But note that many of the mechanisms by which blacks were discriminated against were INSTITUTIONAL (i.e. state schools and biased investment) suggesting that state institutions can be used to augment the prejudices of the local majority and perhaps entrench it, as I believe still takes place in the US.

Please try not to entirely ignore the points I make in my post. If you read it you will see that I am not advocating a return to Victorian values (or their size of economy either), merely the charitable ethos present in middle class families then.

And often through a number of other EU countries.

But I agree that it is disgraceful that they are denied those basic rights once they have got here and while their application being considered.

Well, your biggest proponents to this are Americans, who are absolutely obsessed with reducing the size of the state. And yet, the southeners were brilliant at institutionalising segregation and ‘individual liberty’ that translated into further segregation (on school lines, on housing etc), and then the poor (meaning black) areas getting no investment. I’m afraid I’m not convinced. You rather sound like a hardcore anarchist - who think everything will be solved by material equality. Except you think everything will be solved through more individual liberty and less state influence.

The Victorians also had workhouses and rickets, and destitute unmarried mothers were forced to wear distinctive yellow clothes….

Seriously, if you’re going to talk about welfare reform and ’social solidarity’ then citing the Victorian era as an example really isn’t going to help your argument.

Well, I don’t interpret individual liberty that way but I acknowledge that is from my own experience of the people around me, who I find generally to be responsible and have a social conscience. I acknowledge fully that the flip-side of individual liberty has to be a sense of social responsibility but I also contend that coercive methods of redistribution deplete both liberty and social responsibility.

If I remember my reading of “The Welfare State We’re in” correctly, during the Victorian era, charitable donations were the second biggest expenditure by middle class homes (the biggest being food) and that was at a time when the economy was much much smaller and less developed than it is now. It is hard to imagine the level of welfare that would offer today if that charitable ethos had been maintained but I believe it would be significant, perhaps superior to the level of welfare provided by coercive taxation in its present form.

I am not about to claim that people would suddenly return to giving large amounts of their disposable income to charity if taxes were lowered. Unfortunately, we are too far gone for such a simple solution. Nevertheless, it is that sort of social solidarity we should by trying to foster as a culture so that we eventually don’t have to rely so much on coercion to run our society. Tackling welfare dependency is one element of that, cleaning out people like the conways from parliament is certainly another:)

Believing in individual liberty when it comes to politics (legitimate coercion) is very different from subscribing the cult of the individual as a choice/lifestyle (which I don’t endorse at all).

I agree. But whenever that comes down to an actual proposal from the political establishment ‘reform’ always ends up translated as “cut the benefits, penalise those who claim and do nothing else” accompanied by a large dose of demonisation of existing claiments.

Geez, Nick - I’m all for individual liberty and indeed am someone who profits from that thesis - but how exactly do you imagine the cult of the individual improving life for people on benefits…? I rather thought that we were living the individual liberty dream already - individual employment contracts, the right to decide whether or not to join a trade union, no end of ‘choice’ for the individual in education and health..

Do you honestly think that individuals would choose to support people in need if they weren’t compelled to by legislation? I always interpreted ‘individual liberty’ as ‘the right to feather yr own nest…’

The current system incentivizes all sorts of groups to stay on benefits or get on benefits rather than working, because the difference for them between benefits and work is small or even negative.

A citizen’s basic income scheme (or sizeable negative income tax) would work strongly to counter that by making the difference between subsisting on CI and working very large.

Reduce the size and scope of “the system” and replace it with individual liberty. As individuals, we can judge people as individuals. As a polity, we are more likely to discriminate according to group identity.

“Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction?

Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?”

Exactly my point. Welfare reform is in the interest of the welfare dependent more than anyone else.

No - we have a responsibility to those who cannot participate.
Not to those who refuse.

“And yes, I pay taxes. I’m far happier to see my taxes going to support the so-called ‘work shy’ than I am to see them spent on either bombing Iraq or on bloody Trident.”

“So-called”? By you; just above!!

“I’d also rather see my taxes help those in need, rather than flattening Iraqis, or paying the Conway family’s annual party bill.”

Those genuinely in need, yes.

“Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?”

Probably not.

But if the state has let them down though poor education it should not let them down again by incentivising them to stay on benefits.

But there’s a difference between editorials, and between policy. I can take racism, I just don’t want to see that institutionalised into policy or law etc.

Nick:
They might be in favour of curbs on immigration but they are, in general, globalist in outlook and in favour of free trade in goods and services which offers a tremendous boon to the developing world

Yeah, I’ll believe that when Bush actually cuts subsidies to American farmers. Even on free trade, the neo-cons are all talk and no action. Bush’s money in Africa mostly went to anti-abstinence stuff. The neo-cons were always more about foreign policy than fiscal conservatism, otherwise we wouldn’t see the massive, massive deficits that we see now.

Domestically, they tend to be in favour one law for all regardless of ethnic background

We’re all in favour of equality. But how do you reform a system which keeps discriminating informally?

Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction?

Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?

I don’t think shelf-stacking is as bad as coal mining (it certainly isn’t as dangerous or unhealthy). But perhaps the question is more basic than that. Would you rather have a welfare system that encouraged people to stack shelves or to take up drug addiction and petty theft? Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction? Is it really in their interests for the system to incentivise that self-destructive behaviour?

Your only other option is to invent work that isn’t required. But we are already pretty stretched on paying for generous civil service jobs as it is!

Well different regions have been hit much harder in the past by the need to make the British economy productive. I mean, I believe we now have higher manufacturing output than before Thatcher (just with less labour), certainly in some key industries like car manufacturing. If the unions had not forced governments to entrench useless work practices in their industries for so long after they become obsolete, the sudden shift towards services would not have represented quite such a crisis that was brought about.

The problem now is that jobs (that pay more in real terms and represent better conditions than those offered previously in manufacturing) exist but people are not taking them up. And welfare dependency and the culture that goes along with it plays a major role in that.

Yep! : http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/03/18/the-benefit-of-benefits/

But more seriously, I believe it is the NEETs; the young people who are not taking up jobs that this recent unprecedented surge in immigration has shown are, in fact, available. You know, the lot that Frank Field is always talking about in the same breath as Welfare and education reform: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article2846867.ece

“Are you referring to the Conways or Windsors here…?”

Well who is to say that lack of solidarity is limited to one particular social class :) I am not about to contend that an Eton education fosters social solidarity.

There is an aspect missing to this story - that is the desturction of manufacturing industry and the associated social institutions (trade unions, working mens clubs etc) that went with it. In the areas of the country worst hit the choice for the low skilled is essentially now benefits or shelf stacking. Frankly I’d probably choose drug addiction/alcoholism or petty crime than low paid work in the circumstances.The welfare state is essentially the same whether you live in London or Merthyr, but there are large regional differences in uptake that can only really be explained by the decline of manufacturing and the failure of successive governments to replace it. Slashing benefit levels or penalising those who claim will not change this.

I really don’t think that Merthyr has a higher rate of benefit uptake than say the south of england simply because the locals are supposedly more anti-social and lazy.

Any evidence for this?

Don’t know that I’d entirely agree with your rather romantic assessment of neoconservatism…? - one certainly might describe its disciples as having a global outlook, but only insofar as that outlook allows them to spread the American way of life and ‘democracy’ across the aforementioned globe, keeping America at the top of the pile and the rest of us in order.

I’d also argue that there’s a political tendency to cherrypick the most useful aspects of globalisation/neoconservatism to suit the local political agenda. You will know that our very own Tony Blair repeatedly conflated globalisation and the coming of competitive global markets with his programme for a casualised workforce and all the misery that entailed, etc…. and while simultaneously allowing the likes of Blunkett to stir up middle England’s distrust of immigrants for political gain. The neocons you refer to strike me as rather pure - great guys and ambassadors for capitalism, to be sure, but rather pure - perhaps even impossibly so? Do they actually exist in politics in such a formation?

Conflation of values is a good point - as above, I’d say that neoconservatism HAS conflated with less pleasant aspects of various domestic agendas - politicking on the back of immigration fears being among them. I’d also argue (doing a lot of arguing here) that racism and immigration have conflated utterly. You don’t hear too many people complaining that there are too many Aussies here, for instance. I’m guessing that’s because most of the Australians here are white. Eastern Europeans are white, I suppose, but only just. You can still pick them out in a crowd.

Um - what else…?

‘By rewarding people for doing nothing, which is what a comprehensive welfare system (that ignores ability to contribute) does, you change the underlying economic and social structure that allowed things like the Protestant work ethic to develop in the first place. A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare.’

Are you referring to the Conways or Windsors here…?

Hold on. That is a massive conflation of values. Neocons are many things (like WRONG in most instances) but they are not racists. They might be in favour of curbs on immigration but they are, in general, globalist in outlook and in favour of free trade in goods and services which offers a tremendous boon to the developing world. Domestically, they tend to be in favour one law for all regardless of ethnic background, which could be described as “race-blind” but is certainly not racist.

Straightforward racist ideology spreads across left and right (arguably meeting with the BNP) and that is why you will find trade union views that sounds Daily Mail-esque. It does not help that it is low-skilled British workers who tend to be disadvantaged by the way immigration is structured at the moment, while middle class Brits tend to benefit.

***

“I think there will always be people who don’t want to work, who don’t fit in with the whole protestant work ethic thing, but that as a society we have a responsibility to all citizens, even those who refuse to participate.

An unpopular stance these days I know, but there you have it.”

The problem with that stance is that it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

By rewarding people for doing nothing, which is what a comprehensive welfare system (that ignores ability to contribute) does, you change the underlying economic and social structure that allowed things like the Protestant work ethic to develop in the first place. A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare. They are not bad people, they have just adapted their behaviour and beliefs to circumstances where they are not expected or required to work. As this sector in society grows larger, more stress is put on the whole system, making “welfare reform” inevitable which is why there is no major party that still subscribes to such an ideal. It isn’t for lack of desire that people have to abandon that particular “liberal” dream of comprehensive egalitarian welfare: http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_urbanities-dangerous.html