Showing posts with label Welfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Welfare. Show all posts

19 August 2014

Let's end child poverty say the Reds

Well so say the Greens, with their enormous "give free money to the parents of poor kids" electoral bribe, to be paid for by a tax hike.

It's classic dyed in the wool socialism and its central premise is that it is somehow caring to take by force from a small proportion of the population to give people money because they have children they can't afford to raise properly.

That's it.

When Russel Norman says:

Proud to pay 7c more income tax on every $1 over $140k so 200,000 kids can have food in their bellies 

It defies description.  What's he doing with the money now if he believes so much that it would be better helping poor kids?  Couldn't he just spend that money now on charities to help them?  Couldn't he convince others to do the same?  What's the mentality that says "if only the government took more of my money I could be helping the poor more"?


24 April 2014

Forgotten posts from the past: Compulsory welfare - a quaint remnant of nationalism?

With the whole debate about welfare one question is rarely raised - why does compulsory state welfare only apply to the poor in your own country? Why are the poor in other countries less needy?

Now the obvious answer is that it would be unaffordable to tax everyone to pay for people in other countries to be relieved of poverty, then, in which case, as with anything that you fund, you prioritise.

What is more important, a family with a TV, bed, clothes, car and ample nutrition, or a starving family with nothing?

For to simply say it is "none of our business" you're admitting you're a nationalist.  Human beings not residing in the country you live in are a lower priority to you.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating a global taxpayer funded welfare system.  I don't advocate the state based one.

However, given it is the left that is the source of the welfare state and defender of it on moral grounds, on what moral grounds is there to give money to people who, by any measure, are better off than the vast majority of humanity?

Could it simply be that socialism is nationalist too?

and isn't that rather racist?

20 February 2013

The end result of the welfare state culture

Truth is stranger than fiction, and the editors of the Daily Mail and The Express cannot be disappointed at the discovery of Heather Frost, 37, who personifies the caricature of a welfare parasite (although the same can be said of the feckless sperm donors who abandoned their offspring in her).  Don't worry, she is in the Daily Mirror as well.

She "struggles" to live at taxpayers' expense, in two adjacent houses in Churchdown, Gloucestershire, with her 11 children, 2 grandchildren and unemployed partner Jake.  She would love to have more children, but is sterile (due to cervical cancer), and says she is married.

She also bought a horse and keeps it for one of her daughters, at £200 a month.

Now none of this would matter if her and her kin were sustaining themselves or other people were sustaining them by choice.  I couldn't care less if she wants to breed.  

However, this is a family that costs other people money, and not through ill fortune, but by lifestyle choice.  In fact, this choice, facilitated by the generous UK welfare state, has given the woman the gall to demand more.  

She has been complaining to the council that the housing provided at the expense of others is inadequate, so the Council is now building a brand new house for the family at the price of £400,000.

A true libertarian would cancel her benefits, tell her to get the money from the kids' dads, get a job and warn her that when the house she has asked for is built, it will be sold and the rent where she currently is will go up to market rates.

It is easy to moan about this, but what is needed is answers and a broader reflection on why this happens, when it is blatantly goes against the values of most of the population.

Quite simply, the incentives are set up to encourage this.  

Money and housing is offered in exchange for breeding, without employment and without a call upon the other party responsible for the breeding.  The more breeding, the more money and the bigger the home.  The quality of parenting (which would appear to be at least questionable) is irrelevant.

Defenders of the status quo on the left would hold their hands up and say "what else can you do", and claim these cases are so rare that it is wrong to destroy or reform a system that makes these cases news because they are rare.  Yet these very same people will protest and harass companies that legally seek to minimise their tax bills, and wonder why they do so?

After all, if you invested your hard earned money in a business, would you want a penny of it going to the likes of Heather Frost? 

The culture bred by the welfare state is this one of entitlement, which isn't just about expecting the Council to give you a new house for nothing, but raising children who expect to never have to work, who are resentful of those who have worked and have things they want, and who believe that it is right to raise kids the same.  Her eldest (21) already has a child of 2, who lives with them all.  

Consider the effect of promoting this culture has on business, employment, crime and society as a whole.  Indeed the left ought to consider how it breeds undying resentment amongst the broad mass of people who resent being the host to the parasitical claims of those who choose to be unproductive.

The only answer to this culture is to stop guaranteeing people every growing income for breeding and housing to accommodate it.   Would Heather Frost have kept breeding if she knew she wouldn't get more money or a bigger house to accommodate the children?  She claims that if she could have more children, she would. Maybe she would have named the fathers and they would have had a portion of their income taken to help pay?  If she had been denied more money and housing for breeding, would the social services system let her raise the children in such poverty or take them away so they could be fostered or adopted?  

There are some relatively gentle responses that take us down the path of more individual responsibility.

26 August 2011

What went wrong on council estates?

An interesting programme on BBC 4 last night largely lauded the massive expansion in local government owned housing in the UK in much of the 20th century, driven partly by socialist beliefs that the state could supply people with better housing than they had, to the point where eventually 60% of the population lived in council housing.

However, it brought out some rather interesting points that showed both the dark side of the spread of council housing, but also what went wrong.

The dark side was how it was an excuse for slum clearances.  Large swathes of cities, populated by people in poverty, but living on otherwise empty land or in very cheap rental accommodation, were bulldozed to put in housing estates - for other people.  They were not built for the homeless or the needy, but were built for the employed, for couples and families and people had to pay rent sufficient to keep the place maintained.   

To get council housing, people needed to be vetted.  They needed letters of reference from their employer to prove that Mr. X was a fit and proper person, didn't have any criminal convictions and earned enough money to pay the rent.  Those on welfare alone, those without work and those who had committed crimes were not going to get homes provided by the state.  Indeed, their homes could be swept aside with aplomb so that the aspiring working classes could get homes.

The result was that even when the grotesque Corbusier style housing estates started popping up around the UK (many built by private investors with extensive state subsidies), their first generation of residents were proud aspirational people on relatively low to middling incomes.  

They were almost entirely couple or families.  Intact families, not single parent families.  They were almost entirely employed and as they were all people who aspired for a better life, instilled the work ethic they had into their children.  They lived as a community together, and instilled the same ethic in each others' children.  Most of all, because they had to be able to afford to pay rent, they treated these communal areas as their own, with some pride.  When a family gained such a flat, they had it until they wanted to leave as long as they paid up.  If they stayed, their children could inherit the right to remain tenants.

To a non-socialist it sounds absurd, the state providing permanent housing, but it was the state effectively providing housing on a similar basis to the private sector.  By renting to people who aspired, to people who gave a damn, and who had a stake in their new rental homes, it meant the social structure was of people who were not an underclass of criminal parasites, who did not vandalise and terrorise, and who did act as a community of voluntary interacting adults (and children).

What changed?

Some on the left would blame Thatcher and mass unemployment, because it left many families struggling and men in particular lacking "purpose" and motivation.   However, the change happened in the decade or so before Thatcher.

Some on the right would blame mass immigration.  Yet it was pointed out that quite a few residents of these estates WERE Afro-Caribbean or South Asian families, with the same aspiration and work ethic as the indigenous British.   Some would blame a change in the traditional family, as women did not stay at home to look after their children, but went out working.

One factor is certainly the social change in the 1960s and 1970s that saw the rise of divorce and single parent families.  Included with that is the cultural change from families that were tight knit, well disciplined and bound by a Judeo-Christian code of ethics that had hardened during the war, to a moral relativist attitude of "do what you like".   The breakdown of traditional families hit both indigenous British and Afro-Caribbean families the most, as migrants from India and Pakistan tended to retain close family ties.

However, the single biggest factor, explained by the programme, was the removal of vetting for council housing.  It was deemed "discriminatory" for people to be vetted based on income, so council housing was there for the poor, regardless of employment or indeed criminal history.  Council estates became the places were people went to live when they got out of prison, it became the place to live when you couldn't afford anything else or private landlords wouldn't rent to you.   The culture of hard work and aspiration was eroded by a culture of violence, thieving, vandalism and disregard for the property and lives of others.

It was exacerbated by the expansion of the welfare state into supporting single parents who had never been married, or de facto couples, into paying more for every child, and so rewarding fecklessness. 

Council estates moved from being places were having a home was a privilege, earned by meeting minimum standards set by the owner (the council) and paid for, to places where anyone could go.  The result was that they became the breeding grounds for the parasitical entitlement led mob that recently went on a rampage.  

It is what happens when you reward fecklessness and bad behaviour, whilst penalising frugality and hard work.  Consider that the British government is currently printing money and producing ultra low interest credit on a scale that means the average bank account owner LOSES 5% of his money every year, but still insists on adjusting welfare to that inflation (although few working in the private sector are having pay rises to match inflation).   

Consider that there is a debate only now about whether to deny convicted rioters and looters welfare, or to evict them from council housing (and of course the shrill cries from the left about how "unfair" it is and it will just make them do it again - as if their policies stopped it).

The socialism of the 1960s and 1970s saw council estates in the UK sink into the abyss of squalor, bad behaviour and welfarism, as the end of full employment, the breakdown of traditional families, the rewards of unconditional free money and housing, and the end of vetting council tenancies saw the worst of society being hothoused in what one old council tenant described as "holes".

It has failed.  It is time to sell out these estates, to stop building new ones, and to let the criminals, the feckless and the anti-social try their luck with charity.   Of course those who claim to give a damn about all of them rarely think it is right that they pay out of their own pocket voluntarily, for a charity to help house rapists, thieves and child abusers - but they want you to be forced to do so.

04 January 2011

Ending the subsidy to breed

Cactus Kate has written about two interconnected issues, the chronic rate of extreme abuse and neglect of children in New Zealand disproportionately by Maori adults, and the way the state subsidises breeding from the taxes of others.

She is right of course.  Despite Marxist reality evaders like John Minto and Maia excusing brutal child abuse as being about poverty, precious little is needed to disprove that.  If it were true, children in poorer countries would be getting beaten up and murdered in record numbers.  The problem is not material the problem is a poverty of aspirations, a problem of people breeding recklessly and keeping the kids because they bring in cash, or wanting to be parents, but also wanting to party, get drunk, leave children with relatives, friends, neighbours and then psychologically abusing the kids who want attention.  People who themselves wasted their education, don't read, don't study, don't work hard and don't want kids who know they can be better than them, are the source of abuse and despair.   They destroy the lives and futures of children because they have made their lives a daily search for instant gratification, sensation and mindless hedonism.

Her answers are good as well.  The first priority for the welfare state should be to cease paying the DPB to new claimants, and to end all other benefits/tax allowances for children, in exchange for lowering taxes across the board.  People shouldn't be rewarded for breeding.  Indeed, breeding whilst on welfare benefits should be penalised on the basis that the last thing someone should do whilst unemployed or sick is to breed.

By contrast, imagine if there was an income tax free threshold of NZ$15,000.  What if GST could go back down to 12.5% (!), then families who do work hard to make a difference wouldn't be penalised so much for what they do.  

However, to do that you'd need to vote for political parties that believe in more freedom and less government.  These don't apparently exist in Parliament at the moment.

The bigger message is that breeding carries responsibility and to give up some of your money, time and effort for children.  It costs you to breed.  Nobody else owes you or your children a living, except the source of the sperm (or egg) of your child.   Along with such welfare and tax reform would be the legal obligation of each parent to be responsible for the basic needs of the child (unless one has been removed from this by contract/court agreement).  

While we are at it, why not deny custody of children of all those convicted of serious violent and sexual offences - for reasons that are rather obvious.

09 December 2010

Bad parenting, not lack of money is harming poor kids

"Chinese children from poor families as a group do better than all other non-poor children (except non-poor Chinese children). Growing up in an ethnically Chinese family in England is enough to overcome all of the disadvantages of being poor. This surely has much to do with parental aspirations and attitudes. It would be a betrayal of all our children if we were to say that what this group already achieves cannot be achieved by all British children."

This is a report written by British Labour MP Frank Field, who was commissioned by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition to investigate child poverty.   It has produced a muted response in leftwing circles as he has effectively destroyed the myth that intergenerational poverty can be fixed by increasing benefits.  The report in full is here (PDF).

One of the standards of the left is that one of the biggest issues in modern society is child poverty.  That doesn't mean children who are malnourished (in fact many of them are overweight), it doesn't mean they are homeless, or lack access to health care or schooling.  No, it is about relative poverty, so it means households where children don't get to go on holiday, where they have few choices of clothes, they might not have a Playstation/Wii/XBox, they might not have broadband internet access, there might not be a family car.   In fact, poverty today would have been middle class comfort a couple of generations ago, and positively wealthy for most people on the planet.  

Frank Field agreed to help the government, much to the chagrin of his Labour colleagues, he agreed, largely because he was more interested in getting results than in snarking on the opposition benches.  He has a particular interest in child poverty, but his report also indicates his own increased disaffection with the "more welfare fixes poverty" school of "thought":

Since 1969 I have witnessed a growing indifference from some parents to meeting the most basic needs of children, and particularly younger children, those who are least able to fend for themselves. I have also observed how the home life of a minority but, worryingly, a growing minority of children, fails to express an unconditional commitment to the successful nurturing of children.

The issue about child poverty is not about kids not getting enough stuff, it is about whether being raised in families with low incomes damages their "life chances" and whether the opportunities for children to develop, excel and pursue lives that realise their potential are significantly harmed by poverty.    

The standard leftwing answer is that it is all about money.  Groups such as the self-styled "Child Poverty Action Group" campaign for higher benefits, essentially claiming the solution is simply to give the parents of such children more of other people's money.   In particular they support such money being without conditions, but simply about "fairness" (as if it is unfair to make more money than others).   In other words if only poorer families got more money then their kids would perform as well as families from middle income households.

Field's report disputes this saying that the real indicator of a child's life chances is not money it is quality of parenting.   That factor above all others is critical.  His report makes for stark reading and has thrown the proverbial cat among the pigeons for statements like this:

(This report) questions the almost universal assumption over the last hundred years that increases in income alone will automatically lead to social progress. Over the post-war period we have experienced a considerable increase in the real incomes and yet we still find that too many children now start school who are unable to make the most of their school lives. It is from this group that tomorrow’s unemployed and low paid will be overwhelmingly drawn.


Why should this be so? The Foundation Years argues that the exclusive concern of the adult world about how financial poverty affects children’s life chances has prevented a more comprehensive understanding of why life’s race is already determined for most poor children before they even begin their first day at school.

In other words, despite massive improvements in real standards of living, there is still an underclass of children who grossly under perform at school and then end up being those who end up being the poorest adults (and the cycle repeats). 

Minette Martin in the Sunday Times (subscription only) noted that parental lack of attention and ignorance is a core issue.   Apparently children from poor homes in the UK hear 616 words spoken an hour on average, compared to 2,153 words an hour in more wealthier homes.  She points out that by age 3 this is 30 MILLION less words that the poorer children are hearing, and learning and remembering.   A gap in language and understanding that is almost impossible to get back.   

Field also notes the role that planners and state intervention in housing has had:

Post-war housing policy has also enjoyed more than a walk-on role. Mega developments, sweeping up communities, shaking them around, and scattering them onto new estates, often on the periphery of the towns where they had long established roots, also played a major part in the break-up of the extended, matriarchal family hierarchy and in so doing destroyed the support that this informal network provided for couples as they began the process of starting a family.

He doesn't note that this was driven by the Labour Party, and Conservatives happily went along with the clearance of the poor into estates that were away from their voters.   Field notes how little is done to make fathers pay for their children:


communities have insisted from time immemorial that men who beget children should be made to support those children and the children’s mother, usually by marriage. In a fit of what at best can be charitably described as absent mindedness, or of not wishing to cause a fuss, a whole number of governments forgot that one of its primary duties in safeguarding the wellbeing of children is to enforce the father’s financial responsibility.

Absolutely key is parents being interested in their child's education.  Field's research indicated this is
independent of the parents' own education.  The report noted an effect of the early home learning environment on age five outcomes over and above parental background factors such as socio-economic status, maternal education and family income.







Yes in other words parents who give a damn, who read to their kids, who are involved in their education and help them make far more of a difference than money.   Single parents families are also an issue as:

Fathers’ interest and involvement in their children’s learning is statistically associated with better educational outcomes (higher attainment as well as more positive attitudes and better behaviour) even when controlling for a wide variety of other influencing factors. A number of studies both from the United States and the UK have shown that father involvement has an independent effect from mother involvement and effects have been demonstrated both for younger children and for later educational outcomes.
 
However, this doesn't fit the Marxist monologue that it is all about wealth and if only the rich had more of their money taken and given to the poor unearned, it would all be better. 

Education doesn't get off the hook either:

Most studies also find that schools, and in particular teachers, have an impact on the gap in attainment between the richest and the poorest...Teaching quality was a significant predictor of progress in both reading and mathematics over Key Stage 2. Analysis of the attainment of older children showed that being taught by a high quality (top 25%) rather than low quality (bottom 25%) teacher added 0.425 of a GCSE grade per subject

In other words the fatuous self-serving nonsense peddled by teachers' unions that they can't be paid or judged on performance is just that.   Good teachers make a difference, which means setting their pay by some central government fiat is as nonsensical as setting the pay of chefs by the same means, but far more damaging.

No person who genuinely gives a damn about fixing child poverty would simply reject these findings out of hand and continue with the mindless belief that the welfare state can fix the problems of intergenerational poverty.  It is about parents, it is about education, it is not about money.
 
Frank Field's recommendations are heavy on intervention.  He wants monitoring of children in what he calls the "Foundation Years" (the first five years of life) and a concentration on support of parents and training of parents for those years.   He recommends freezing child benefit (which gives parents money for having children at all income levels, but which the government will be capping at parents who earn no more than £44,000 p.a. (well above the average income in the UK) and redirecting money towards services for children in the first five years of life.   I think far more needs to be done to change the incentives around breeding when one can't afford to do so,  and that education needs to be freed from the shackles of state control and direction.   

Yet what is more important is to finally ditch once and for all the Marxist based myth that the reason children from low income backgrounds do badly is about money (and the solution is to pillage money from other people), when it is about parenting.   If groups like CPAG really gave a damn about child poverty they would cease their obsession with increasing taxes and benefits, and engage in hands on assistance for parents who need help, and encourage people who are in poverty to concentrate on improving their own lives, not on breeding. 

05 October 2010

Destroying the welfare state

"There will only be schools for the rich"
"We wont have any hospitals for the poor"
"Families will struggle"
"It's so unfair"

Such are the ridiculous hyperboles thrown about because the British Government is proposing to cap the welfare state by (get ready for the poor bashing moment):

1. Eliminating child benefit for anyone earning over roughly £44,000 p.a. (where the second highest income tax rate cuts in);
2. No one will be able to receive more in benefits (including housing, council tax etc) than the average wage.

So the top 15% of incomes in the UK (yes apparently £44,000 p.a. is rich!!) wont get welfare. "An attack on the principle of universality"! Oh what a tragedy. Families that WONT get welfare.

It really has come to this. Britain is overspending at a rate of £2 billion a week, but a cut in welfare for the comparatively RICH, sends the left into apoplexy. A saving of £1 billion a year, and it is portrayed absurdly as an attack on the poor.

The British welfare state is not under threat.

British taxpayers still pay for everyone's children to have compulsory education.
British taxpayers still pay for the most centrally planned and socialist universal health care system in the world (and funding for it isn't to be touched).
British taxpayers still pay for benefits for those out of work, unable to work and to reward breeding up to the average wage.
British taxpayers still pay for much of the population to be housed.

All the government is doing is cutting back on welfare for the middle classes. It is a start, but it is NOT destroying or even challenging the welfare state.

The opponents of these cuts do NOT have an alternative to reduce the deficit, they like to pretend continually borrowing to pay these benefits is better (none ever propose other cuts, few propose more taxes on the rich who will lose from these cuts anyway).

However, most disconcerting is the belief that families are "entitled" to help from the government. No notion that it is their own taxes they are getting back, no notion that when one breeds you should look after your kids yourself. A culture of being "entitled" to someone else's money or more absurdly, to get your own taxes recycled through the state.

The Conservative-Lib Dem government isn't challenging this revoltingly corrosive dependence on the state. What it is doing is abolishing welfare for wealthier families and capping welfare so that nobody gets more in welfare than the average person takes home from working.

For this to be controversial to anyone other than hardened Marxists who believe money grows on trees and that people should ideally get paid money for no reason at all, is tragic.

Oh and if you think New Zealand is less silly, then take the OECD figures from the Daily Telegraph, which claims payments per child per annum are on average US$3,133 per annum in NZ.

What is wrong with people paying for the consequences of their own breeding?

06 May 2010

What the UK election will tell you about Britain

With at least 60% of the electorate likely to support the two major leftwing parties, Liberal Democrats and Labour, it becomes clear that Margaret Thatcher didn’t fundamentally reform attitudes towards the state during her administration, what she did was reform the economy and wind the clock back, somewhat.

However, the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the British public carry a view of the state that I characterise as being supportive of the nanny state. The relationship those people have with the state is either being a co-parent, or as a dependent child.

Those who see the state from the view of a child are scared they’ll lose “their benefit” “their NHS” “their school”. They can’t envisage looking after their own health care, selecting schools, selecting retirement plans or actually paying for what they use. They are the dependent underclass, and comprise perhaps as much as 15-20% of the population. People who don’t think there is any other way. They are brought up loving the Labour Party, almost in the mould of North Korean propaganda, that they owe their house, their education, their health and their employment to the Labour Party. Without the Labour Party paternalistically supplying all of this (who cares where the money comes from) it is a terrifying brutal world indeed.

The myth built around it is the classic Marxist binary view. Them or Us. Because the Labour Party pays for Us, and supports Us, then the Conservative Party must pay for Them and support Them. Labour gives the underclass money, so surely the Conservatives must make things so the rich get richer. This is the repulsive lie manipulated and used by politicians on the left.

Not for one moment is it argued that the tax paid by the wealthier is what pays for Us, or that businesses create the majority of jobs and the money that pays for Us. More insidiously, it is not argued that the “rich” (a catchall for anyone middle class and above) earned their money, but rather there is a focus on inheritance, and on privilege. That those who are financially successful somehow got there through luck, rather than through effort or intelligence. You see the overwhelming myth is that without Labour, you are nothing, cannot be anything and the rich will get what you are getting now – forgetting that the vast bulk of what the government spends comes from the “rich”. The dominant theme of the campaign in the past few weeks has been to concentrate on getting that base of supporters out to vote, purely out of fear of the alternative. The BNP caters for these same children, who blame the "new kids" for getting more with a sneering disdain for big business and immigration generally. The BNP comprises the local bullies, whereas Labour makes friends with the immigrant underclass and says "you can have some too".

While that is all understandable, what about the rest? What about the 40-50% of voters who also vote to the left. Well they are not children in the state-citizen relationship, but supportive parents. These are people who, on the face of it, would admit they can choose the school for their kids, they could buy health insurance and retirement incomes, and could pretty much make their own decisions for themselves and their families. However, they all would say "what about everyone else?"

That is the point, when the bulk of middle class voters think, the state needs to look after the "children" I mentioned before - the underclass. "You can’t leave them to their own devices." In other words, it nurtures the “what about the people who couldn’t” view, pointing at how so many of the underclass are living grossly unhealthy lifestyles, bearing in mind that they are demonstrably unable to look after themselves.

They treat their fellow adults as children, they buy homes to avoid the underclass, and want to give them opportunities at best, and to lock them away at worst. Meanwhile, they too also want “their share” of nanny state, in tax credits, middle class welfare and the like. They support universalism so they can get some of their taxes back, because you see, they DO pay for themselves indirectly. They advocate the nanny state, but want their cut, increasing the overall cost.

So you see, it is about the dependency of the infantile, and the belief by the self-appointed nannies in the wisdom of the state “sorting out” the poor and the feckless. That essentially comprises the majority of British voters, who are one or the other.

It is both these attitudes that believers in small government and individual freedom need to address. For the “children”, it is about a transition to encourage them to “grow up”, give them opportunities to make more choices, not tax them, and increase the incentives to abandon what should be a shift from the welfare state to self sufficiency and private benevolent initiatives. For the “grownups” who want to help them, it is about taking away their own middle class welfare privileges in exchange for tax cuts, and encouraging those who wish to help others to do so, more directly, and in this perhaps some of the elements of the poorly named “Big Society” of David Cameron may have some merit. If you are concerned about the homeless, then don’t let the government fix the problem, do something yourself.

How are both these attitudes confronted? I don’t know. I don’t think it is about surrendering, as the Conservatives have largely done. However, until both are confronted and the concerns and views answered clearly, there will be next to no chance of ever electing a government that will consciously have a mandate to shrink the size of the state.

07 January 2010

UK taxpayers fund Islamist enemy

Anjem Choudhary leads Islam4UK, an Islamist group that wants UK residents to embrace Islam and the UK government to submit to it, and for the UK to become an Islamist state.

He has received much publicity lately for organising a protest march in the town of Wootton Bassett, which holds unofficial public mourning events when the coffins of soldiers returned from Iraq and Afghanistan arrive from the nearby RAF Lineham base.

Choudhary wants a counter protest to represent the "Muslims who have died" implicitly due to UK involvement in war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He claims they are the true victims.

Choudhary has long expressed views contrary to that of Western civilisation, celebrating the 9/11 terrorists as "martyrs", he refused to condemn the 2005 bombings in London and has long called for Sharia law to be implemented in the UK.

Now it is discovered that this enemy of the British political system and way of life is being funded by the taxpayer. He is a welfare parasite according to Guido Fawkes, getting around £25,000 a year from the taxpayer. The beloved welfare state funding, feeding, clothing, housing a man who effectively incites terrorism (but dances delicately along the line of not breaking the law as he does). He can't be deported as he was born here, but he gives a damned good reason for why the welfare state should be abolished.

Meanwhile, the appropriate response is to counter the views he expresses, to damn Islamism and damn the idea of an Islamic state for the UK. His views need to be confronted, his lies about what British troops are doing in Afghanistan exposed for what they are, and it's a good enough reason for serious questions to be asked as to why this man can claim so much on welfare.

02 November 2009

Nats torture the disabled!

Well I'd think that if I got my NZ news from Idiot Savant, who says the Nats are cancelling the invalids benefit unless people work.

He said the invalids benefit "Its (sic) paid to terminal cancer patients, people with no limbs, and the totally blind." and a lot of others too of course, but no he wouldn't tell you that.

He says the Nats are forcing people off the benefit and "we will waste millions hounding these people, and millions more on pointless and humiliating medical tests to confirm that no, there haven't been any miracles, and that they still have cancer, motor neurone, paralysis, or whatever other condition robbed them of their career. As I said: sadism - and a particularly expensive and wasteful form of it."

What banal nonsense. It is propaganda hyperbole I'd expect to see from the North Koreans.

After all, he paints National as libertarian in a ruthless way, when it is nothing of the sort, in fact you can almost see the image he paints of cigar smoking cackling about how they are going to be mean to the common people today.

What was actually said by Bill English was "Effectively we have [more than] 80,000 people where officially the welfare system has said they won't work again. We think that's a waste of those people and of their potential so we want to look at how to encourage more people off those longer-term benefits"

Nothing radical there, but no Idiot Savant thinks they should be on welfare for life, and nothing should be done about it. He bends down and kisses the welfare state for being so generous and giving, and that means he personally washes himself from ever thinking about giving a rat's arse about the people who get welfare. The state does it - all is better, and don't even think about changing it.

Now if the Nats were talking about transforming the system so that people in future made provision for permanent disability through insurance, whilst ensuring those currently on invalids benefits retained those benefits and had no disadvantage from working, then I might get interested. As it goes, Bill English is doing a little more than just letting things be as they are.

However, it is too much for an old fashioned socialist worshipper of the welfare state to even THINK the state might encourage less dependency, by, for example, making invalids benefit abatement rates parallel with tax (i.e. for every dollar you earn, the benefit is abated by the tax paid on that dollar).

International welfare state logical if.....

you believe in the welfare state at all.

One of the latest little "hands in the air" scandals to hit Britain is the news about the 38,000 children in Poland receiving British child benefits because their parents are working in the UK.

The EU of course means that all European citizens are, well, European citizens. British, Irish, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Romanian or French, you are all entitled to live, work and claim health, education and welfare in whatever country you are in. So if you live and work in the UK, you can claim benefits for children that may be located elsewhere in the EU, at the UK rate. Now the vice versa would apply as well, but good luck to a Brit working in Poland and getting Polish benefits for their children (if there are any), because they will, understandably, be much lower.

The welfare state concept is based on the idea that we are all our "brothers' keepers", so that people who are in need of income assistance (or income at all) get it from the state, paid for compulsorily by you. Of course take it further and it is based on there being an unwritten, unconscious and unagreed obligation. Your very existence means you must pay for others to survive, and their very existence and poverty means they are "entitled" to welfare.

So the question comes, if it is good enough within border, why not internationally? After all Polish children are far more needy than most British children. Why stop there, why not have a global welfare state where taxes are taken from those with the ability to each according to their needs (you know where THAT came from don't you?)?

Isn't anything else racist, xenophobic and morally wrong? After all, if the welfare state is moral, it must surely be moral internationally. Couldn't those on the left argue that such trans-border poverty is "racist"?

The answer of course is no. It isn't moral to maintain the welfare state. It isn't moral to force people to pay others to have an income. The answer to Britain's dilemma of paying the welfare state of others is to phase out its own.

It could start by telling the EU it is eliminating payments to other countries, and then all new migrants are told they will never have a claim on welfare, in exchange for exemption from the PAYGO tax otherwise known as "national insurance". From then starts the long weaning process off of the welfare state, which will see support for the poor move from compulsion to choice, from the state to the private voluntary sector. However, nobody dare even talk of such a thing in the UK today.

03 September 2009

OECD report IS a wake up call

Tariana Turia and Annette King both think the OECD report "Doing Better for Children" is a wake up call. Sadly the people who most need to wake up, spend too much time sleeping and ignoring their kids as it is.

Tariana Turia thinks it is a wake up call to the government and you. Yes you! It’s up to you to fix these problems and you should be forced to do so, through taxes.

The response has been tragically asinine:

- Labour is calling for more fiscal child abuse to subsidise errant families;
- Jigsaw family services is calling for the same;
- Idiot Savant continues his state worshipping;
- The perpetually inert Child Poverty (in)Action Group wants to pilfer more money from successful families to increase welfare benefits (whilst CPAG itself does nothing material to help children).

Lindsay Mitchell by contrast points out that the OECD report contains a damning indictment on welfare for single parent families. She quotes "Some countries spend considerable amounts on long-duration single-parent benefits. There is little or no evidence that these benefits positively influence child well-being. Durations could be reduced and resources concentrated on improving family income during the early part of the life cycle for those children".

In other words, the OECD doesn't support the blind "more welfare" approach at all, and denies that such benefits are good for children. Ironic, when so many want to use this report to promote more welfarism, they deftly avoided that.

Many New Zealand families function reasonably well, and don’t have suicidal children or children in poverty. The people who should be waking up are as follows:

1. Everyone who breeds without the means to look after their kids: Why would you do that? Why would you produce children in poverty? The reason your kids are living in poverty is you. Yes, you.

2. Parents who abuse their kids: Apparently most of you were abused yourselves, which is hardly an excuse to repeat the behaviour. You are vile, you don’t deserve to have children, and you should be in prison and denied ever having custody of kids again. Just because Sue Bradford made it look like most parents are like you, they are not.

3. Parents who ignore their kids: Yes it isn’t a crime to always go to the pub instead of staying home and playing with or helping your kids, to never read to your children, to take little interest in what they do, to tell them that a lack of schooling never did you any harm, to be more interested in picking up men that picking up your kids’ homework or to regard your kids as a nuisance. However, you’re pretty useless as parents.

4. Politicians who insist on forcing everyone to pay for categories 1-3 above: Why are you penalising good families by subsidising bad ones? Why do you want to continue treating children as a welfare gravy train for indolent nobodies? Why wont you confront the disincentive the status quo is for good behaviour? Why do you create virtually useless agencies like the Ministry of Youth Affairs or the malignant (nobody is to blame) Office of the Childrens’ Commissioner? Wouldn’t children be better off if their parents didn’t need to work so much to make a living because you weren’t strong arming so much tax from them?

5. Staff of the Office of the Childrens’ Commissioner, and Ministry of Youth Affairs: You have failed, time to resign. 5x the suicide rate of the UK? Double the suicide rate of Australia and the US? Time to ease the budget deficit back a bit and shut those entities down.

Quite simple, if you can't afford to have kids, don't have them. If you have them, make sure you love them and dedicate a good part of your life to giving them the attention they deserve and need. Beyond that, either close your legs, take the pill, wear a condom and stop producing children you wont love or can't care for - and stop electing politicians who encourage it.

Then, people who can afford to have kids, might have more, and besides - those who think human beings are a blot on the environment ought to support people breeding less.

28 August 2009

Daily Telegraph columns of the day

Janet Daley on the Kennedy legacy, the truth behind the higher profile Kennedy men that seemed to go largely ignored, how one could have a private life of intense shallowness, whilst opining the highest moral standards publicly. Political hypocrisy came of age, was known and ignored.

Philip Johnston on the failure to address welfare. Instead of tackling the problems of an underclass dependent on the welfare state, Labour tinkled "From 1999 onwards, the government – ie the Treasury – abolished family credit, introduced working families' tax credit, introduced the disabled person's tax credit, introduced a childcare tax credit, introduced an employment credit, abolished the married couple's tax allowance, introduced the children's tax credit, introduced a baby tax credit, abolished the working families' tax credit, abolished the disabled person's tax credit, abolished the children's tax credit, abolished the baby tax credit, introduced a child tax credit, abolished the employment credit and introduced a working tax credit" so that "five per cent of British men aged under 50 are still classified as ill or disabled – three times higher than in Germany".

Doesn't matter, people on welfare all vote Labour anyway don't they?

17 August 2009

You can assist people by choice

One Idiot Savant doesn’t understand. When referring to huge families on welfare he says:

those children exist, and their need is real… If we want them to have any chance of a decent life (rather than creating or perpetuating multi-generational poverty), they need to be provided for.”

Why do these children exist? Who is primarily responsible for meeting their needs? Why should people who choose not to have children or to have few children be forced to fund a decent life because some parents ARE feckless? Why should people currently on welfare get more welfare if they breed more? Why is the money forcibly taken from others, a right?

However, his lack of imagination, the fundamental failure of morality shared by virtually all on the left is this statement here:

What exactly are the right proposing here? Denying assistance to those whose need is greatest? Leaving people to starve?

Who is leaving who to starve? Who denies assistance? Who is stopping anyone from providing assistance? Is Idiot Savant suggesting that if the beloved state doesn’t pilfer taxes from him, pay bureaucrats in the process then hand it out in welfare, that he wouldn’t help people in need?

Why are taxes, a tax collection bureaucracy and a money handout bureaucracy a sign you care, but charity – something you choose to give, through people who want to help – an anathema?

In other words – why do you need to be forced to care?

Furthermore, why is it ok to bash the people who are forced to pay welfare, but not to demand accountability and appreciation from those who get it?

21 July 2009

Goff lost the fiscal plot

Seriously!

Phil Goff. The man who brought student fees to universities, arguing for a massive expansion of the welfare state? Labour has lost the plot.

To call for the partners of those who are employed to be eligible for welfare benefits is impractical, unaffordable, immoral and destructive. Consider quite simply how many hundreds of thousands of people would then be welfare beneficiaries, consider what disincentive it creates for work, consider how much more tax on the employed partner would be needed to pay for this.
John Key says there are no pixies printing cash (he's not quite right there), but this harks back to when the Labour Party regarded fiscal prudence as some plot by the bourgeoisie.

Consider how parasitical this would make so much of the population. Husbands shouldn’t pay for their wives, or vice versa, no. The state should, and hubby can run off with ALL of his earnings (more highly taxed) and wife can just bugger off and enjoy her benefit. If the notion of the welfare state as a safety net is widely accepted by the majority of the population (doesn’t make it right), what does the Labour view of the welfare state tell you? That half of the population should be supported by the other half – with a leviathan state to enforce, violently if necessary, the leech like demands on the productive, to pay for everyone else.

Think more how many people would be grateful for this kindness, how many would vote Labour to keep it, and what a travesty of modern liberal capitalist society such state enforced dependency would represent. Not a society of free individuals pursuing their interests, desires and being what they want to be, but a society where half work hard to sustain themselves and their families, and another family at the same time, and the other half take their “entitlement” from the loving state – knowing they don’t ever have to really be accountable for it.

It’s what the Greens have always really believed in, and what Labour now espouses. So imagine a teacher asking a classroom of kids. How many want be paid for working, and pay half of what they earn to the government? How many want to be paid for not working, getting all of it from the government?

15 February 2009

Able bodied lowlife on invalids benefits

Deborah Coddington in the Herald on Sunday outlines why the government should review every single recipient of the Invalid's Benefit. She talks of the mother of a murderer, who also happens to be a Mongrel Mob member, who verbally abused the wife of the deceased. Someone New Zealand taxpayers are forced to keep housed, fed, clothed, boozed and entertained.

As Coddington says, if the Greens call this beneficiary bashing, let them spend their own money on the likes of them. Good luck setting up the charity called "supporting the underclass trash who help destroy the lives of others".

08 December 2008

What's wrong with Britain? Welfare culture led by the state

I'm constantly astonished by the belief held by all three main political parties in the UK that local government somehow could ever have sufficient competence to manage everything from education to law and order and welfare. This case in the Daily Telegraph, demonstrates the complete disregard local government has for the money it gets from taxpayers.

The Saindi family has seven children. The mother approached Ealing Council for housing assistance in July, and according to the law the council was legally required to find a seven bedroom property for this family. Yes, seven bedrooms. So it did. The family gets £400 a week in benefits/tax credits, but taxpayers are also paying £12,458 a month in rent to the private landlord for this property. In other words the landlord is making a killing from taxpayers - because the Labour government forces councils to find accommodation for families, regardless of cost.

On top of that the system "enables landlords to find out the maximum amount of money available before a price is agreed", so it allows them to completely screw taxpayers. So this one has, and has no shame about it. "Landlord Ajit Panesar, who is acting within his rights, fixed a value for his Acton property so that the Rent Service – an executive agency of the Department for Work and Pensions - could advise the council what it should pay. It came up with a figure of £12,458 a month." An estate agent said that similar properties typically attract half that.

The mother's eldest son 20 said "It's not that we wanted this big house - my mum is not happy because she has to clean all of it. The first day we moved in here we got lost because it was so big". So the family would have been content with less, but no, the warm loving embrace of the Labour government, and its compliant council, is throwing taxpayers' money for people to live in a £1.2 million house - the same taxpayers struggling to pay mortgages.

Central government sets rules to force generous welfare on councils, it sets rules that allow landlords to rip off taxpayers at extortionate rates, even beyond what those receiving the benefits would seek themselves.

So the winners are:
- The Saindi family which gets a large house but pays next to nothing towards it;
- Ajit Panesar who is ripping off the taxpayer by playing with the rules;
- The bureaucrats who are paid and aren't the slightest bit accountable.

The losers are:
- Future British taxpayers who will face higher taxes or less government supplied services to pay the debt for this largesse.

Socialism is wonderful isn't it?

11 November 2008

What DID leftwing campaigners tell some people?

This report that some people rang the Police when the election results were coming through is alarming in several ways:

1. That people thought their benefits would disappear because National was being elected. What sort of untrammelled nonsense have the left been spreading about such a situation? How despicable are those who promote such lies among people who are clearly rather unhinged? How many were persuaded to vote Labour or Green or else their benefits would dry up?

2. What do people think the Police will do? Arrest John Key and Rodney Hide? Call an end to general elections? Do they think when things don't go their way the Police should be called in? How scary is that?

3. Most disconcerting is the helpless dependency of such people who think the only way forward is to remain dependent on money taken by force from others. How insipid has the welfare state become that there are people terrified at the prospect of having to earn themselves a living?

Sorry folks, it's when the word Libertarianz replaces National that you might be worried, but by then the culture would have to have changed so radically that you wouldn't be scared anymore.

05 November 2008

Maori Party want more welfare too

Yes it's not just abolish the dole, according to the NZ Herald, it's also give $500 to the poorest families - taken of course from everyone else.

What do they get that for?
What did they do to earn it?
What will they spend it on?

The Herald asks Adelaide Wharakura, a mother working part time, who would get the money if she backs it, she obviously says yes, but even so she is wiser than the Maori Party. She said:

"Who it makes a difference to depends on which families you give it to. There are a lot of drugs and alcohol. If I'm being honest [there are some who would] rather spend money on things like that. This money shouldn't be spent like that - there should be some checks or rules"

Yes, money taken from hard working taxpayers as a handout, which some will use on drugs and alcohol.

Even the Maori Party's candidate for Hauraki-Waikato said "it was likely that for some children the money wouldn't trickle down and the majority would miss out"

So a bit of theft and giving money for nothing is still ok - take from more successful families to pay for less successful ones.

Marxist Maori Party nonsense - it wants to take your money and give it away for nothing.

and Labour and National will both go to bed with it for power. So why would you vote for them?

UPDATE: Not PC posts eloquently on the nonsense of the "multiplier effect" of boosting the economy by taking money from people in the first place.

31 October 2008

Why grow the welfare state?

Think about it:

Been in a job for five years
Lose the job
Doesn't matter if you have a partner or not

Perfect for many outgoing Labour MPs.