Roger Helmer MEP

The Welfare State We’re In, James Bartholomew  – This is an extraordinary exposé of the damage which welfarism is doing to the fabric of our society.  The vast sums spent on social security remove the incentive to work.  State pension provision and means testing guarantee poverty for many of our old people.  A socially-engineered school system means large numbers of truculent and disaffected youths achieving nothing for themselves or society, and turning to anti-social behaviour and crime.  Our NHS, “the envy of the world”, is the last vast centrally-planned enterprise in the world (apart from the Chinese Army and Indian Railway), and delivers arguably the poorest health outcomes in the developed world. Bartholomew points out that before the welfare state was developed, most people had adequate health-care.  Before free schools, literacy rates were better than they are today.  It’s not just that welfare doesn’t work.  It actually makes matters worse, by destroying the incentives that drive successful public services.  This book is an eye-opener.

(2)  How to be RIGHT, James Delingpole lists dozens of politically-correct shibboleths and takes aim at them with irreverence, panache, humour, and an unashamedly right-on, right-wing set of attitudes.  You will laugh till you cry.