I won't be hanging around this thread, my blood pressure won't take it.
In brief - McJagger, I wonder if your feelings regarding welfare would differ if you lived in a country where well paid manual work was largely extinct and the unions were dead or disarmed; where casualisation and deskilling of the workforce has led to most remaining working class jobs and also a lot of routine 'white collar' jobs being temporary, insecure or outsourced, on short term contracts, with piss poor conditions and rates of pay, few prospects, and changing work hours when it suits the company; and that you become unfit for work just long enough for your mortgage protection insurance payments to stop and the unpaid bills to start piling up. How are you going to manage then?
Also, whether you like it or not, a lot of the new service sector jobs like 'greeters' are simply not practical for a lot of people with ASDs to do. You are very fortunate to have so few issues regarding sensory problems and social difficulties, rather like my dad. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to function so well in an employment setting, and if anyone resents me being on disability which I try to get back on my feet and back into some form of
sustainable employment, they can kiss my arse.