benefits – Compassion and Justice

Immigration is a hot issue in the United Kingdom right now. Some time ago I picked up a copy of the Daily ? (a paper that I don’t normally read) and the story on the front page was going on about immigrants and basically implying that we should pull up the drawbridge and prevent any further immigration into our already “overcrowded Island”.

Turning to page 20 (or thereabouts) was an article about how the world economic crisis had affected Dubai and how “poor” British “settlers” were suffering from the economic fallout.

Probably the two journalists did not meet to discuss how they should handle the situation. But why are migrants to the United Kingdom demonised and called immigrants (a word with all sort of connotations) whilst British migrants to other countries were treated sympathetically as settlers? Continue reading “Immigrants or Settlers”

The government of the United Kingdom says that is trying to encourage people back to work and reduce dependence upon state benefits. To do this, most of the emphasis has been on reducing benefits. I believe that rather than the stick of reducing benefits, more could be achieved by the carrot of increasing the minimum wage. In turn this would reduce our benefits bill and increase our national income through Income Tax, National Insurance, Value Added Tax etc.

There are about 1,350,000 people in Britain who only receive the minimum wage with a further 4 million earning less than a “living wage” (see below). Because it is impossible to support a family on this level, a great number of these will also be receiving state benefits. It is wrong that we, as taxpayers, should be subsidising companies who fail to pay a living wage to their workers. Continue reading “Why we should increase the minimum wage (UK)”

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