22/07/2008 by admin.

Someone must have been listening to my last post. Of course the Green Paper is welcome and makes a contribution to the thinking on lifting people out of a generational dependence on benefit but, in reality, is only one aspect of a necessary incentivised regeneration of the “deserving working class” morality. It comes at a rather strange time though, doesn’t it? One has to hope that there will be the jobs  to offer the mock-invalid population and also that Janet Daley is right when she asserts that the mere threat of reassessment will be enough to avoid the expense of medical assessment. We have yet to see the detailed forecasts.

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15/07/2008 by admin.

Since there is no obvious and easy solution it should be possible to get a consensus between the parties on a multi-layered approach. However the main culprit is ,to my mind, pretty obviously the cycle of deprivation which in turn is largely attributable to the legacy of workless families. Now what have we heard lately about earlier ‘initiatives’ to get people back to work who continue endlessly on dubiously-earned disability benefit or lurch from one job-seekers allowance to another, the main factor being, of course, that some people are worse off on low wages than they are if they claim the maximum benefits associated with large families. This must be broken but what has this government so far achieved. We only ask because we want to know.

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04/07/2008 by admin.

Wimbledon with its mixture of sunshine and (very occasional as yet) showers used to epitomise the English summer. Long days when cares fly away.

The dearth of real news at this time of the year used to be called the ’silly season’ in the media when stories of the ‘dog bites man’ variety pushed out the real news. Not so this year. Apart from the darkening view of the economy the dark side of our society seems to be laid bare - the dreadful murders of the two French students and the needless waste of life yet again in the murder of Ben Kinsella.

Is it really the result of the development of an underclass or just a manifestation of the lack of parental care and control and of any framework of moral values?  As Ben’s half-sister so plaintively and movingly said whatever it is it needs to be addressed  and corrected before more knives are used.

Our MPs might think about this as they vote against reforming their iniquitous ‘allowance’ system. There is little evidence to suggest that they do. Ministers continue to quote meaningless statistics on the alleged decline in knife crime and seem to imply that such incidents as Ben’s murder are an inconsequential blip on the fine New Labour society we have created. Shame on them!

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