We can splutter into our cornflakes as much as we like, but until we address the cultural Marxism which has brought our country to this pass, we are going to continue our ineluctable journey towards the cliff.
Even John Bird, the founder of the Big Issue, acknowledges this. The Big Issue, he has always said, is supposed to be a “hand-up, not a hand-out” – a step on the ladder for homeless people in search of work, not a place of permanent employment. Bird also happens to be of a soundly free market, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps persuasion. I doubt, somehow, that he intended his noble enterprise to become a vehicle for Roma gipsies to come and fleece the British taxpayer.
Yet that, with the connivance of our courts, is what it has become. Today, we read with joy in our papers that a Roma woman with four children – one Firuta Vasile, 27 – has won a ruling from a London court that, as a Big Issue seller, she and her family are now entitled to housing benefit on top of the other handouts they already receive courtesy of you, me and our cash-cow welfare state:
Speaking through an interpreter, she said: “I came to the UK in 2007 to look for work. The only work I could find was selling the Big Issue on the streets of Bristol. I can keep half of the money I take and I usually make around £100 per week.
“This isn’t enough to meet all my family’s needs so I asked the council for housing benefit to help with my rent. My claim was turned down.
“I was told that because I am Romanian I could not get benefits unless I have a job or I am in self-employment. They said work for the Big Issue didn’t count.
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