Stripped of the specifically Christian element, these views were also echoed in the recent remarks by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, when he inveighed against the consumerist ‘I-society’ as exemplified by the contemporary obsession with iPads and iPhones.

A 79-year-old woman has died from head injuries after trying to fight off teenage muggers who robbed her of the bag containing her husband’s ashes.

Of course these youths didn’t know what the bag contained. But what a terrible commentary on our society, where not even the dead are safe from muggers who have no qualms about robbing an elderly woman.

Attempts to portray the right’s rise as a return of trends in the 1930s, when Mosley’s Blackshirts marched the streets, with grand self-flattering claims from ‘anti-fascists’ that by opposing the EDL they are repeating the Battle of Cable Street, fails to address its very modern causes. The mainstream left must realise its own role in any rise of right wing populism in Britain. By abandoning much of their traditional constituency or treating them with disdain, and embracing culturally divisive politics, they have created a space and for the far right to fill.

What about, for instance, South Africa or Venezuela; want, squalor and ignorance do prevail in these places to the extent that people may be forced to turn to crime simply to survive. Asks John Blance.
One of the miracles of the human condition is the fact that in many places around the world, people are able to live in conditions of real poverty and deprivation without turning to crime or living in squalor. Such people live on less money than we can imagine here in the west and yet are honest, clean and proud. They have not lost their self-respect. Once you lose that, no amount of money will satisfy you. Here in our lazy decadent society, we not only worship money but our modern heros are often those who managed to acquire it effortlessly, without working.
Yes, there is great poverty in this country, but it has nothing to do with money

“Well, it is about time that every rebel wakes up to the fact that "the people" and the working class have nothing in common.”
--Joe Hill


We have our lives run by them. The newspapers and television put forward their view of the world. Schools teach about the great (or unfortunate) history of their society and produce a spectrum of graduates and dropouts fit for different kinds of work. The government provides services to keep their society running smoothly. And when all else fails, they have the police, the prisons and the army.

This is not our community.