Welfare state in retreat.

I very rarely need any extra stimulus to fan the flames of my desire to see Wales given its freedom. The UK under this ConDem and previous Tory and Labour governments has done its best to emulate the very worse excesses of a market driven economy inevitably corrupted by greed and self interest. To an extent I have become sensitised to the daily examples of the attack on the Social structures and welfare state within the UK.
However now and again even this crusty old cynic can become shocked and angered  by the sheer inhumanity that a UK society motivated solely by the "me,myself,I" philosophy of Thatcher stoops to.

So it is with the report on an ex army veteran and his wife who rather than face another freezing Winter in poverty formed a suicide pact and ended their existence. Details of the story here, with thanks to Malice in Blunderland :-

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059238/Army-veteran-Mark-Mullins-wife-Helen-driven-suicide-poverty.html#ixzz1dDtd4DtC

Greed is Good!

We are all in this together the massed ranks of the Unionist politicians tell us. Unfortunately some are "in it" to a greater extent than others. The public and private sector workers who have lost or are losing their jobs are certainly "in it". The people being forced to accept savage cuts to their benefits are "in it" as  are the people being forced to retire later than planned. The great British tax payers who have bailed out the greedy and corrupt that got us into this mess are "in it". But not it seems the Company directors who have just given themselves a 49% pay rise over the last 12 months.

They are in fact rolling "in it" and revelling in the fact. Nice little earner if you are taking home on average £2.7 Million per annum. We need our own version of the "Arab Spring" to rid ourselves of this assortment of leeches and rogues that corrupt our Society. The "99" movement is a start and I hope the movement will accelerate the realisation of the extent to which "Rip off Britain" pervades every aspect of our lives. The quicker Wales embraces the fact that the only way things will improve is by taking our destiny in our hands, the better! In the meantime the cancer ridden corpse of a failed imperialist experiment should be allowed to disintegrate with whatever grace it can muster!

Dependency

Excellent post on MOF regarding the perceived dependence relationship we have with the Unionist state of Great Britain. Problem is that if you have that kind of relationship there has to be a "What's in it for me" assessment made. Now in the case of Wales although GB is one of the richest economies in the world we have ended up as one of the poorest Countries in the EU. Call me Mr Greedy but that doesn't seem to be a particularly successful arrangement. A successful symbiotic relationship relies on both parties getting something out of the arrangement. GB gets a ready supply of brave boys and girls to fight their generally imperialist wars and the opportunity of relieving us of our natural resources for free. We get Thatcher and the levels of corruption, inequality, ineptitude and funding levels designed to keep us poor.

Now admittedly some of the examples used were shall we say selective. But one thing is for sure, if you want anything other than a Country that is still in effect a poor colony of a deeply flawed union as a legacy to your children and future generations then we need a plan "B". I have no doubt we are  relatively poor and lacking in confidence and self belief because of the union. It is time to call the Unionists bluff and reject the dependency culture they have subjected us to. It is time to realise that only by accepting full responsibility for our own affairs that we can turn our Society and  Economy around and  work towards our full potential. It is also the only way for us Welsh to truly walk tall and look the world right in the eye!

Cures?

As usual after an event like the English riots everyone and their uncle start putting forward their solutions to the problems highlighted. Sadly most of them become tainted by the desire to exact revenge and punish. Perfectly understandable of course especially if you happened to be the owner of one of the pillaged businesses. But a more reasoned look at the cause and effect shows, I believe, that the hang-em and flog-em brigade are barking up the wrong tree. I make no apology for yet again singing the praise of our friends from Scandinavia. Not only do they have lower numbers of people incarcerated in their prisons but they also have lower levels of criminality and anti social behaviour/obesity/teenage pregnancy etc.

Bring back corporal punishment, its the only way to instil respect in the young is a cry sometimes heard. The riposte to that idea is the fact that for the last 25 years or so Sweden has banned the smacking of children and as shown above has lower crime rates, lower anti social behaviour etc. So we really should be concentrating on the old adage that prevention is better than cure. We should start by accepting that inequality which is rife in the UK must be addressed before we slip further into the mire of lawlessness. Secondly we need to accept that prison incarceration without an attempt to rehabilitate is doomed to failure. The re-offending rate is 70% in the UK, that 70% of the male prison population suffer with two or more Mental health problems and it costs £41,000 per prisoner per annum, prison looks like an expensive failure.
I am open to be convinced otherwise but I cannot think of any modern western democracy that shows that a more draconian punishment and prison regime works. Can you?

Britnot: UK - RIP?

Britnot: UK - RIP?: "I fear that given the inherent cancers at the heart of UK society the recent riots in England are no more than part of a continuing trend. I..."

UK - RIP?

I fear that given the inherent cancers at the heart of UK society the recent riots in England are no more than part of a continuing trend. In recent months we have seen the corruption at the very heart of British society exposed and dragged blinking into the light of day. Even though I am a unashamed advocate of a free Welsh state it is painful to witness the unravelling of a society hopelessly compromised by inequality and corruption. In the vacuum left by an ineffectual British state it is hardly surprising that there are fervent cries for a English parliament and I think those cries will grow ever louder.

The harm done to British society by consecutive right of centre governments (both Tory and Labour) have served to eat away at the cement of social cohesion that used to bind us. Inequality between the greedy rich and the rest are approaching Victorian levels and we seem inexorably to be approaching a tipping point. On the one hand the public rightly bay for the perpetrators of the riots to be punished. Sadly, it is atypical of a British state controlled by and for the very rich that those people who bankrupted this country have got away with impunity! The Bankers and fund managers who gambled us into debt still pay themselves seven figure salaries and lottery sized bonuses. 

There are no signs that those in power are willing to confront the demons within the heart of British society. With what I see as undue haste we are already witnessing those with a vested interest earnestly preaching that these problems are not signs of what most people se as Broken Britain. The siren voices claim that it has nothing to do with poverty or the crushing inequalities at the heart of British society. But I think we know different. If a society is unwilling to evolve and even admit its shortcomings then it doesn't deserve to survive.