RE: Is Britain Really In Decline, or just Adjusting...?!?

Agree with you that we need a more global outlook and a more progressive approach to climate change. I think we will still need some immigration, even with everyone working, there's some mismatch between skills available and skills required, and as other commenters have said, there's a collapsed birthrate.

make people WORK for benefits

I laughed at this: have you met some of the people unable to work? I wouldn't wish them on any employer, sure fire way to drain the will to live from anyone. And even for people who could work (and pretty much all of them, regardless of capacity, do want to work), there is a big skills gap. That's pretty much how come they're unemployed in the first place, following years of deprivation.

There were some interesting experiments in the 1980s - was it called the community programme where people worked for three days a week in a community project and received an allowance - I think it was for something like 18 months - 2 years. Another one was the Enterprise programme, where people had to show evidence of having access to £1,000 start up money and received something like £40 a week for a year.