Delingpole on benefit cheats

A couple of days ago I posted on the heartwarming story of Firuta Vasile, 27 – the Roma woman with four children who came to Britain five years ago, claims not to have been able to find work except as a Big Issue seller, and currently snaffles in excess of £25,000 in benefits, courtesy of the British taxpayer. And who has just snaffled another £2,500 in housing benefit having argued – through an interpreter, also funded by you, the British taxpayer, and with the support of a Welfare Benefits Adviser called Andy King – that this is no more than her fair entitlement.

Nice.

What shocked me almost more than the story itself was the reaction from some of our menagerie of trolls.

Here's one of our friends from across the water:

Vasile says that she looked for work, and the only work she could find was selling The Big Issue. Obviously it is not a proper job if it pays only £100 per week, and obviously she cannot pay all her family's expenses on that … hence the housing benefit. Would it be better if she were doing nothing and receiving more in benefits?

To describe Vasile as a 'greedy shyster' really shows what a vindictive worm you are. How much do you earn?

And of course, having lifted yet another rock, you will watch as the lowlife crawls out from under it to advocate Final Solutions of one form or another.

Here's another:

I am delighted that Firuta Vasile has won this victory for two reasons.

1. She and her family need the money.

2. It makes Delingpole even more angry.

and here's one from a caring young lady called @mariannepowell on Twitter (apparently she campaigns for Roma rights in Budapest: well done, Marianne, love! Bet that makes you feel all warm and gooey inside, yes?) who Tweets:

Something vile from James Delingpole. Apparently we are living under 'cultural Marxism'. Can't say I'd noticed.

There are plenty more in this vein but you get the idea. Out there, in the world right now, not in lunatic asylums but on the streets with actual voting rights, are angry, quasi-articulate people who sincerely believe that:

1. Mentioning Roma in any vaguely critical context puts you one step away from endorsing Hitler's death camps

2. Criticising welfare tourism means you're heartless and probably a Nazi

3. The British exchequer is a source of limitless bounty. If there are any poor people out there in the world, it is entirely right and proper that they should partake of its largesse. To argue otherwise is morally indefensible.

I wonder how these people will respond to today's Telegraph scoop that there are 370,000 economic migrants currently claiming the dole in Britain. Actually I don't wonder at all. I'm quite sure they'll think it's great, in the same way some people think the foxhunting ban is great because of "what Thatcher did to the Miners" or that HS2 is great because it will teach poncy Southerners a lesson by destroying their countryside, or, most appositely, that unchecked immigration is great because it will smash the Tory fascist vote base for ever and dilute our filthy, reprehensible, hideously white Anglo-Saxon stock with people of all colours and creeds holding hands underneath a rainbow.

I wish that last bit was an exaggeration. But it's not. As former New Labour speechwriter Andrew Neather has revealed, between 2000 and 2009 Tony Blair and his bien-pensant ministers (among them Jack Straw) cynically and very deliberately used immigration policy as part of their Kulturkampf against the right:

"I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."

The "deliberate policy", from late 2000 until "at least February last year", when the new points based system was introduced, was to open up the UK to mass migration, he said.

Some 2.3 million migrants have been added to the population since then, according to Whitehall estimates quietly slipped out last month.

On Question Time on Thursday, Mr Straw was repeatedly quizzed about whether Labour's immigration policies had left the door open for the BNP.

In his column, Mr Neather said that as well as bringing in hundreds of thousands more migrants to plug labour market gaps, there was also a "driving political purpose" behind immigration policy.

He defended the policy, saying mass immigration has "enriched" Britain, and made London a more attractive and cosmopolitan place.

We need, I think, to be far more courageous and outspoken in resisting this insidious cultural Marxist assault on our values. Since Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech, the liberal-left has successfully created a climate in which any criticism of immigration is considered tantamount to racism. This is a grotesque mispresentation of reality. We are – even now, amazingly – for the most part a hugely tolerant nation. But we also have a very refined sense of "fair play."

It is clearly not fair play when, at a time of severe economic crisis when many of us are feeling the pinch, that we should have our taxes raised and be forced to borrow more money on the international markets in order to fund immigrants who are here merely to leech off our generosity.

Like many of a libertarian persuasion, I have few problems with immigrants who have come here to work. I have major problems with immigrants who are here to sponge. As, I hope, does anyone out there with even half a brain or a scrap of moral integrity. (Guess that doesn't mean you, trolls).