Treasures from the threads- Number Nine

Again this comment was sparked by a Simon Heffer article in the Daily Telegraph. This appeared on 2nd April and stated in its title "Labour is malignant, not incompetent" linked here. The comment I have chosen is this: All political parties pursue policies for ideological, not often common sense, reasons and therefore Labour is both malignant and incompetent. What I cannot understand is why Labour, deliberately it would seem, has pursued a policy of unfettered immigration, without any sensible system of selective control based on professional and vocational qualifications as applied in other nations around the world. This particular policy has caused increasing hardship for many millions of their own supporters, in the lowest economic quintiles, to gain any kind of employment whilst also increasing unnecessary and unwanted pressure on already over-stretched public services such as health, housing and education. Unless of course this was also part of the plan to make increasing numbers of poorly or badly educated people beholden to the state through social security handouts whilst, in the process, undermining the notion of national culture and identity, certainly English identity, by pushing through the programme of multiculturalism, which has also undermined established creeds. With respect to the notion of an economic miracle in Britain over the last 11 years, I suspect that if you trumpet a message long enough and loud enough then, eventually, some will begin to believe the spin and rhetoric and may even try to convince others of its veracity. There never was an economic miracle in Britain and the parlous state of this nation’s finances is due to the policies pursued by the Chancellor and the Treasury, the continued loss of our industrial and manufacturing base leading to £70bn, and increasing, annual trade deficits and an enormous national debt that has almost doubled to £574.4bn in a decade; that is not economic competence, that is economic incompetence. Large scale projects like the Greenwich Dome and the Wembley Stadium bear witness to the general inability of UK Plc, even with masses of imported foreigners to provide labour, to complete tasks within budget and to timescale whilst making increased profits for the companies involved; Heathrow Terminal 5 is the latest management and organizational debacle that has come about through more than a degree of arrogance, ignorance, incompetence, lack of experience and lack of responsibility and accountability by management. It will be interesting to see just how much many more billions will be poured into the bottomless pit that is the Olympics 2012. Again, for some unknown reason, Gordon Brown remains convinced that he needs to encourage greater levels of immigration even though the jobs are not available and yet there are more than 10 million people in UK, of working age 16 – 65, who are “economically inactive”, that is not in any kind of paid employment. Is it because they are physically or mentally incapable of work, untrained and uneducated for work and are unable to read, write and express themselves or is it because, somehow, the state education system, with all its fudging and fiddling of academic standards to prove that young people are more educated and capable, is still failing to prepare people for the demands of the world of work? Approximately 2.2 million of the 10 million are numbered as “carers and home makers”; between 2.3 and 2.6 million are on long-term incapacity benefit; 800,000 are, allegedly, unemployed and claiming unemployment benefit; and, 1.7 million are listed as being students in full time further and higher education, although I suspect they may not be all at Universities. That still leaves between 2.5 and 2.7 million people of working age who are not in any supposed category for employment. If these policies are deliberate, proving malignancy rather than incompetence, then how on earth was the British electorate hood-winked into voting for a group of individuals who appear hell-bent on destroying this nation from within? Democracy in Britain is gradually being extinguished by apathy, ignorance and indifference. Posted by Kenneth Armitage on April 2, 2008 6:53 AM A possible answer to the question which I have placed in bold in the final paragraph of Mr Armiage's summary of the tragedy the nation has suffered might lie in the following I received today: Common Purpose, click here. More from these links: www.commonpurpose.org.uk/home.aspx www.egovmonitor.com www.policy-network.net www.youngfoundation.org.uk