ANGER AT BRITAIN'S WARPED WELFARE STATE

From an article by a Labour party member of the British pariament:

This is not about race. Immigration and bogus asylum seekers act like the barium meal of an X-ray, showing up the weakness of the body politic. Yet the revolt of working-class voters is not limited to areas of high immigration. Race merely acts as a flashpoint. In my constituency, Birkenhead, where black faces are still a rarity, the revolt is just as fundamental as in London and other multicultural centres.

Many on the Left imagine that support for the BNP and other extremists represent a cry for the reinstatement of Old Labour values of nationalisation and high state spending. In fact, the objection is much more fundamental. It represents a clash between people's sense of fairness, grounded in a collective social ethic, and what they see as the foreign idea of individualised rights....

Housing remains a flash point. The working-class sense of fairness is mocked by allocation policies that put at the top of the list groups who, in the local community's eye, have less claim than other groups. A policy of housing the homeless is noble. It is the way it is carried out which is so objectionable. I have never heard a constituent - even one who has waited in the housing queue for decades - argue against a policy that looks after the homeless. What so many of my constituents object to, as I do, is the way the homeless jump to the top of the queue and are able to choose the best homes. This policy strikes at the very sense of fairness that working people hold. Fairness demands that those who have striven longest should rise to the top of the queue and take the best housing. The accommodation they vacate should then be offered to the homeless.

In parts of the East End, the housing flashpoint is colour. In Birkenhead, it centres on the advantage that single parents or the homeless have in sweeping the weekly housing jackpots. The objection is the same. Dench and Gavron detail the ways current social housing policy favours the family in crisis against the family that has strengthened the local community.

The values that welfare preaches are equally objectionable to decent poorer families of any colour. Within the living memory of many voters, welfare has been reshaped from a system whose values reflected a working-class collective culture to one based on individual rights. In place of effort and contribution, a welfare system has been rolled out preaching and practising inalienable rights that individuals gain simply by turning up and asking for help....

Political correctness on individualised rights now runs deep in the Parliamentary Labour Party. It will take a considerable amount of courage to realign welfare with the collective values that are crucial to underpinning strong and sustainable communities. Moreover, altruism is sustainable in the longer run only if it is buttressed by a widespread sense of fairness.

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ELSEWHERE

Britain's minority government: "Public support for Labour has slumped to its lowest point since the 1987 general election defeat of Neil Kinnock by Margaret Thatcher. The ICM survey for the Guardian newspaper showed the party had suffered a five-point slump over the past month to 32% - fewer than a third of voters. It is not David Cameron's Tories who benefited from the slide in popularity however but the Liberal Democrats under new leader Sir Menzies Campbell. Despite the personal scandals which surrounded the exit of Charles Kennedy and the search for his successor, the party was up three points to 24%. The Conservatives were on 34%, a two-point lead over the governing party but unchanged from last month. Backing for the British National Party stood at 2%"

Help needed: "Right Wing News has just posted about a woman by the name of Andrea Clarke. Andrea Clarke is a woman with a heart condition and despite her wishes and the wishes of her family, the hospital she's at is about to pull the plug on the respirator and dialysis that are keeping her alive. This is despite the fact that her sister claims that a doctor at that hospital says Andrea has a chance to recover. During the Terri Schiavo controversy, there were big arguments over what Terri wanted, whether Terri was braindead, and who really represented Terri Schiavo's wishes. In this case, Andrea Clarke can speak for herself, no one is claiming she's braindead, and her family doesn't want to see her die. Andrea's sister believes that getting the word out about what's happening may literally mean the difference between life and death for her sister. So spread the word.

It had to happen: Spanish socialists claim that monkeys must be considered as human beings, with all legal and moral protection applicable to humans, human rights included. First Amendment rights for monkeys not included so far. No. It's not a joke.

Some good sense from a black writer: "African-Americans should be among the top supporters of today's domestic surveillance program. Why? Because without it, a terrorist could unwittingly inflict more devastation on the black community than even the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have inflicted historically. Today's most significant terrorist threats are color blind in the sense they want to hurt and kill as many Americans - black, white or otherwise - as possible. But the reality is that terrorists will most likely target major U.S. cities. And, although blacks make up about 12 percent of our country's population, Census Bureau figures show that we make up the majority of many large cities."

British immigrant urges assimilation: "George Alagiah, one of the BBC's most senior news broadcasters, has urged immigrants to do more to assimilate into the British way of life. Alagiah, 50, who was born in Sri Lanka, believes that too many arrivals are finding themselves isolated because they are putting loyalty to their homeland before their allegiance to Britain. The journalist contrasts the attitudes of new immigrants with those of previous generations who showed a greater willingness to embrace their new home".

Conservatism works best in Catholicism too: "In a nutshell, Catholicism in France is in a state of collapse. Its numbers are in free fall and the only signs of vitality are among those who attend the old rite. The majority of those who go to the new mass, the post-VaticanII liturgy in the vernacular, are over 55. Traditionalists comprise about 5 per cent (and growing rapidly) of the French church but 13 per cent of practising Catholics under 55. More than 70 per cent of traditionalist families have four or more children. Nearly 90 per cent are under 55 and their average age is 26 and falling steadily".

Chris Brand has been blogging up a storm again -- about what he sees as the current exciting times in Britain

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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