Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury could hardly be called a swivel eyed, slavering right winger which makes his comments yesterday about the insidiousness of ‘welfarism’ in Wales all the more powerful.
Dr Williams was making a speech in the Welsh Assembly yesterday and he said community was incompatible with "passive welfarism" or "passive statism" - "an assumption that the state is the provider of solutions and solver of problems".
He went on to say : "We may bridle as I sometimes instinctively do at the way welfarism is used in a derogatory sense these days, because the achievements of public welfare have been enormous.
"Yet there is some substance to that suspicious use of welfarism.
"There is a problem about dependency. There is a problem about assuming somebody else resolves the problems and there is certainly a problem about centralised state provision as the solution to everything.
"And those who have recently from both left and right pointed out that welfarism is not good news for those who want a mutually responsible active, creative community have not been wrong."
Once again is takes an outsider to say what welsh politicians, particularly ones of the left can’t or won’t in case they offend anyone. But having worked in some of these communities and seen the damaged lives, the bigger offense surely is not trying to break the cycle of poverty, dependency and hopelessness that a life on benefits means for too many welsh families sadly.
The full audio of the speech entitled 'For the common good: what is it that turns a society into a community?" can be found here.
More here from BBC Wales.Any source
No comments:
Post a Comment