exactly. a culture of entitlement and assumption that the government will provide. changes would have to be made gradually obviously. but even then its so engrained one has to wonder, is there any hope for many of these people? So often Im going on my way to work / in shop / walking on streets and there are just so many people who I have no idea how they would survive in a professional, salary earning environment.
hmm things that are particularly bad? how about the Department for International Development. Cut the whole lot out. I dont buy this whole "Britain Brand Building" bullshit. Nor do I believe that people should be forced to help starving kids etc across the world. Why not increase Gift Aid benefits or something if the goverment wants people to help the 3rd world out?
Spending on military projects that are none of our business - Libya conflict, Syrian conflict support....if were gonna be helping out terrorists, why not start helping out Hamas against Israel too?
EU? I dont really care for all the "omg our trade will suffer with EU" argument...or the "we can work in EU now too and get equal benefits..."....Personally, for me, the possibility of staying as an independent country without having power centralised to a massive extent in a federalist state (with no real representation or oversight and a loss of national sovereignty) outweighs all possible economic benefits (and with the massive unnecessary spending and corruption at EU, one could argue about which way things weighed in terms of benefits). Not to mention theres a whole other world out there with whom we can trade with and with whom we have much closer ties to on so many levels if we wanted to start integrating.
Im sure there are many things that need to be changed economically in this country, but the fact that a social-cultural change needs to happen is even more obvious. We have too many people who's net contribution to society im just unsure about. Although I guess you could argue that they do bring in valuable revenue through purchase of cigarettes & alchohol on which they pay tax
etc etc
Btw Will, have you read the book "Jennifer Government"? Highly recommend it. Its somewhat a dig against anti-big government people, but the irony is, i actually quite liked the vision it proposed as opposed to what big government might entail in a dystopian future