UK National Debt and Welfare State

The UK national debt at the end of the first quarter of 2013 amounted to £1 trillion and 377.4 billion, or 90.7% of total GDP (Gross Domestic Product).

Considering that Britain is the sixth richest country in the world, this is an astonishing figure. Could it have to do with how the economy is managed by our government?

The government is spending more money than it can tax, so it needs to sell bonds (called "gilts") to domestic and foreign investors. Gilts must be repaid in full, with interest. Unpaid loans form the UK's national debt. That debt is enormously growing.

What we have now is a peacetime record. The last time Britain borrowed so much money was during and after the two World Wars.

Spending by the government is similar to spending by the individual in that it can be divided into two types: to produce and to consume.

Spending for welfare state items like benefits and pensions is the most obvious consumption expenditure; health and education can also consume money, especially when they don't deliver.

In all these cases, the money, once spent, has gone forever, there is no return on it.

Spending productively is investing, and the money spent repays itself. The government does that when it invests in infrastructure like energy, transport and communication systems. These will help the country's businesses, increase productivity, generate jobs.

When people demand that the government "create jobs", they often have in mind what Labour did in the interminably long years it was in power from 1997: create redundant, unproductive public-sector jobs draining money from the public coffers. Not all of these jobs are redundant, of course, but a surplus of them just to keep people in employment is.

The government's role is not to create jobs, but to put industry and commerce in the best condition to create them.

The government has a choice: spending - and borrowing - to maintain and even increase our gargantuan welfare system or invest in infrastructure.

There is a limit even for our corrupt, indebted government to how much it can borrow. Money which is spent on benefits will not be invested in infrastructure.

This is why we are caught in this vicious circle of ever-increasing national debt spiralling out of control.

The British government, like Obama's America and the ideologically Leftist political elites of other Western countries, enacts policies not dictated by economic sense but political expediency.

Unfortunately, as Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.

Democracy, combined with high levels of prosperity, has led to a system in which the politicians bribe the electorate with welfare cheques, food stamps in the USA, and other freebies.

Their preferred choice to be elected is the easiest way, the path of least resistance of liberally giving handouts to voters, putting into practice the long-established crooks' method of spending other people's money with largesse. Why should they care? It's not theirs.

While they are getting elected and re-elected, in the meantime this economic policy can only produce a long-term effect: if the public money is consumed but not invested productively it will constantly decrease, and can only be replaced and repaid by higher tax rates and higher levels of borrowing.

Both of these are deadly for the economy. Higher rates of taxation discourage business and therefore productivity, leading to less hiring and more unemployment. This also results in lower tax revenue, even if the rates are high, because there is less wealth to tax. Elevated fiscal rates have the other undesirable effect of leaving less disposable income available for consumer spending, thus diminishing the demand for products.

Higher levels of public borrowing increase national debt, therefore interest and eventually, due to creditors' mistrust causing reduced credit rating, the interest rates at which the country can borrow.

Britain has recently lost its top triple A credit rating with some agencies.

This is how the government spends our money:

1. Pensions - 21%
2. Health care - 18%
3. Welfare - 17%
4. Education -13%
5. Interest - 7%
6. Defence - 6%
7. Protection - 5%
8. Transport - 3%
9. General government - 2%

The public finances are dominated by the welfare state, which comprises the first 4 biggest items in the budget. The welfare budget includes pensions and tax credits, as well as unemployment, child support, housing, sickness, council tax and other benefits.

The 5th item is the interest on our debt, which exceeds defence, protection - which encompasses protection from crime, emergency services, public order and safety - and transport. The projection is that by the end of 2013 interest will have become the 4th largest public expenditure, overtaking education.

The original purpose of the welfare system was to give a safety net to people in exceptional circumstances but, due partly to the new Marxist idea of redistributionism - redistribution of wealth in society, which in no way should be a democratic government's function - and partly to politicians' tactic of bribing voters with benefits, it has grown into something completely different, which is not just suffocating but slowly killing the economy.

If public money were spent more on investments to help productivity, there would be less need for dole payments. It's a question of rational choice and correct priorities.

The Revival of British Patriotism?

First published on FrontPage Magazine.

By Enza Ferreri

Beside the birth of Prince George, the most significant event to take place in Britain over the last few months has been the incredible rise of a small party opposed to immigration, multiculturalism, the European Union, same-sex marriage — in short, all the things loved by the main parties and ruining Britain.
Coming almost from nowhere, with support of barely 5% of the population, the UK Independent Party (UKIP) had a historical victory in November 2012, achieving a record second place in the by-election held in the northern town of Rotherham to replace the resigning local Member of Parliament. It was the highest percentage of the vote ever achieved by UKIP in any parliamentary election: 21.8%.

This “safe seat” was previously held by Labor, which has provided the town’s MPs since 1933.
Another “far-right” party, the British National Party (BNP), came third, following the extreme-left, Islamophile Respect and the Conservatives.

The fact that the Labor-run Rotherham Council had removed children from a foster home only because the foster couple are members of UKIP played a role in the election results. The thought-police behavior of the council nauseated many.

Rotherham was also one of the numerous English towns where Muslim pedophile gangs were allowed to prey on white girls without being disturbed by local police, social services or the media for 20 years.

This shameful neglect of duty and cover-up, recently brought to light, may have won supporters for the BNP, which first alerted the public to the scandal years ago, but was ignored amid accusations of racism.

Then in February, in another by-election, UKIP did even better, polling 27.8% of the votes, coming in a close second to the Liberal Democrats, and pushing the not-so-conservative Conservative Party into third place.
In that by-election, in Eastleigh, southern England, 55% of all votes went to candidates who opposed the new same-sex marriage law about to be introduced in Britain. Many blamed the Conservative Party’s third place on its leader, Prime Minister David Cameron, who pushed for that law, the same man who had called UKIP supporters “closet racists, loonies, nutters and fruitcakes.”
And finally, in what was described by UKIP leader Nigel Farage as a “game changer,” reshaping British politics possibly forever and making it no longer a three-party, but four-party system, the UKIP stormed the May local elections throughout England and Wales, getting a quarter of the vote nationally, with an astonishing gain in number of seats from 8 to 147.

While someone described the Conservative Party in the coalition government as being on the left of the U.S. Democrats, there have been comparisons made between UKIP and the Tea Party.

Alas, the UKIP, in its ascent to power, has undergone a transformation. Its policy to put an end to the age of “mass uncontrolled immigration” through a 5-year-freeze on immigration and a cap of 50,000 people per annum on future immigration, its main selling point, is under review.

Its positions on Islam have increasingly shown signs of the same battered wife syndrome that has long affected the British elites vis-à-vis the religion of peace, to the point that UKIP is now indistinguishable on this issue from the three mainstream parties — Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats.

A revealing example was a UKIP politician’s announced visit to a mosque in Scotland, the destination of a school trip that was opposed by almost a third of the schoolchildren’s parents. The man, Jonathan Stanley, said:

I am in no way condemning these parents, but I do not agree with this decision, and so I want to go and reassure the Muslim community.

Contrast this with the position of the BNP, whose Scottish organiser backed the parents:

Unlike UKIP, we fully back the growing number of parents who we feel are saying No to their children being taken to mosques, as if Islam is a part of Scottish heritage and culture, it is not. They are told all about the wonders of Islam, but there is no mention of Islam`s horrific Sharia law, no mention of women being classed as second rate beneath men, as per scriptural understanding. It`s all about cultural conditioning.

The problem with the BNP, though, is that it’s often been accused of having anti-Semitic and racist elements in its midst and even leadership.

How can UKIP take such a nonchalant approach to mosques, when we know that a high number of them are a hotbeds of Islamism and jihad?

Only Saturday, July 27th, the East London Mosque hosted a fundraiser for Cageprisoners, an Islamic charity for Muslim terrorists in prison, including those held at Guantanamo, calling for them to be freed.

These are busy days for British jihadists and counter-jihadists. This is the same mosque about which George Whale of Liberty GB sent a letter of protest to two MPs, which complained about the hundreds of people praying outside the mosque and occupying the pavement, something that has been going on for at least the past three years.

Liberty GB – to which I belong – was formed last March to fill the gap in British politics that exists between the UKIP, a clear Islam appeaser, and parties like the BNP with a less-than-clean reputation.

The party stands for Christian civilization, human rights, animal welfare, capitalism, and against jihad, multiculturalism and mass immigration, and it will contest the 2014 European Elections with its chairman Paul Weston as a candidate.

Liberty GB is part of the increasing British resistance to the Left’s imposition of its various politically correct agendas. This movement includes patriotic, nationalist groups and parties misleadingly called “far right.”

Paul Weston told me:

The rise of so called “right-wing” parties is logical and inevitable. If the Left control the institutions and the Left carry out the policies of mass immigration and divisive multiculturalism, then they can only realistically expect others to resist this path to national suicide. It is not about “right-wing ideology” to combat the Left on this issue, it is about national, racial and cultural survival – a perfectly natural, moral and civilised reaction to an unnatural, immoral and barbaric process propagated by the wicked and genocidally racist Left.

Weston is not new to Americans. He was in the U.S. early last year and made a speech hosted by Act for America in New York, warning America not to go down the same path Britain has taken. He’s planning another visit to the States in September or October.

Could the softening of UKIP’s positions explain its sharp decline in opinion polls, already evident in June and now even more pronounced? It was supported by 18% of respondents in May, 12% in June and now just 7%.

Could UKIP be repeating the mistake the GOP made in choosing half-conservative Romney as a presidential candidate? Maybe people want a clear, uncompromising message and don’t trust U-turns.

There has recently been in Britain a proliferation of nationalist groups and parties.

One of the best-known is the English Defence League (EDL), which is not a party, but a street protest movement. Among the parties, in addition to those already mentioned, are the British Democratic Party and English Democrats, and among the non-party groups are Britain First and England National Resistance.

This fragmentation is a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, it is a sign of excessive discord and therefore weakness, which may be the result of the difficulty of doing political work when one is constantly accused of the worst thought crimes under the sun.

On the other hand, this mushrooming of truly conservative organizations is a sign of how dissatisfied the British public is with the vast shift of the nation’s politics to the extreme left. Being Christian in the UK is regarded as something to hide, to be ashamed of. The “culture wars” that in America are still being fought are over in Britain, having been won by the “progressives.”

The birth of future king Prince George may indicate that some elements of traditional British culture and institutions are still alive and kicking, the monarchy being the best example.

But we’re not so lucky. Even that is under threat of corruption from the Islamophile monarch-in-waiting Prince Charles, who doesn’t recognize the primacy, let alone uniqueness, of Christianity, and from the new same-sex marriage law, which would lead to problematic legitimacy of heirs to the throne.

About Enza Ferreri

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based Philosophy graduate, author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L’Espresso, and La Repubblica. She is on the Executive Council of the UK’s party Liberty GB. She blogs at www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk.

Tories' Fear of UKIP Creates Useless Ads

The UK's Immigration Minister Mark Harper on The Daily Mail defends a government campaign of mobile billboards aimed at illegal immigrants telling them to go home or be prepared to be arrested.

He says:

But the reaction they have generated from the Left and the pro-immigration industry has been astonishing. They have denounced that simple message as ‘racist’.

Let me clear this up once and for all – it is not racist to ask people who are here illegally to leave Britain. It is merely telling them to comply with the law.

Our campaign targets illegal immigrants without any discrimination at all between them. By no stretch of the rational imagination can it be described as ‘racist’.

Furthermore, the campaign is not meant to, and does not, discourage legal immigrants who have earned the right to live or settle in Britain. To claim that the poster campaign is unfair to legal migrants is silly.

And that's the problem. This campaign does nothing about the too many immigrants who are or, like the Romanians and Bulgarians, are shortly going to come here legally.

Nor, for that matter, can do much about illegal immigrants. They know they are illegal: if they wanted to obey the law of the country they wouldn't have entered Britain. A billboard will not make law-abiding people of them.

But what the Conservatives want is just to appear to do something. The UK Independence Party, although opinion polls show that its support is fast declining, has already made its impact felt through the fear it has instilled in the pseudo-conservatives.

Is Sex outside the Sphere of Morality?

"Sex raises no special moral issues at all. Decisions about sex may involve considerations of honesty, concern for others, prudence and so on, but there is nothing special about sex in this respect, for the same could be said of decisions about driving a car. (In fact the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more serious than those raised by having sex.) Accordingly this book contains no discussion of sexual morality."

This is from the introductory pages of Practical Ethics (Amazon US) , (Amazon UK) by the influential contemporary moral philosopher Peter Singer, a Leftist utilitarian with whose views, I hasten to add, I agree on other major issues, such as animal liberation and equality.

I used to believe that sex had nothing to do with ethics, long before I read Peter Singer.

I now think that I was wrong and Peter Singer still is.

The effects of the “sexual revolution” promoted by the 60s “liberation movements” have been:

1) increase in the number of single mothers and illegitimate births, with the social consequences of increases in welfare dependency, unemployment rate and crime rate, put simply a growth in the phenomenon that sociologist Charles Murray calls “the underclass”. I refer you to his books Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (Amazon US) , (Amazon UK) ; The Underclass Revisited (AEI Studies in Social Welfare Policy) (Amazon US), (Amazon UK) ; In Our Hands : A Plan To Replace The Welfare State (Amazon US), (Amazon UK) , because these connections are well documented there, socially and statistically.

2) increase in child molestation, children's sexual abuse and paedophilia. In a world where everyone seems to be enjoying “sexual freedom”, no wonder paedophiles will be feeling that they are the only ones excluded from the party.

3) increase in teenage sex

4) increase in teenage pregnancy

5) increase in sexual transmitted diseases among children and teenagers

6) large increase in sexual trasnsmitted diseases among adults

7) creation and perpetuation of the AIDS epidemic.

How’s that for the consequences of something that should raise no ethical question, from the viewpoint of a consequentialist philosopher like utilitarian Singer?


A writer who has intelligently explored this subject is Tammy Bruce, author of The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) .

Tammy Bruce is an unusual writer, in that she is a lesbian feminist, actually a former activist and leader in both gay and women’s movements in the USA, who denounces what she calls the Left Elite of which she was part before leaving in disgust.

She puts in direct connection the Left’s agenda and the homosexual and feminists movements with the repercussions of sexual freedom I listed above, of which she holds Leftists responsible.

Fellow Traveller Obama Lauds Ho Chi Minh

If someone, especially a public figure, praised Hitler, he would certainly be called all names under the sun, and in particular "nazi" and "fascist".

How is it, then, that top political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic can express admiration for the worst communist dictators and killers with impunity, as if they had eulogized great statesmen or munificent philanthropists?

If commending Hitler makes you a nazi, doing the same with Ho Chi Minh should make you a communist. Fair is fair. But not in the world of the left-dominated media and "progressive" elites.

This is exactly what Barack Hussein Obama did during the visit Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House.

Obama is not unique. When Venezuelan communist President Hugo Chavez, who had praised the infamous terrorist Carlos the Jackal and Mugabe, died, it turned out that he had many friends among our Western leaders, including British politicians William Hague, George Galloway, hard-left Labour Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn.

From PJ Media (emphases added):

President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders...

After meeting with the leader of a country that persecutes and imprisons bloggers and priests, suppresses media and any form of political dissent and uses forced labor, Obama said they “discussed the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights.”

“We emphasized how the United States continues to believe that all of us have to respect issues like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,” the president continued. “And we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that Vietnam is making and the challenges that remain.”

The visit by Sang, he said, “signifies the maturing and the next stage of the development between the United States and Vietnam.”

Obama said Sang concluded the meeting by sharing “a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman.”

“And we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson. Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the United States. And President Sang indicated that even if it’s 67 years later, it’s good that we’re still making progress.”

Sang said the pair “had a very candid, open, useful and constructive discussion.”

These are excerpts from "The Blood-Red Hands of Ho Chi Minh", published in Reader’s Digest in November 1968 (emphases added):

Suddenly, the boy came out of the jungle and ran across the rice paddies toward the village. He was crying. His mother ran to him and swept him up in her arms. Both of his hands had been cut off, and there was a sign around his neck, a message to his father: if he or any one else in the village dared go to the polls during the upcoming elections, something worse would happen to the rest of his children.

The VC [Vietcong] delivered a similar warning to the residents of a hamlet not far from Danang. All were herded before the home of their chief. While they and the chief’s pregnant wife and four children were forced to look on, the chief’s tongue was cut out. Then his genital organs were sliced off and sewn inside his bloody mouth. As he died, the VC went to work on his wife, slashing open her womb. Then, the nine-year-old son: a bamboo lance was rammed through one ear and out the other. Two more of the chief’s children were murdered the same way...

Then their wives and children, including a number of two- and three-year-olds, had been brought into the street, disrobed, tortured and finally executed: their throats were cut; they were shot, beheaded, disemboweled...

These atrocities are not isolated cases; they are typical... While the naive and anti-American throughout the world, cued by communist propaganda; have trumpeted against American “immorality” in the Vietnam war — aerial bombing, the use of napalm, casualties caused by American combat action — daily and nightly for years, the communists have systematically authored history’s grisliest catalogue of barbarism. By the end of 1967, they had committed at least 100,000 acts of terror against the South Vietnamese people. The record is an endless litany of tortures, mutilations and murders that would have been instructive even to such as Adolf Hitler...

Hence the enemy has largely succeeded in casting himself in the role of noble revolutionary. It is long past time for Americans, who are sick and tired of being vilified for trying to help South Vietnam stay free, to take a hard look at the nature of this enemy.

Bloodbath Discipline.

The terror had its real beginning when Red dictator Ho Chi Minh consolidated his power in the North. More than a year before his 1954 victory over the French, he launched a savage campaign against his own people. In virtually every North Vietnamese village, strong-arm squads assembled the populace to witness the “confessions” of landowners. As time went on, businessmen, intellectuals, school teachers, civic leaders — all who represented a potential source of future opposition — were also rounded up and forced to “confess” to “errors of thought.” There followed public “trials,” conviction and, in many cases, execution. People were shot, beheaded, beaten to death; some were tied up, thrown into open graves and covered with stones until they were crushed to death, Ho has renewed his terror in North Vietnam periodically. Between 50,000 and 100,000 are believed to have died in these blood-baths — in a coldly calculated effort to discipline the party and the masses. To be sure, few who escape Ho’s terror now seem likely to tempt his wrath. During the 1950s, however, he had to quell some sizeable uprisings in North Vietnam — most notably one that occurred in early November 1956, in the An province, which included Ho’s birthplace village of Nam Dan. So heavily had he taxed the region that the inhabitants finally banded together and refused to meet his price. Ho sent troops to collect, and then sent in an army division, shooting. About 6,000 unarmed villagers were killed. The survivors scattered, some escaping to the South. The slaughter went largely unnoticed by a world then preoccupied with the Soviet Union’s rape of Hungary.

Photo from mediajorgenyc

Petition against Italy's Freedom-Killing "Homophobia Bill"

In Italy, several websites are collecting signatures for a petition opposing the "bill against homophobia and transphobia".

It is an oppressive, totalitarian and dangerous piece of legislation, threatening freedom of speech and religion. The petition has already collected 24,000 signatures (including mine) in a few days.

The Italian Parliament's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, is about to discuss a new "bill against homophobia and transphobia". If approved, this law would have serious repercussions on the fundamental human rights recognized by the Italian Constitution, including the right to freedom of thought (art. 21) and freedom of religion (art. 19).

Under this law, people could be indicted (and subject to imprisonment up to one year and six months) for:

1. urging MPs not to introduce a gay marriage law;

2. proposing to deny children's adoption to homosexual couples;

3. thinking of organizing a propaganda campaign to oppose the introduction of a gay marriage law;

4. saying publicly that homosexuality is a "grave depravity," quoting the Scriptures (Genesis 19.1 to 29; Rm 1.24 to 27, 1 Cor 6:9-10, 1 Tim 1:10.);

5. declaring publicly that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona Humana Declaration)

6. maintaining that homosexual acts are "contrary to natural law," because "they preclude the sexual act from the gift of life and are not the result of a genuine affective and sexual complementarity" (art. 2357 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church).

This law would ban any organization, association, movement or group "inciting" to prevent homosexuals from marrying and adopting children (imprisonment from six months to four years for participants, from one to six years for founders and leaders).

This law would introduce for the first time in the Italian legislation the definition of "gender identity" as "the perception that a person has of himself or herself as belonging to the male or female gender, although opposite to his or her biological sex", pace the principle of legal certainty and objectivity of the offence.

This law allows for citizens to be subjected to a sort of re-education through a further punishment - to be served "at the end of the jail sentence" - consisting in work "in support of associations for the protection of homosexual persons."

In fact homosexuals already enjoy the legal instruments provided by the Italian penal code against all forms of unjust discrimination, violence, offence to personal dignity.

The bill on homophobia, therefore, has no reason to enter the country's legal system.

Opposing it means fighting against the risk of a dangerous violation of the freedom of expression of religious thought and belief, the foundation of all civil liberties.


Photo by daameriva

Current Riots Are the Perpetuation of What Caused the Death of Trayvon Martin

From the article "Dr. Carson: 'Tone Down Rhetoric' on Race" :

Trayvon Martin probably had a "fight-or-flight" frame of mind the night he was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, Dr. Ben Carson said on "Fox News Sunday."

Carson, speaking to host Chris Wallace from Sun Valley, Idaho, said youths who grow up in inner cities experience the world differently than those who grow up "in a gated community in Palm Springs."

"You have a situation where you have a young black male walking home, not doing anything incorrect, and he ends up killed, and nobody suffers any consequences," Carson said.

"On the surface, that would appear to be a gross miscarriage of justice. Those of us in leadership positions need to be looking for things that we can take out of this situation that will be helpful, not things that inflame the situation.

Let's tone down the rhetoric and recognize that we the people aren't each other's enemies," he said.
Carson said he is from an inner city and "when you grow up in that environment, you develop a different type of philosophy."

"Trayvon Martin may well have had that philosophy and went into this fight-or-flight mode," Carson said.

Yes, it's a bad philosophy to bash someone's head for no reason. If Martin is the victim of somebody or something, he's the victim of that horrifying idea that blacks are always the victim and must always be prepared to react with violence, the same idea that we now see in action in all those so-called "demonstrations" which are in fact looting and vandalism sprees, fomented by the rhetoric of career "anti-racists" who are in reality the true racists, the various Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons, a group which now seems to include Barack Hussein Obama as well.