ENGLAND'S SHOCKING DECLINE
This was the FRONT PAGE headlines in "Macleans" news
magazine of Canada, the June 2007 edition.
Underneath those Headline words were:
The Queen's once-proud subjects now LEAD Europe in
ILLITERACY
UNEMPLOYMENT
TEEN PREGNANCY
DIVORCE
DRUG USE
OBESITY
ALCOHOLISM
CRIME
STDs
The feature article in part had this to say:
"UNICEF this year ranked Britain bottom in the league of
industrialized nations in terms of the well-being of children....
Labour has also failed to meet its targets on reduction of child
poverty...
Britain also has the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe,
the highest portion of single mothers, and one of the highest
divorce rates.
Britain ranks top, with France, in western Europe in terms of
sexually transmitted disease.
It has the highest obesity rate in europe, with near quarter of
its inhabitants classified as obese.
Britain has one of the highest rates of alcohol abuse in Europe,
with a quarter of Britons indulging in the sort of binge drinking
that every week-end transforms cities and market twins into
Hogarthian hellholes.
Britain also heads Europe in terms of drug abuse. Cocaine use is
highest in the United Kingdom, and use among secondary school
pupils has doubled in the last year.
Along with Ireland and Holland, Britain has the highest crime
rate in Europe. London has a higher violent crime rate that any
other city in the european Union, higher than in Istanbul and New
York city.
Perhaps most worrying is the alienation of large sections of the
country's young people,. These are people detached from society,
floating free of family, jobs, education, and training. NEET's,
or young people "not in education, employment or training," now
comprise one-fifth (1.2 million) of British 16- to 24-year-olds.
In the 16 to 19 age bracket, 11 per cent are classified as NEETS,
double the proportion in Germany and France - and this despite
massive spending on "welfare to work" initiatives by Gordon
Brown...Commentators scratch their heads at how so many young
people are able to get away with, doing nothing, when there's
apparently enough work for the hundreds of thousands of eastern
Europeans who have entered the country since enlargement of the
European Union a couple of years ago.....
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development last
year claimed a quarter of the British population aged between 25
and 34 are "low skilled" in terms of education attainment, five
times the number in Japan.
Recent statistics showed that fully one-half of state secondary
schools are failing to provide pupils with a good standard of
education, and 40 per cent of 11-year-olds are leaving primary
school without having reached an appropriate level of reading,
writing and math....
In a country where the average home costs nearly $430,000,
property owning remains a pipe dream for the poor and an enormous
burden for the blue-collar families and the middle
classes....This means that anyone on the average wage of $49,500
would be spending 70 per cent of take-home pay on the
mortgage....
The welfare bill is becoming unmanageable. In 1971, only 8 per
cent of the working population was on benefits. Today the figure
is 18 per cent, and some economic think tanks estimate that
one-third of British households rely on benefits for at least
half their income....
Perhaps the greatest indictment of the NHS (Nation Health
Service) is the fact that thousands each year die from
hospital-acquired diseases and infections....In 2005, 41 per cent
of patients waited four months or longer for elective surgery,
compared with 33 per cent in canada, 19 per cent in Australia and
less than 10 per cent in Germany and America....
Taxation has risen to a 20-year high to cope with funding the
state and public services.....
And London itself, frequently mistaken by outsiders as
representing Britain as a whole, has become ... "a city state ...
with a fairly unimportant country attached." London's role as a
financial centre on its way to eclipsing New York City has
provided a vision of prosperity which, it is assumed, trickles
down to the population at large. But it is a city in which
increasingly only those on welfare, or the super-rich, can afford
to live. It has become the playground for non-domiciled
billionaires and financial wizards who receive
multi-million-pound bonuses to artificially inflate property
prices and average earnings levels....
Politicians now blame a decline in marriage and family for social
problems like ill health and promiscuity. And it is young people
who are causing the most concern. Recent statistic showed, for
instance, that at least one child aged five and under is expelled
from school every week and many more excluded for offences
ranging from fighting to sexual assault to drug dealing....
A Conservative party policy paper last year revealed that three-
quarters of family break-downs affected affecting young children
now involve unmarried parents, and that cohabiting parents were
more than twice as likely to break up than married couples.
Government figures show that by 2031 there will be four million
cohabiting couples. Over the past 20 years the proportion of
children born outside marriage has risen from 12 per cent to 42
per cent....
Britain leads Europe - and most of the world - in terms of
single-mother households. Commentators and politicians are
increasingly linking this to the fact that the country offers the
most generous benefits in Europe to those same households....
There are now plans to keep state schools open for 50 hours a
week, so educators who wen into the profession to teach find
themselves transformed into social workers and surrogate
parents....
The Conservatives say it is the decline of the family unit, the
fiscal and practical challenges to good parenting, poor education
and the nanny state, that is the root of so many of Britain's
social and cultural problems. It remains to be seen whether the
Conservatives, when in power, will make the difficult decisions
they accuse the current government of ignoring.
W.F. Deedes, at 94 a national icon who still pens a column for
the London "Daily Telegraph" has participated in public life for
over 70 years. Said to be the inspiration behind the fictional
and hapless Boot in Evelyn Waugh's "Scroop," Lord Deedes has been
an MP, a minister, a newspaper editor, a soldier and privy
counsellor to the Queen.
"I have never known a time when government exercised more control
over every aspect of our lives," he says, pointing to the sheer
size of the state and the inroads it has made into "personal
liberty, fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility."
"We are, dear boy, on the verge of a permanent change in the
national character. It is very sad."
..................
OH, HOW SAD INDEED to see the DECLINE of such a world Empire as
that of the British Commonwealth and its spear head - the once
mighty and proud and Bible books spreading nations in the whole
world - Britain.
It is to happen, God knew centuries ago that the GREATEST Empire
the world has ever seen, that of The British Commonwealth and the
United States of America, would rot from within, it is only a
matter of time before the rest of the British Commonwealth and
the United States follow the lead into degeneration. The Eternal
God will have to punish them in a drastic manner one day, to get
them to fall on their knees in humble REPENTANCE and turn away
from sin and turn back to Him and His Holy Word. It is all told
to us in advance in the prophetic books of your Bible. I will
soon be expounding the book of Revelation in "The New Testament
Bible Story," and then God willing I will proceed to expound to
you all the prophetic books of the Old Testament, and the
meaning for us today and beyond - Keith Hunt (October 2007).
