I feel I must add, further to the financial facts and figures attributed to the Welfare State and the NHS, that over the last 10 years Labour have been VERY canny.
They've created a state where 12-year old mothers get a council house and benefits to spend however they want. Or even get pregnant to get a council house.
They give a 40-year old bloke with no qualifications and 14 kids two council houses an £40k per year to feed and clothe them. His comment, 'I can't earn £40k or anywhere near that,' so he stays at home with no incentive to be educated or work to contribute and his kids are likely to grow up with the same lack of work ethic.
They're now talking of paying children (and parents) to take exercise and eat healthily, in spite of the fact that fresh vegetables and other healthy options are often cheaper than the ready-meals and take-aways that these people eat.
They've created a sub-nation of voters (12-year-old mothers excepted, but I'm sure THEIR mothers aren't going to vote against this policy) whoare so totally dependent on handouts that they cannot afford to give up the welfare state and will, therefore, never vote for a political party who advocate a cutting of this welfare, and therefore a population who will only vote to keep Labour in power.
I don't have an answer but I believe that clothing and food coupons would be a start, and would stop some of the cash being spent on cigarettes and cheap cider, along with the state benefits reducing after a short period to the bread-line to encourage people to get off their warm behinds and go and find work; do they think I skip along the road to work with a smile in my heart every morning? Maybe I'm lucky: I enjoy my job 90% of the time, but I'd much rather be asleep at 0800.
I've watched university education be devalued over the last 10 years to the point where a bin-men will need/be able to do a degree in 'Refuse Technology' rather than a willingness to crawl out of bed a 0500 (and I've had to do it to pay my way).
We need to mobilise and motivate the silent majority, the middle classes who're being taxed back towards poverty for having a work ethic, who've been criminalised because the own a car and get them to VOTE, not retreat apathetically into the darkness shrugging their shoulders. Proportional representation would be a start, but Dave sticking to his guns and not responding to every little thing that the government (and I deliberately use a lower case 'g') do, but preaching and motivating the people who identify with him.
Rant over.
