Unless you're going to invite a beggar round for Christmas dinner or do something else insanely saintly like foster. (Foster parents are saints!) what's going to happen if nobody takes responsibility? It's not very grown up to rely on "charities" to look after people who need looking after. No one on this forum is saying "are there no workhouses?" I'm sure. Christopher Leigh I'll bet you're a decent bloke, but it sounds like you don't give a b*gger about anybody but yourself and your money. It's nothing to do with socialism or toryism, just common decency. This society is too big to be unorganised, for people to educate themselves and bind up their own wounds. I take your point about mass movements grinding individuals down in the name of spurious common aims. But these aims were in reality the private sicknesses of a few domineering individuals made large.
Where the welfare state fails is largely in the lack of conscientiousness of individuals; I am a teacher and was a nurse. But for god's sake go to India where people will try to sell you a discarded banana skin in order to make a living for their families. That's the market economy red in tooth and claw. Try it as a beggar not a trekker.
We're in paradise in this country. All we need to do is click our heels and turn around to realise it.