By Roberta Woods
Our Welfare State was created to provide a safety net for the British people during the post-WW2 period. However, it is having a negative impact on the people it was designed to help. The safety net has become a way of life for many people, with generations of families relying on it. Unfortunately, this has replaced the role of the family in some cases, and politicians have been reluctant to address this issue. The Welfare State often leads to low expectations, stifled aspirations, and ill health. It may even be partially responsible for the obesity epidemic, as many people use their benefit money to order fast food deliveries directly to their door.
Whenever the state tries to fix a problem, things are often worse. For example, more money spent on education has resulted in worse students, and the NHS consumes vast amounts of cash with worse outcomes and longer waiting times for many patients.
Our sense of fair play is tested when our fellow citizens take advantage of the benefit system. This feeling is exacerbated by mass immigration, as foreigners who have never contributed to the system have immediate access to the Welfare State, which was created by our ancestors and supported by the taxes of their descendants for the past 70 years. It is becoming clear that we cannot maintain a generous Welfare State against a backdrop of mass immigration.
Politicians often say that we need to bring in the brightest and the best, but they should look at nurturing our own people to acquire the skills of these supposed ‘brightest and best’. It is a well-known fact that newly qualified doctors do not find the UK an attractive place to live, but it is a magnet for ‘the dullest and the worst’ due to our Welfare State. For a generous welfare system to survive long-term, there needs to be a high level of trust among its recipients, and high unassimilable immigration levels further weaken this trust.
When 48% of London’s heads of household were born overseas, neglecting the impact of migration on housing is irresponsible. Media discussion on immigration often assumes that it brings an economic windfall. However, it has become evident that many of those who have come to the UK are not even net taxpayers; taking out of the system benefits more than they contribute.
A shared national identity fosters a sense of community, while ‘diversity’ threatens social solidarity. Generous welfare benefits encourage high unemployment, low productivity, and a high tax burden on workers. Increasing unemployment triggers a willingness to cheat on benefits and an unwillingness to take unattractive, low-paid jobs. While bringing in hundreds of thousands of immigrants to work in the care and other low-pay, low-status sectors, we currently have millions of economically inactive working-age adults. Politicians refuse to acknowledge the burden that an addition of over one million immigrants per annum puts on the country’s infrastructure.
Another effect of globalization is that migrants can ‘welfare shop‘ and ‘asylum shop’, increasing demand for government assistance in de-industrialized areas. Liz Truss promised to grow the economy through high immigration levels, only referencing GDP and ignoring the downside of quality of life for the existing population. We are no longer a socially cohesive, culturally confident British nation, and the situation in Gaza highlights the tensions of having imported a fifth column into our midst.
Over-generous welfare states eventually undermine the social norms essential to their proper functioning. They can work when the majority feel obligated to care for themselves and have a stigma attached to benefit claims. This scenario was the case up until the 1970s. However, successive governments have since extended the role of the state and the transfer dependency view that everyone has a moral right to receive benefits. This view encourages irresponsible behaviour, with the state and taxpayers footing the bill for others’ poor lifestyle choices. Workers’ hard-earned income is squandered on a bloated Welfare State that does nothing to promote the prosperity or well-being of those it purports to help.
The British Democrats have always opposed globalization, and now most people acknowledge its detrimental effect on first-world countries. The loss of many skilled, well-paid jobs and reduced wages in those remaining have been coupled with the offshoring of our jobs.
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The Party of British Identity
Clearly the Treasury model for the economy and the Office of Budgetary responsibility are completely wrong about immigration. An awful lot of immigrants do not work. They just stay at home and breed, for some it’s a means of fullfilling their religious obligations.