Posted on 06/21/2011 4:02:51 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
The choice of the London A-list, St. John’s Wood is a neighborhood of ethereal wealth, its leafy avenues lined with the ample mansions of Paul McCartney, Ewan McGregor and Kate Moss. And yet, they share the most unlikely neighbors — the Kastrati family.
Poor immigrants struggling to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities, the family of four nevertheless lives in a sunny, two-bedroom flat in an enclave of urban privilege. Their benefactor: the British government, which covers 85 percent of their $3,600-a-month rent through welfare benefits giving tens of thousands of low-income earners access to even the best neighborhoods. But the clock on such subsidized London lifestyles is suddenly running out.
The Conservative-led government is rolling out Britain’s most sweeping welfare reform since the 1940s, taking aim at the ballooning bills in cities such as London, where a few families receive as much as $160,000 a year to ensure economic diversity and quality housing for the poor in some of the priciest districts in the world. Yet as benefits are rolled back, academics are warning of a major side effect: an exodus of the poor from central London in numbers not seen since the demolition of soot-caked Dickensian slums in the 19th century.
London’s population shift may emerge as one of the most dramatic examples of the deficit-busting crusade taking place across Europe and now under serious debate in Washington. On this side of the Atlantic, cash-strapped nations from Greece to Ireland — drowning in debt in the wake of the Great Recession — are rolling back famously generous welfare programs that they can no longer afford.
Few have been as ambitious as Britain, where the government’s push is igniting a fierce debate about the fading European ideal of a right to a good life.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Funny how when one considers how high taxes are in the UK, it never seems to be enough.
Oh, I see, Shpejtim Kastrati, 25, whose family fled to London from Kosovo in the 1990s.
Sounds veddy Rush Limbaugh to me.
But, but, but ...you VOTED for them, now, didn’t you?
Socialists — evil the world throughout. And their followers — terminally stupid.
A play on words finding reality. Didn’t take long either.
Maybe the Kastrati could develop a skill with the same economic appeal as their neighbors’ music, acting, or posing. Perhaps they could be a family opera-singing troupe.
“It’s a very complex psychological issue,” said Lord David Anthony Freud, the British government’s welfare reform minister and the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud. “The issue is, what set of expectations is the state breeding in people? . . . We need to wean them off the state.”
Socialists — evil the world throughout. And their followers — terminally stupid.
That's the funny thing. Since the UK does not tax income that her citizens earn outside of the country, many of the rich people there simply set up residence in tax havens. The irony of that is that many of those rich people are themselves socialists. The even greater irony is that most foreign tax havens wisely do not grant voting privileges to such people. :)
There was actually a protest recently against Bono for moving his business from Ireland to the Netherlands, so he could save on taxes, that he likes extracted from others that he would redistribute to the worlds poor.
The even greater irony is that most foreign tax havens wisely do not grant voting privileges to such people. :)
Something whispers, there is a larger lesson here.
The only thing I can say about Britains welfare problem, is that here in America-—”Been there —Done that”.
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
Really? I haven't heard a single Democrat offer anything serious. Maybe I just missed it.
Yet in London the poor will be banished to the outer suburbs, while here the affluent flee to the outer suburbs and the poor remain in the inner city ghettos.
The Ryan family, mentioned in the article, and featured in the slide show, seem to do nothing other than wander the neighborhood shopping. No wonder they’re poor and the husband had a mental breakdown.
The insanity of liberals is simply unbelievable.
I wonder what barriers to gentrification the DC council and federal legislature has put in place to prevent this?
it’s almost as if Congress had killed all funding for Section 8...
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