The hard-working majority are at mercy of the nine million Brits out of work

Not working

HOW has it come to this?

Britons used to be among the hardest-working people in the West — a nation whose success since the 1980s was built on a giant army of self-starting strivers.

Now the hard-working majority find themselves at the mercy of an idle or underperforming minority.

For all that the Left screams about austerity and lack of investment, an extra 33,000 people over the last decade or so now work in our bloated and failing public sector.

A third of them — 23,000 new posts — have been created in the allegedly “under-funded” NHS.

Meanwhile, around nine million people in the UK simply don’t work at all.

Doing absolutely nothing now actively pays.

Around 3.9 million get health benefits for bad backs and poor mental health without ever having to look for a job.

Squeezed middle-earners find themselves working harder and paying more for the feather-bedded and the indolent.

Why should they?

Holy ridiculous

IT takes a brave whistle-blower to stand up against the might of a big organisation.

Especially if its leadership is professing to take the moral high ground.

But ex-vicar Matthew Firth has been determined to speak the truth about fake Christian conversions of illegal migrants within the Church of England.

Mr Firth told MPs the groups of young Syrians and Iranians who wanted ­baptisms to help their asylum claims simply “melted away” once he insisted on them being active members of his congregation.

Church leaders should have the blood of the victims of chemical attacker convert Abdul Ezedi on their collective conscience.

But today the Iranian-born Bishop of Chelmsford insisted to a Commons committee there was no evidence and no scandal.

Beware a clergy speaking with forked tongues.

Lawful mess

ONCE again ordinary people will be left to suffer the consequences of yet another broken public institution.

The early release of thousands of non-violent criminals from prisons because of overcrowding is bound to increase crime on our streets.

For more than five years the Tories have been pledging to boost cell spaces by up to 20,000.

But the party of law and order has abjectly failed to do so.

Current re-offending rates mean at least a quarter of those crooks now enjoying a cut of up to 60 days in their sentence will go straight out and commit more crimes.

What a humiliating shambles.