The dangers of state dependency

A powerful Panorama was shown tonight about the Broken Society (as the BBC didn’t call it). It was about how if communities get together they can reclaim control of the streets. What the documentary didn’t look at was the roots of these problems: why do kids wander around like this? What has caused communities to disintegrate in this way? Answer – mass joblessness/ welfare dependency.

I looked up the data (Excel) for two areas in the programme: East End Park in Leeds and Bulwell Hall in Nottingham. In both areas, a staggering 28% of adults are on welfare (but just 5% on jobseekers allowance). This was called a “Great Depression” when it happened in America. And this depression – with its accompanying social breakdown – is happening in hundreds of communities across our supposedly booming Britain today.  So the horizontal ties which once bound communities together are replaced with vertical ties between the individual and the state.