Dependency culture

The Telegraph reports that a third of all households in Britain receive a half or more of their income from state benefits.

This clearly demonstrates the dependency culture that we have created, where more and more people are reliant on the state. I'm sure that if you considered the number who are not just reliant on benefits, but who are reliant on the state for employment this number would be considerably higher. Why have we become such a nation of dependents?

This comes at a time when more and more senior politicians are mouthing platitudes about "Britishness" - whilst having very little idea what Britishness means. They seem to think it's things like fair play, tolerance, fish and chips, orderly queuing and red buses when in fact the core British values are independence, self respect, self reliance and dignity - the very things that they undermine with their policies encouraging dependency.

The crisis in Britishness is caused by the collapse of self-dependence.

We should not be surprised at this, though, as successive British governments for many years have bought into the dependency culture themselves. Our government makes very few decisions for itself, but is almost entirely dependent on some other body to direct it - the EU, NATO, the UN, USA.

A government that is itself dependent creates a nation of dependent people. Independent people need an independent nation and an independent nation demands an independent government.