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Why is There So Much Apathy and Laziness in Canada ? This here writer contents that human beings by nature are not basically lazy. Look at babies and little children. They are energetic and curious, and full of life. Human beings by nature have a willingness to work, and do things. Then why oh why is there so much apathy and laziness in the nation of Canada ? There is a stunningly high level of public apathy here. Why have too many in Canada fallen into a collective lethargic, apathetic stupour ? You see it everywhere. Obesity is a growing concern. Yet look at all the empty sports fields - empty ball diamonds, empty tennis courts, that a person sees constantly. Where are the people - are they too busy to go out there and throw a football, or kick around a soccer ball, or play games with the kids - or are they just too damn lazy or what ? Voter turnout in elections particularly at the municipal level are very low. In the last Alberta provincial election in 2008 there was only a 41 % voter turnout. Are too many Canadian voters simply too apathetic, and lazy to keep up with the issues, and take a few minutes to vote ? Are most Canadians political illiterates and proud of it ? You see it on the job site - there are too many who just want to get a soft, easy job - and leave the heavy lifting to others (who probably in their opinion are too dumb to get a soft job like them). There seems to be this all too pervasive attitude on the job site by way too many, of trying to finagle themselves into a soft cushy position, or trying to manipulate things so they get the easy work. Taking advantage of others on the job, and getting them to do the hard work - while these same people smirk and silently laugh at those who are willing to do the hard jobs - and consider such persons as being dumbbells. Why is it that those who do the hard and dirty jobs in Canada are too often labeled as being dumb, or uneducated ? Why do so many look down upon those who work with their hands, and are prepared to get a little bit dirty and sweat a bit ? Why are too many hard workers in the workshops of Canada being taken advantage of by fellow employees and employers ? Why are such persons labeled as being stupid ? Since when was it stupid to be diligent, and be an energetic, hard worker ? Well in the Canada of today in 2008 that is where we are sadly headed. If you don't believe me regarding the work ethic of too many here in Canada (and I'll remind you I do live in Calgary, Alberta and we here are certainly not exempt from this problem) then would you believe the comments of the former Premier of Quebec and former leader of the Parti Quebecois - Lucien Bouchard. He made some interesting comments concerning his home Province, but I feel much of what he said could apply to a large percentage of Canada. Quotes by Lucien Bouchard:
Too many Canadians are not even willing to make the effort to keep the birth rate up - instead they rely upon the government to increase immigration. Are there too many women and men who are just plain too lazy to even make the effort to get married, get mated and have sex and reproduce ? Isn't it a natural instinct within normal human beings to reproduce ? Why are abortion rates so high - are too many Canadians simply too lazy to rear children - too much work or what ? Is killing the kids just the easy way out, or what ? We are living in a nation which claims to be Christian, yet most Canadian adults are Biblical illiterates. Are they simply too lazy to read their Bibles or what ? There are no shortages of Bibles you know. Too many are Biblical illiterates and proud of it. Proud of being uneducated ? This here writer is prepared to be generous (this may be one of my weaknesses you know) - and say that the overwhelming majority of Canadians are not lazy by nature. Instead I feel the problem has something to do with the nanny state and socialism. Canada is a socialist society.
The Problem Is Socialism - and the Nanny State Every nation or distinct society has a collective orientation. Some nations like Canada are more diverse, while others like Japan for example are more homogeneous. So within such a diverse and geographically enormous nation like Canada - there can be more than one overriding collective orientation. This here writer in his humble opinion believes that there are two overarching collective orientations within the larger society in Canada and these are specifically the following:
There are subcultures within such a huge and diverse nation like Canada, but it is not within the scope of this article to deal with these today. Instead we shall within this article concentrate specifically upon one of the main orientations of the collective Canadian society - specifically socialism. The Collective Canadian Societal Disease of Socialism Socialism in Canada has robbed too many Canadians of their initiative, robbed them of their independence, robbed them of their willingness to work, robbed them of their taking personal responsibility for things, and robbed them of their dignity and self-respect. Socialism has robbed them of their pride, because socialism doesn't approve of individual success. Socialism instead approves of the mediocre middle of the road dull gray. Sticking out and being different is frowned upon. You can even see it in the colours of the clothes the people wear in public in Canada - gray, blue or brownish are the norm - not the bright colours. Not anything that really stands out too much. Socialism in Canada has caused too many Canadians to always look to Big Brother and the Nanny State to solve their problems, and to take care of things - from cradle to grave. Socialism is destroying Canada and Canadians. In a socialist system individual success is not valued - in fact it too often is frowned upon. For example at school during gym classes (at least where my daughter goes to school) - they too often frown upon keeping score in sports activities during regular gym classes. Why on earth would anyone play a sport or game without keeping score ? Well in a socialist society - keeping score might offend those who just are not very good at the game. Therefore such a system tends to kill personal initiative, and destroy the personal initiative of our best and brightest. In a socialist system the best and brightest - the gifted - have few places to go. They are often bored to death, and may just tune out. A good number may leave and go to other countries like the United States - where excellence is still supposedly rewarded (that is what they say at least). Personal individual excellence is not encouraged enough in a socialist system, which values more things like getting along, and working together with others harmoniously. So being too bright or too competent, or too smart - offends too many in a society, which tends or gravitates towards the bland and mediocre. Socialism and the nanny state has practically destroyed most of the native people in Canada. Too many natives have this attitude of entitlement, and the attitude of always blaming others like government and the white man for their problems. Instead of taking responsibility and ownership of their problems, too many aboriginals on reserves and elsewhere look to government to solve their problems. And they are supported in taking this approach by a vast array of so-called experts - like social workers, lawyers, social scientists, and political leaders - who feed upon the natives and get their living off of the stunningly expensive and complicated bureaucracy that surrounds, imprisons and feeds off the aboriginals. Socialism in Canada is a very serious impediment or obstacle to tackling so many problems we face. This is because the socialist system tends towards viewing social problems as being caused more by the society, and social environment rather than caused by individual behavior. Therefore the socialist nanny state doesn't encourage too much individuals taking ownership and responsibility over problems. Instead the system encourages people to look to government and big brother for solutions. Sure ones environment does have a big influence over us when we are small and vulnerable and not in control of anything much. However, people do grow up, and they can change. We are not helpless victims of our past, once we grow up and are adults. We can change for the better, and we can take control over our lives. One way we can do this is by resisting actively the intrusive, controlling nanny state, and fighting for individual freedom. To illustrate the fruits of socialism gone mad take the great left wing socialist sacred cow of socialized medicine in Canada - namely the Canadian Medicare System. Too many Canadians look to the Health Care System to take care of their health - rather than taking ownership and responsibility for their own health. Sure we need public health care in serious matters where we as individuals cannot care for ourselves, and can't afford the costs personally of access to the specialized equipment, and specialized caregivers - like when involved in serious accidents, cases of serious diseases and so on. However, the system does not really encourage or support a preventative based approach to Health Care here in Canada. Today in 2008 the costs of the socialized Health Care System in Canada are out of control and unsustainable. It just cannot continue - something has to give.
Another illustration is a recent tragic incident that happened in Saskatchewan. I will relate the story to you first, which describes how the tragedy unfolded. Then I will give you some comments on the matter. I have gotten the details from over the internet, and do not have any personal involvement with the story, or in reporting it. This is a terribly heart wrenching, sad story. The RCMP say an aboriginal Father - Christopher Pauchay was taking his daughters, ages 1 and 3, to another house on the Yellow Quill First Nation reservation on Tuesday night January 29, 2008 in extremely cold weather (in the -30's) when due to drunkenness he blacked out. He was found and taken to a hospital, but it wasn't until about eight hours later he mentioned his kids. The 1-year-old's body was found hours later and the 3-year-old was found Wednesday. The children's grandmother, Pearl Pauchay, said the girls belong to her
25-year-old son and his common-law wife. "He was carrying them.
But he was drinking and he must have blacked out," she said. "That's
what he said when we went to visit him in the hospital." Christopher, 24, was drinking heavily Monday night, his elder sister, Bernita Pauchay, said. His wife Tracey stormed out after a fight earlier, and Pauchay was left home alone with the kids. The day before he had purchased a case of beer and two bottles of whisky. "My brother was so intoxicated," Bernita, 35, said. "I don't know how big the bottles were, but when he drank whisky he would get real loaded." That night, something happened with Santana that scared Christopher. She may have been sick, Bernita said, or something else may have gone wrong. "I'm not sure what happened with the baby but he said something was wrong with her," she said. This apparently caused Mr. Pauchay to try and run through the snow to his sister's house, maybe because he wanted to get a ride down to the hospital in Kelvington, and had no phone in his house. He never got there. His tracks were left in the snow. "You could tell he couldn't see where he was running because he was running right through high snowbanks. You could see the times that he fell," Bernita said. "He remembers carrying both of the babies, but he was so intoxicated he doesn't really remember anything else," she said. "He remembers holding both of the babies in his arms and falling all over in the snow. At some point he must have fallen so hard that he dropped one of them and he kept running with the other one, and he was just so scared that he just kept going. He didn't realize that he had dropped one of the girls." He lost the other girl as well. Four hours later, around 5 a.m. Tuesday, Pauchay crawled through the snow to a neighbour's front step. His hand frozen, he banged on the door. He was incoherent, the neighbours told his family, suffering from hypothermia and frostbite and still under the influence of alcohol. They called an ambulance, whose crew called the RCMP, and Pauchay was brought to Kelvington's hospital by 5:30 a.m. It wasn't until eight hours later that anyone noticed his daughters were missing. At 1:30 p.m. Pauchay asked hospital staff if his children were all right ! Later that afternoon, a tuft of dark, curly hair was spotted in a snow bank on the reserve. The RCMP recovered the body of little Santana that day. With the cold and blowing snow it took another 24 hours to recover Kaydence's body, which lay about 45 yards from the spot where her sister was found. " The entire reserve was in mourning Wednesday," Yellow Quill Chief Robert Whitehead said. Media vehicles streamed out of the reserve after Chief Robert Whitehead decided it was time to dim the national spotlight on the story to give his community time to grieve. He asked journalists to stay away until four days after the funeral. Earlier in the day, there was an emotional plea from Nippi, who is one of the children's grandmothers. She told reporters her daughter and son-in-law were "the best parents" and have not been treated fairly in the media. "They've been 'misportrayed,'" she said. She also said the role of the community should be looked at. "We don't guide our children enough. We don't guide them because they get into alcohol, they get into drugs, they get into pills. You know, it's a community problem, not just one. It's everybody's problem here." Nippi also said she should take some responsibility herself for what
happened. Guy Lonechild, a vice-chief with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, said it was distressing to hear the desperation in Nippi's voice, but he hopes the entire country pays attention to her words. "I think there's time for voices to be heard and I think all of Saskatchewan really needs to stand together with the families," he said. "I was worried about my grandchildren. I did not want them to leave this world in vain," Nippi said, her slight frame trembling against the cold. "I hope there's change now that happens - a lot of changes like no alcohol and counseling and stuff to be brought in here. Our old teachings should be brought back." Concerns are being raised about alcohol use on reserves after the frozen bodies of two little girls were found on Saskatchewan's Yellow Quill First Nation. June Draude, the province's First Nations minister, said Thursday there are a lot of questions to be answered about the deaths of Kaydance and Santana Pauchay. Ms. Draude said Yellow Quill is a loving community but she acknowledged that there are several social issues, including addictions, that have to be dealt with on the reserve.
My Comments Well obviously the family has suffered severely here, especially the poor two little girls - now dead and gone. This tragedy is just being quietly coved up, and it shouldn't be. This is a national shame, and should not be quietly laid to rest, like the two poor little girls have been - in a far, far too early grave. How utterly tragic and senseless. Just imagine how much suffering these children went through struggling in the deep snow and terribly cold weather, with only very light clothes on. I notice very little personal responsibility being shown by anyone here - except maybe the Grandma Nippi. Of course I am not privy to all the details and players, and I'm just going by the few articles I read on the subject, and on some of the things I heard on TV. I am not up to date on recent developments if any on the case. This tragedy portrays in glaring, stark terms the evil fruits of the Canadian societal orientation around socialist and the nanny state - where individuals are not encouraged to take personal responsibility for their actions. Instead there is the same old tired out, ridiculous call for more social programs, more government intervention, more treatment programs for alcoholism, more counseling by more parasitic social workers, and there is the implied message that somehow the white man is responsible here. You know I am a so-called white man (but I regard myself just as much and big a native of this land as any aboriginal) and I never in any way forced Christopher Pauchay to drink all that booze, and get drunk out of his mind - so damn drunk that he does something so bloody stupid as taking his half naked toddlers out into -30 degree temperatures. Who is forcing these people to drink that stuff ? You know I used to drink a lot myself, but I could handle it. I have stopped drinking alcohol now for about 12 years (except for some wine on the Passover), because I felt the beer was harming my health. I just went cold turkey and stopped. People like Christopher Pauchay can do the same thing - just take personal responsibility and stop drinking booze - if you can't handle it, if it is harming your health and relationships, and if you can't stop until you are dead drunk. Just do it - just stop drinking booze period. It may be a tough addiction to handle, but basically people who for whatever reason cannot handle booze - my suggestion is to just go cold turkey - just stay away from it if you can't handle it. Take personal responsibility - you don't need a bunch of social workers, or government intervention, or for your reserve to ban the stuff. Just do it yourself and stop. The overarching problem is Canada's orientation around socialism, and the promotion of the nanny state. Like I told you dear reader - socialism is robbing Canadians of their taking personal responsibility for things, and robbed them of their dignity and self-respect. There is this attitude among too many natives of always blaming others like government and the white man for their problems. Instead of taking responsibility and ownership of their problems, too many aboriginals on reserves and elsewhere look to government to solve their problems, or they play the blame game.
Another illustration is the recent (early April 2008) strangling death of a Calgary toddler, two-year-old Preet Dhami, after she was choked by the dangling window blind cords in her family's home. The girl at the time was at home with her uncle and grandparents. "You can expect parents to have a certain amount of responsibility, but you need society to provide protection," said Dr. Louis Francescutti, an emergency room physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton and a professor at the University of Alberta's faculty of medicine. "You have to transfer the responsibility back onto society. We're Neanderthals when it comes to children's safety," Francescutti said. My Comments Once again the parents have suffered a great deal, but especially the little girl - now dead. Dr. Louis Francescutti was reported as saying that society is to blame for the death of this toddler. I am part of this society, so according to Francescutti I am partly responsible for the child's death. This is ridiculous. I do not even know the family yet alone the child. So how am I to blame ? This is just another example of the evils of socialism. You know if everyone is responsible - then no one is. If everyone owns it - this means no one owns it. This is just a convenient out - blame society - individuals are not held accountable - if society is to blame.
In a socialist, over regulated, over governed, and bureaucratic country like Canada (where big government and big business reign) it can be socially dangerous to display too much personal initiative, and free thinking. Socialism represses free thinking. Socialism punishes you for thinking creatively , and for thinking outside of the box. Socialism encourages collective, herd like, lemming like thinking. Therefore socialism by its very nature is a self-defeating destructive system, because it prevents people from coming up with creative innovative solutions to our problems. Instead it encourages citizens to keep banging their collective heads against the same old problems, and keep looking to the nanny state to solve our problems. Therefore the constant and tiresome call for more government programs to tackle social problems, which just mean more and more taxes to feed a ever growing government bureaucracy. Socialism is destroying initiative in Canada, because it effectively punishes you for working hard. The more the ordinary worker makes - the more taxes they pay. So it gets to the point where it doesn't even make any sense to work more or longer hours, or work overtime to get ahead - because then you will just fall into a higher tax bracket, and have much of your hard earned wages stolen from you through higher taxes to feed the ever growing bureaucratic nanny state. I personally know a guy who told me he used to work very much overtime at his job site, but has stopped doing so. Why ? Well he calculated that after he factored in all the extra taxes he was paying - he was really only making about $ 1.00 an hour. So why put in all that extra work, when the socialist nanny system siphons off most of it just to feed the insatiable maw of the bloated socialist nanny state ? Socialism in Canada is repressing and suppressing the natural instinct of most normal human beings in Canada to reproduce and have a family. Many adults in Canada have consciously decided on not having children, because they can see how intrusive and meddlesome the nanny state is here in Canada towards families. They can see how the nanny state wants to be the parent, and how the nanny state works to undermine the authority of parents in regards to their children. So why open yourself up to government meddling - why expose yourself and make yourself vulnerable to an intrusive bureaucracy, which has the power to seize almost any child in Canada they want - for any kind of hatched up bogus reason they can think of ? Why put yourself through the mental anguish of possibly exposing yourself to the corrupt government officials at Child Services - when you have children ? Why have kids when there is almost no incentive within the socialist system to have kids ? Little wonder birth rates in Canada have fallen to record low levels in recent years. Socialism in Canada encourages too many men to be sexually irresponsible. Therefore too many men (especially black men) have taken the irresponsible approach of " Lov'em and Leav'em " in regards to women. We have had a large increase in the numbers of single mothers in Canada in our recent history. These so-called men jump in the sack with one loose woman after another, and then don't have the gumption, gonads, and courage to take care of the children. They often just leave when the woman gets pregnant. Such male creeps and bums receive little sanction from anyone - and the nanny state too often just picks up the costs of rearing the children through various social welfare programs. Socialism doesn't hold individuals accountable for their actions enough, but instead tends to look to society for causes of individual behavior. You know the phony socialist slogan " It takes a village to raise a child " so there is little incentive in socialist Canada for the man to stick around and care for the child, since it takes a village to raise a child, and all they figure they need do is the copulation part. Then let society take care of the kid. On the other hand it is an entirely different story for sexually responsible men. Such Fathers in Canada are too often treated just like junk - just as penises and wallets. In socialist Canada the system supports feminist ideology, which is in conspiracy against Fatherhood. The courts, particularly the Family Court is stacked against men - the system especially hates a genuine Christian Father, who believes in following the Biblical laws regarding family. The sexually responsible male is an easy target for the intrusive nanny state, since they stick around, and make commitments. So the system comes down on them with both boots, while the irresponsible male creeps and bums just go their merry, shiftless ways - looking to society to foot the bill for their irresponsible behavior.
MacLeans magazine had an article by Martin Newland number of years ago, which depicts the rot in socialist England. I have asked MacLeans for consent to reprint it here, but got no response from them. So I am taking the liberty of just downloading it from some of the web sites that carry it. I also have a link to the article at Macleans, so you can just click on that. Why England is rotting England leads Europe in illiteracy, obesity, divorce, drug use, crime and STDs. Bloody hell MARTIN NEWLAND | June 11, 2007 | originally published by Macleans Magazine A rot that is also in Canada, and a rot which seems like the inevitable fruits of a socialist, nanny state. Please read it and you can see for yourself the dangerous road we here in Canada are going down. Naturally this is an opinion article by Martin Newland, and of course others may believe different. Anyways please read it and it will perhaps help show you how out of control socialism, can have serious consequences. Make up your own mind, but please inform yourself first. Why England is Rotting - link to the article reprinted on my this web page. Why England is Rotting - link to the article at Macleans I sincerely hope they don't mind me using the article without their consent. If it is a problem I'll gladly take it off my site, and apologize as well. I am personally prepared to take the hit here, if they don't approve. How about that for taking personal responsibility for ones actions folks ?
Why England is Rotting - link to the article reprinted on my web page. Why England is Rotting - link to the article at Macleans.
Why England is rotting England leads Europe in illiteracy, obesity, divorce, drug use, crime and STDs. Bloody hell MARTIN NEWLAND | June 11, 2007 | originally published in Macleans Magazine There used to be a time when taking on the Royal Navy was a bad idea. The force that policed the high seas through two world wars and protected the largest empire ever seen was for years the emblem of British national pride and pugnacity. Which is why it was particularly humiliating for many Britons to witness the spectacle of the navy's finest peddling stories about their capture a couple of months ago by the Iranian Republican Guard to the newspapers. The British had already watched televised "confessions" by servicemen, in which they criticized national foreign policy and admitted to crimes and trespasses they had not committed. But it was the paid interviews given once safely home that left the nation wondering what has happened to traditional British reserve and the notion of the stiff upper lip. Leading Seaman Faye Turney told the nation of the sheer hell of being reduced to counting carpet tiles in solitary confinement while waiting to learn of her fate (Iranian prisons, one is led to believe, are carpeted). And the diminutive Operator Mechanic Arthur Batchelor complained to the media that the Republican Guard had taken away his iPod and called him Mr. Bean. It was not long before commentators drew parallels between the behaviour of our fighting personnel and the collapse of traditional British values. The venerable right of centre newsmagazine The Spectator, in its editorial, said the episode "demonstrated just how deeply British society has been corrupted by the twin cults of celebrity and victimhood." These sentiments were echoed by the social commentator Theodore Dalrymple, who said the affair showed Britain "to be a country of very slight account, with a population increasingly unable to distinguish the trivial from the important and the virtual from the real, led by a man of the most frivolous earnestness who for many years has been given to gushes of cheap moral enthusiasm." The Shatt al-Arab affair was, he contended, a sign of a desire by British leadership to be both "policeman and lady almoner, General Patton and Gandhi, Rambo and [prison reformer] Elizabeth Fry." Our servicemen are potential killers, and yet make good subjects for the chat-show couch. In striving to be both, they end up being neither. This dichotomy runs through the country these servicemen are paid to defend: Britain is, for instance, a champion of free markets, but also administers some of the greatest and most unproductive state bureaucracies in the world. Britain believes in multiculturalism, but dislikes its Muslims wearing the veil. The country believes in freedom of choice by individuals and parents, but prohibits selection in schools and enacts streams of legislation restricting freedom of speech and protest. Every year since Labour's landslide 1997 victory, Chancellor of the Exchequer (and soon to be prime minister) Gordon Brown has delivered budget speeches in the House of Commons trumpeting Britain's sustained growth and its record of low unemployment and inflation. We are told of a miraculous melding of socialist philanthropism with market-force-driven capitalism. We are reminded of Labour's war on child poverty, of its solicitude for the elderly, of its sustained investment in health care and education, but also of the positioning of Britain as the economic powerhouse of Europe, churning out dynamic, well-educated graduates who are more than capable of taking on the Asian Tiger economies. Britain is, apparently, awash with disposable wealth, laden with opportunity, bursting with economic and social optimism. CEOs and union bosses can live happily together, either side of an agreed minimum wage. The social safety net, which guarantees world class public services for everybody, free at the point of need, have been sealed off from market forces, offering care for those unfortunates who find themselves unable, through no fault of their own, to benefit from Britain's economic miracle. And we don't just care about the poor at home. Gordon Brown and almost-departed Prime Minister Tony Blair are fully paid up members of the Bono / Bob Geldof African anti-poverty movement, unashamed to divert G8 agendas and overseas aid programs to issues of Third World debt relief and the scourge of AIDS and underdevelopment. The government trumpets unique and long-standing "British values," but has done away with some of the constitutional "anachronisms" of the past; Wales has a devolved assembly, Scotland its own parliament, and Northern Ireland took up the reins of self-government weeks ago. All members of the "union" still have full access to subsidies generated in England, however. The House of Lords is well on its way to becoming either an elected, or an appointed chamber, or a hybrid of the two. The House of Commons is increasingly marginalized and many developments in government policy are revealed to friendly newspapers before they are announced in Parliament. Republicanism is on the rise among the ruling elites, though not yet among the masses. The Queen was forced to give up her beloved royal yacht Britannia and will soon be ferried around on a jet dubbed "Blair Force One," to be shared with Gordon Brown. Brown mistrusts European integration, has shunned the euro, and all are invited to shake their heads despairingly at the sclerotic economies and social models of the Continent, bound by stifling employment laws and mired in protectionism and economic nationalism. Instead, we are led to believe that Britain and the United States are natural economic bedfellows, chasing ever lower levels of regulation and ever higher levels of productivity. To echo Dalrymple above, we are tough, but caring. We are competitive, but solicitous for the weak and the poor. We are modern, but in tune with precedent. We have, if the rhetoric is to be believed, established a utopia where the full spectrum of human endeavour and aspiration can find a home. But consider the following statistics which, most will agree, point instead to a fractured society, to impending economic decay and the total collapse of the postwar values system:
Perhaps most worrying is the alienation of large sections of the country's young people. These are people detached from society, floating free of family, jobs, education and training. NEETs, or young people "not in education, employment or training," now comprise one-fifth(1.2 million) of British 16- to 24-year-olds. In the 16 to 19 age bracket, 11 per cent are classed as NEETS, double the proportion in Germany and France -- and this despite massive spending on "welfare to work" initiatives by Gordon Brown since he declared, on taking up the reins of power in 1997, that "staying home is not an option." Commentators scratch their heads at how so many young people are able to get away with, literally, doing nothing, when there is apparently enough work for the hundreds of thousands of eastern Europeans who have entered the country since enlargement of the European Union a couple of years ago. One of the most watched shows on television employs police closed-circuit television-camera footage of drunken brawls each weekend in British towns and cities. It is normally the NEETS who are throwing the punches. And with the challenges of globalization becoming every day more apparent, Britain's record on education declines steadily, despite a doubling of spending from £29 billion($62 billion, using current exchange rates) in 1997 to £64 billion($138 billion) projected for 2008. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development last year claimed a quarter of the British population aged between 25 and 34 are "low skilled" in terms of educational attainment, five times the numbers in Japan. An OECD report also said that Britain lags behind in literacy rates among developed nations, and the U.S. Institute for Education Sciences says 14-year-olds in Britain are outperformed by 17 other countries in the developed world in terms of mathematical ability. Recent statistics showed that fully one-half of state secondary schools are failing to provide pupils with a good standard of education, and 40 per cent of 11-year-olds are leaving primary school without having reached an appropriate level in reading, writing and math. Grade inflation, through which the government stands accused of covering up low achievement, is endemic. In 1989, for instance, a grade of 48 per cent was needed to get a C in GCSE math. By the year 2000 it was 18 per cent. The government remains hostile to selection in education, and teachers remain hostile to any academic streaming within state schools. This means that in any given classroom, a Somali refugee who does not speak English can sit alongside the pupil with learning difficulties who in turn sits next to one with chronic behavioral problems who "learns" alongside the gifted pupil who would benefit from a greater challenge. And, as part of its policy of ensuring "equal access" to higher education, universities have been told that, in future, funding will be partly dependent on the ethnic, economic and social background of undergraduates they select. It will now also be incumbent on universities to consider the education and social background of an applicant's parents, as well as the suitability of the applicant himself, in allocating places. The pressure on universities to accept, and then pass, undergraduates who have little aptitude for further education has the inevitable effect of devaluing Britain's knowledge base and competitiveness. Employer and business organizations are already bemoaning the low literacy and numeric skills of graduates, and the drawbacks of government manipulation of education standards will become increasingly manifest as Britain is thrown into closer competition with the developing economies of India and China. After the Prime Minister steps down on June 27, Gordon Brown will finally gain the keys to Number 10 and Blair will wander off, like his old friend Bill Clinton before him, into a world of multi-million-dollar book deals and lecture tours. Blair's fury at Brown's grip on domestic affairs has always been obvious. The latter used his support on the left of the party to block real reform of health care and education, and stifled at birth the Prime Minister's more progressive (and market-driven) domestic plans through ruthless, centralized control of the nation's purse strings. Blair leaves without the domestic legacy he craves. But it is probably just as well for Blair that he is leaving. For Brown's policies are beginning to turn sour, and Blair will be better off writing speeches on the beach at Robin Gibb's Florida hideaway when the full scale of Brown's legacy becomes apparent. Interest rates in March reached a 10-year high of 3.1 per cent, one of the fastest among developed nations. House prices -- one of the most inflation-sensitive factors in British household finances -- are excluded from the official method of inflation measurement. If included, the real rate would be close to five per cent. In a country where the average home costs nearly £200,000($430,000), property owning remains a pipe dream for the poor and an enormous burden for blue-collar families and the middle classes. The homeowner is faced with a precarious financial predicament: new homebuyers are facing an average mortgage of £150,000($323,000). This means that anyone on the average wage of £23,000($49,500)would be spending 70 per cent of take-home pay on the mortgage. And this is before factors such as unsecured debt, spiraling domestic costs including a 70 per cent hike in property taxes over the last 10 years, and over 100 indirect tax increases since 1997 take their share. If interest rates continue to remain high, increased mortgage repayments on all those highly leveraged families referred to above could mean severe hardship and, some are predicting, the bursting of the U.K. property bubble and subsequent movement by large parts of the property-owning classes into negative equity. The International Monetary Fund is warning that public spending is too high and that public sector wage demands threaten Britain's stability. But both show every chance of rising under a Brown premiership. The state now employs a quarter of workers in Britain, and the 900,000 hired since 1997 almost equals the fall in unemployment in the same period. All seven million public sector workers are furnished with index-linked pensions, leaving the country with a current public sector pensions liability of, some studies contend, £700 billion($1.5 trillion)-- twice the national debt. Brown's decision upon taking power to remove tax concessions on private pension funds has, conversely, devastated their value and channeled an extra £5 billion($10.8 billion) a year to the Treasury. This has done huge damage to Britain's savings culture and left the person holding a devalued private sector pension paying increased sums in taxation to ensure his neighbour's public sector pension maintains its integrity. The welfare bill is becoming unmanageable. In 1971, only eight per cent of the working population was on benefits. Today the figure is 18 per cent, and some economic think tanks estimate that one-third of British households rely on benefits for at least half their income. Catering for the demands of such a massive welfare operation and for the demands of the gigantic state workforce and public services (the National Health Service is one of the largest employers in the world) is the single biggest threat to competitiveness and, the IMF warns, will lead to rising inflation. Gordon Brown has taken advantage of 10 years of growth to pump billions into public services, but with negligible results. In 1997, for instance, spending on the National Health Service was £33 billion($71 billion), rising to £90 billion($194 billion) last year. Although critics of the NHS would argue for negative productivity, the most generous estimates point to a productivity increase of just 9.9 per cent between 1998 and 2004 -- a period during which spending doubled. And by the end of last year, a service that has seen a funding increase of nearly 200 per cent since Labour came to power found itself, amazingly, facing a deficit of over £500 million($1.1 billion). The urge to meet government targets resulted in regional managers over-hiring and over-remunerating staff rather than relying on increasing efficiency or improving standards. General practitioners in Britain can now earn over £150,000($323,000)a year, and no longer have to make house calls. And tens of thousands of managers were hired to administer centralized targets and implement reforms. Perhaps the greatest indictment of the NHS is the fact that thousands each year die from hospital-acquired diseases and infections. Officially, death rates stand at around 5,000 a year, but some experts, pointing to misreporting of suspicious deaths by hospitals, suggest a figure four times as high. The answer to the problem is simple cleanliness. All those extra billions, all those extra targets and managers and doctors and nurses, and thousands are still dying each year for the lack of properly mopped floors and cleaned toilets. And ordinary health outcomes, measured in deaths before 70 that were potentially avoidable through good medical care, put Britain near the bottom of the league among developed nations in terms of cancer, heart disease and stroke. In 2005, 41 per cent of patients waited four months or longer for elective surgery, compared with 33 per cent in Canada, 19 per cent in Australia and less than 10 per cent in Germany and America. Taxation has risen to a 20-year high to cope with funding the state and the public services. Since 1997, the amount raised through personal taxes has risen from £175 billion($376 billion) to nearly £370 billion($796 billion). The OECD says that over the past four years, taxation of working families has risen in Britain, but fallen across Europe. In the lead-up to the French elections, French politicians and businessmen were singing the praises of Britain -- its lower tax rates, its free-market competitiveness. A BBC documentary focused on young French graduates pouring across the Channel to take up jobs in the British financial sector. But although personal taxation is higher in France, total taxation taking into account Brown's so-called indirect "stealth taxes") is almost on a par, and the French public services, unlike Britain's, are world class. London may well be a tempting place for the young French graduate, but France is a far better place if he or she gets married, seeks a good education for the children, falls ill or grows old. And London itself, frequently mistaken by outsiders as representing Britain as a whole, has become, in the words of the British conservative commentator Charles Moore, a "city state ... with a fairly unimportant country attached." London's role as a financial centre on its way to eclipsing New York City has provided a vision of prosperity which, it is assumed, trickles down to the population at large. But it is a city in which increasingly only those on welfare, or the super-rich, can afford to live. It has become a playground for non-domiciled billionaires and financial wizards who receive multi-million-pound bonuses to artificially inflate property prices and average earnings levels. The IMF recently ranked Britain alongside the likes of Bermuda and the Caymans as a tax haven. Last year, accountants from Grant Thornton calculated that the U.K.'s 54 billionaires paid income tax totaling £14.7 million($32 million) on their combined £126 billion($271 billion) fortunes. There is an argument to be made for some of this wealth trickling down -- perhaps to the catering and entertainment and other service industries, but the main burden of supporting Britain's gargantuan state machinery lies with the working and middle classes -- many of them unable to afford a house in London. The central government's policies, extending to the ballooning public sector and expanding welfare provision, have rendered large parts of the populace reliant on redistributionist state largesse. Added to this is the government's fondness for legislation and intervention in many aspects of its citizens' affairs. For instance, the Home Office, which handles crime, immigration and security, has put no less than 3,000 new offences on the statute book since 1997 -- on issues from detention without trial to the correct use of cell phones in cars. Myriads of new laws affecting personal liberty have been introduced, from religious hatred legislation to a national identity card scheme. Bible tracts are seized as evidence of hate literature at homosexual rights rallies, Catholic children's' agencies are required to place foster children with gay couples, and protests are banned in the vicinity of Parliament. But it is Dalrymple's identification, noted above, of a "population increasingly unable to distinguish the trivial from the important," that is causing commentators, politicians and swaths of Middle England concern. A few weeks ago, for instance, a mother, a grandmother and two aunts of a pair of toddlers were spared jail for filming a fight between the children in which they were goaded to viciously assault each other. On the same day, a man was sent to jail for four months for dog fighting. Similar inconsistencies are everywhere increasingly apparent. Tony Blair recently announced a plan to provide pregnant problem mothers with state "super-nannies" to teach them good child-rearing practices. At the same time, local government authorities employ nurses to provide underage girls with morning-after contraception services -- the most notorious example of this was when a nurse met a girl at a McDonald's and administered the dose in the restroom. Another girl of 14 had an abortion after counseling from school health workers. In both cases, parents were not informed because of the child's right to privacy. And it is young people who are causing the most concern. Recent statistics showed, for instance, that at least one child aged five and under is expelled from school every week and many more excluded for offences ranging from fighting to sexual assault to drug dealing. Increasingly, but belatedly, politicians are beginning to identify the decline of marriage and the family as the major cause of this and other social dysfunctions including ill health, crime, rampant promiscuity and welfare dependency. David Cameron, the leader of a resurgent Conservative party, finds himself able to mention this publicly without being crushed by the forces of political correctness. He points out that every government statistic garnered over the past 20 years shows that families bound together by marriage are happier, healthier and wealthier, and he is promising to alter the tax system to provide incentives for marriage, fidelity within marriage, and child nurture. A few weeks ago, Cameron railed at the increasing lack of civility in British society. Citing the case of the women forcing their children to fight for the camera, he said "all these are signs of a culture that is becoming de-civilized -- and the terrible thing is, we are getting used to it." Government's interventions in the realm of personal responsibility had stripped people, particularly parents, of the need to take responsibility for themselves: "My worry is that after a decade of a Labour government that said, 'the state is always the answer, more government is the answer,' they actually created the irresponsible society." Increasing numbers attribute Britain's lapse into incivility to the misapplication of welfare and the disincentives to taking responsibility that this causes. Despite overwhelming evidence of the benefits, social and economic, of marriage to society, Gordon Brown in one of his first acts as chancellor abolished the married couples allowance, which gave tax breaks to a husband and wife who stayed together. A Conservative party policy paper last year revealed that three-quarters of family breakdowns affecting young children now involve unmarried parents, and that cohabiting parents were more than twice as likely to break up than married couples. Government figures show that by 2031 there will be four million cohabiting couples. Over the past 20 years the proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from 12 per cent to 42 per cent. Labour's highly complicated tax credit system, born partly from a need to reduce child poverty, made welfare benefits for lone parents far more generous and, perversely, rendered a poor family headed by a single parent better off than a poor family headed by a couple. An out-of-work couple with children would thus be better off by between 27 and 35 per cent if they broke up, and a couple earning minimum wage with children would see their income rise by 12 per cent if the father moved out. Britain leads Europe -- and most of the world -- in terms of single-mother households. Commentators and politicians are increasingly linking this to the fact that the country offers the most generous benefits in Europe to those same households. They recall former president Clinton's success in reducing teenage pregnancy rates and lone parent households by changing welfare entitlements. In Sweden, a single parent begins to lose state support if he or she is not in employment by the time the first child is three. In Britain, the government is only now taking soundings on the possibility of doing the same thing when a child reaches 12. Whatever the case, those couples who do take responsibility to provide for themselves are forced to work to meet the bills, and many children rarely see their parents. Government has plowed millions into child care facilities without considering the benefits of manipulating the tax system to allow one career to remain at home. There are now plans to keep state schools open for 50 hours a week, so educators who went into the profession to teach find themselves transformed into social workers and surrogate parents. As a means of targeting the poor and encouraging the low-paid into employment, Gordon Brown shuns tax allowances, whereby the individual is allowed to retain more of his earnings at source, in favour of tax credits where income is taxed and returned after means testing. The message is clear: wealth cannot stay with the earner, who, arguably, is better able to make decisions about their personal financial circumstances. Wealth instead belongs first to the state, which sets itself up as the sole axis and arbiter of redistribution. Economists and think tanks contend that it is hardly surprising that so many at the bottom end of the income scale opt for welfare instead of employment. Because Brown has increased National Insurance contributions (a levy designed to help fund the NHS) and allowed the personal income tax allowance to shrink as earnings rise, it is the poor who now pay the largest share of their income in direct taxation. A minimum wage earner in the U.K., after the first 26 hours' work per week, pays over 30 pence in every extra pound he earns direct to the taxman. The fiscal dynamics of marriage, home and family at the lowest end of the earning scale are thus not governed by the principle of self-betterment, experts say. "The bravest and most admirable person in Britain today is the working-class man with children who clings to self-provision when it would be far easier to get on the state teat," said David Smith of the Institute of Economic Affairs. "If you look after your children and stay with your partner, you are poor and the kids are debits. If you leave home the state takes over your family and you, alone again, are richer." In France and other European nations, child-rearing is rewarded by a reduction in the tax burden. In Britain, poor families crumble, male role models are encouraged to depart, and children of broken unions soon lapse into delinquency and social ostracization. Government is doing everything it can to keep growing numbers of Britain's youth from becoming feckless. It has plans to force young people not in training to stay in school until they are 18, but for many, this is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The Conservatives say it is the decline of the family unit, the fiscal and practical challenges to good parenting, poor education and the nanny state, that is the root of so many of Britain's social and cultural problems. It remains to be seen whether the Conservatives, when in power, will make the difficult decisions they accuse the current government of ignoring. W.F. Deedes, at 94 a national icon who still pens a column for the London Daily Telegraph, has participated in public life for over 70 years. Said to be the inspiration behind the fictional and hapless Boot in Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, Lord Deedes has been an MP, a minister, a newspaper editor, a soldier and privy counselor to the Queen. "I have never known a time when government exercised more control over every aspect of our lives," he says, pointing to the sheer size of the state and the inroads it has made into "personal liberty, fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility." "We are, dear boy, on the verge of a permanent change in the national character. It is very sad." Article Why England is Rotting by MARTIN NEWLAND | June 11, 2007
Mailing Address: Ray Wegner P.O. Box 475 Stn. Main Calgary, Alberta T2P-2J1 Telephone (403) 274-5253 E-mail Guarantee of Rights and Freedoms and Fundamental Freedoms (from the Canadian Constitution) " The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: (a) freedom of conscience and religion; (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication; (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and (d) freedom of association. " This web site built, designed, and owned by Ray Wegner18/02/10
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" Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. " quote by Arnold Toynbee - British Historian 1889 - 1975
"Apathy is a mental state in which the sufferer lacks the desire, will or energy to engage in any activity, whether intellectual or physical. It is variously called indifference, boredom, lassitude, languor, listlessness, laziness, lethargy or inertia. It may be a symptom of mental disorder. It is first alienation of the self from the world and then self-alienation. Finally it is withdrawal from all participation in the care of others and care of oneself. Collectively, apathy may be expressed in social, economic, political or ideological paralysis, with all the available energy for change locked up in the institutions, systems and structures of society."
Definition of Apathy Apathy can be defined as an absence or suppression of emotion, feeling, concern or passion. Further, apathy is an indifference to things generally found to be exciting or moving.
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Christopher Pauchay was recently sentenced in early 2009 to a jail
term - I believe a three year one for criminal negligence. There was a
native sentencing circle first - and the recommendation was he not be
jailed, but required to do service within the community. However, the
court has the final say here, and there was a trial and Pauchay is now
behind bars. He apparently displayed little remorse and did not seem to be
willing to take full responsibility for the tragic death of his two
daughters. 