Paul Mason tells us that there is a ‘parallel world of ideas out there where millions are denied a voice.’
‘As activists come to the defence of a blogger in China who made the mistake of making a joke about the Communist Party Congress, Newsnight’s Paul Mason talks to three Chinese writers about what it is like working in a climate of censorship and repression.’
‘Dig around on YouTube and you will find a spoof of the Hollywood weepie It’s a Wonderful Life made in 1995 by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie for their BBC sketch show A Bit of Fry and Laurie. In It’s a Soaraway Life!, angel second class Clarence Cosy – Fry – shows Rupert Murdoch, played by Laurie, what Britain would have been like if he had never been born. He finds polite cabbies, ethnic minorities in pubs, no page 3 girls, and – to his horror – no satellite dishes dotting the façades of terrace houses. “Without your newspapers debasing people’s views of the world with every sentence they produce, people turned out to be interested in all kinds of other things,” Clarence tells him. “Newspapers haven’t taught people to sneer at others because they are Left-wing.” ‘
‘It has taken the Left years, but finally the press is at its mercy….[but maybe]the Left has overreached itself, and has been too naked in playing Leveson for political advantage.’
Ironically Mason uses China as an example when of course his own organisation is a classic case of the suppression of ideas, values and beliefs that are troublesome to its own ideology….millions of Britains are denied a real voice by the BBC’s very narrow definition of what is acceptable……it is all the more ironic because of the BBC’s championing of ‘multi-culturalism’ and the ‘celebration of diversity’ that goes along with it…the only people who don’t get a say are the native Brits….unless you’re ‘approved’…or indeed those immigrants who ‘integrate’ and see that the things they came to this country to benefit from will be destroyed by the Left’s ‘open door’ immigration policy.
Maybe the BBC are waking up to this….it is 70 years since the Beveridge Report and the wholesale implementation of ‘Welfarism’….the BBC asks can it survive the ever increasing costs and ‘globalisation’?
You might think that yes it is the growing demands on the system that will destroy it…but what does ‘destroy’ mean…after all when the welfrae system was introduced it was not designed to cope with the massive demands we have now…such as imposed by a population, ever growing, but also living far longer…..what if the provision was just cut back to the original range of services and subsidy? Is that destruction?
The BBC’s use of the word ‘globalisation’ is interesting. What do they mean by that? It seems, from the below, that they merely mean that competition from abroad lowers wages here…..‘wages at the bottom have been driven down by globalisation, requiring top ups from tax credits’.
In fact the real problem is the open door immigration policy….and one that is made very much worse by the EU which tells us to pay benefits to anyone who steps off a plane or train from Europe from day one.
Open door immigration, with anyone allowed to claim benefits, housing, access to free NHS service, use of the roads, demands on the police and overburdening schools is the biggest threat to the existence of the welfare system…..and the BBC refuses to recognise that…..once more denying the millions in this country who oppose such a policy their voice and say in the matter.
The BBC is examining the welfare system extensively on R4 today (27th) at 1000 am, The State of Welfare, but if you look at this BBC magazine report which sets out to eulogise Welfare you might get an idea of the direction they will take:
‘Jose Harris, author of Beveridge: A Biography, says that even during the Hungry Thirties public suspicion of the scrounger existed.
But the war banished that with its sense of common purpose and social solidarity. High emergency taxes and rationing imposed a redistributive, egalitarian economic model. Above all there was work for everyone.
“There were no scroungers,” says Harris. “You were put to work in the Army, the pioneer corps or the factories.” ‘
Ironic that…‘put to work‘…imagine the BBC cries of ‘slavery’…
Look at this highly misleading part:
‘The country was deeply indebted at the end of World War II to the US, bread was rationed and life austere. But there was less of a sense of division between those who worked and those who claimed benefits. Nearly everyone – or rather, nearly every working-age man – had a job. Full employment lasted for the following two decades.’
Why was there full employment? There was National Service.…and full employment for two decades? Because that was when National service ended, the last conscript demobbing in 1963….it was a vastly expensive business.
The whole article has a narrative aimed at defending those on welfare…they are not ‘scroungers’ or ‘lazy’….and immigrants are workaholic wonders to be cherished.
Here the BBC tries to have its cake and eat it….quoting the Sun’s Kelvin Mackenzie saying Brits are scroungers but immigrants are great…then it quotes someone from a poverty charity who says it is rubbish to suggest people choose a life on the dole, they are not scroungers…..so we have ‘immigrants are great’ and then a negation of that ‘myth’ of the ‘lazy scrounger’. Tick two BBC boxes….in fact a third one as well…the BBC here raises the question of immigration destroying the welfare system…but then uses Mackenzie to demolish it…..with him saying it is the lazy scrounger that is milking the system and forcing businesses to import immigrants who want to work. They hope you won’t notice the failed logic of the following repudiation of that by the charity. It is a very muddled piece that wants to present immigration as a boon, the welfare system as an underfunded agent of redistribution and social equality and welfare claimants as angelic victims.
‘Immigration – rare in Beveridge’s day – may have played a role in the change of attitudes towards benefit claimants. David Goodhart, director of think tank Demos, has posited that as society becomes ever more diverse, the sense of shared values needed to sustain a redistributive welfare system is weakened.
Beveridge’s idea that welfare should reward individuals and families who have paid in to the system is undermined by the practice of giving council housing and benefits to newly arrived immigrants, critics like former minister Margaret Hodge have argued.
Mackenzie offers a different spin on migration. Many indigenous British people could work if they wanted to but are content to stay on benefits, he and others argue, whereas eastern Europeans arrive with little but are soon working.
“I love these people. They can travel thousands of miles from Budapest, get here with no money, can’t speak English but they have ambition. And they find work.”
The idea that people choose a life on benefits is false, says Imran Hussain, head of policy at the Child Poverty Action Group.’
The State of Welfare is a three hour programme……listen if you dare…Polly Toynbee is naturally on the side of those wanting to deport the scroungers to a rocky, barren island far far away….might have got that wrong.
First quote from the programme from a claimant….regarding the reform of the welfare system….
‘It’s scary, very scary’……
‘and it could get scarier‘ adds Julian Worricker.
Hmmm…need you really listen to the three hours?
Paul Mason 
Simon Hardy 
Jon Donnison 
