A Very British Dude: Welfare, Crime and Abortion - Were Levitt et al. Correct?.

The Dude makes elegantly a point I have been crudely sledge hammering for some time. He observes astutely that the notion of "moral hazard" applies equally to the recipients of all state handouts, whether welfare claimants, banks or car companies in trouble. The notion that the safety net is there encourages rash behaviour on life's high wire. Which is not to say there should be no net, but only that we should be aware of its costs and risks.

Why save, when your savings will (as is happening to my parents, retired and living on theirs) periodically be clobbered by low interest rates and inflation engineered by a Labour government to buy the votes of its improvident clients? Why work, when (as an unskilled, uneducated young woman) you can become a Karen Matthews and maximise your benefits? Why save for a house, when you can be given one in (sometimes even in Kensington) on "the Social?"

More importantly than these economic irritants, we are all going to reap what we sow socially. Children bred for subsidies are far more likely to be mistreated and/or become violent. The indiscipline in our schools (the reason why my wife and her friends no longer teach and indeed why so few trained teachers are practising their craft) is gradually trending to violence as unloved, uncared-for feral youths take vengeance on their luckier peers.

I confess I am in a dark mood today. Not only is Mrs P. undergoing a course of scary treatment for a serious illness, but I have just learned that one of my business partners has lost her 17 year old daughter, who fell ill with viral meningitis and died while on a school trip. She rushed to her child's side, but she never came out of her coma. There is nothing worse than losing a child. In the middle of our own fears yesterday, our hearts went out to her as we imagined ourselves in her awful position.

Unavoidable tragedies may lead us to despair, but are really all the more reason to focus on averting avoidable ones. My partner's daughter was wanted, cherished and has been tragically lost. I can only hope one day the agonising grief of today will fade to permit access to fond memories of her brief, but good, life. The poor children of Britain are too often unwanted and uncherished. They are only in danger of their potential being lost because of political choices we have made. We must turn away from those choices, accepting that though they may have been well-intentioned, their consequences prove that they were evil. It is time to reclaim the moral high ground from the Left. Their policies are turning great swathes of our beloved country into swamps of squalor and violence. We must not let them continue to associate the concept of "caring" with their crude, cruel, corrupt, apology for an ideology.