard-earned money they are handing out to these anti-social spongers.

No questions are asked, it seems, even when they can afford to have £30,000 four-wheel drive vehicles parked outside their caravans on a subsidised site.

Perhaps these benefit-drawers are too busy filling in their self-assessment tax forms to explain.

It is not just these ale-can layabout travellers that need investigating, it's the easy-going sorts down at the DSS dishing out your dosh to dollopers who need putting on the dole - without the benefit of foreign holidays thrown in.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.