Times Online economics editor David Smith takes advantage of the declining dollar to make a claim so outrageous that I had reread the article several times to make sure it wasn’t a joke:

LIVING standards in Britain are set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, according to a report by the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

The calculations suggest that, measured by gross domestic product per capita, Britain can now hold its head up high in the economic stakes after more than a century of playing second fiddle to the Americans.

It says that GDP per head in Britain will be £23,500 this year, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting not only the strength of the pound against the dollar but also the UK economy’s record run of growth and rising incomes going back to the early 1990s.

In those days, according to Oxford Economics, Britain’s GDP per capita was 34% below that in America, 33% less than in Germany and 26% lower than in France. Now, not only have average incomes crept above those in America but they are more than 8% above France (£21,700) and Germany (£21,665).

He pulls out some good old fashioned World Worker Party style agi-prop to support his claim:

Although many people will be surprised by the figures, Americans have long complained that average incomes have been stagnant in their country. One often-quoted statistical comparison suggests that in real terms the median male full-time salary in America is no higher now than it was in the 1970s.

Patently absurd, which is no doubt why he doesn’t make any attribution of this bombshell. But even Comrade Smith can’t spin the truth about the superiority of our free markets to Britian’s semi-socialist, neo-liberal welfare state. When examining the Oxford Economics Consultancy study, he admits:

It concedes, however, that a significant fall in the pound against other currencies would push Britain back down the ladder. It has assumed an exchange rate of just over $2 for the purpose of the calculation but in recent days the pound has slipped below that level.

The Oxford analysts also point out that Americans benefit from lower prices than those in Britain. With an adjustment made for this “purchasing power parity”, the average American has more spending power than his UK counterpart and pays lower taxes. (In the run-up to Christmas many Britons traveled to New York and other American cities to take advantage of the strength of sterling against the dollar and those lower prices.)

So in other words, even if the British made roughly the same amount of money, a fiction only possible with some creative mathematics, they’d still be unable to match the lifestyle of an American in their same economic class. In fact, America’s market is so good English people travel here to benefit from not just the weak dollar, but from the purchasing power a free market gives to consumers.

But of course, standard of living is more than just the goodies you can buy, it’s little things like knowing that you won’t be arrested and thrown in jail for blogging.

Which England is doing right now to anti-Jihad blogger Lionheart. He’s being arrested for “inciting racial hatred” because he’s against the Islamization of England. I guess Islam’s a race now. He points out that radical Muslims have been allowed to spread vile hate speech for years unmolested.

And of course there’s this news from The Telegraph:

Islamic extremists have created “no-go” areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter, one of the Church of England’s most senior bishops warns today.

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Church’s only Asian bishop, says that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.

[…]

Bishop Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, gives warning that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character by introducing the call to prayer and wider use of sharia law, a legal system based on the Koran.

In an attack on the Government’s response to immigration and the influx of “people of other faiths to these shores”, he blames its “novel philosophy of multiculturalism” for allowing society to become deeply divided, and accuses ministers of lacking a “moral and spiritual vision”.

So now England has “no-go zones” like France. Places where people who aren’t Muslims suffer physical attacks and the government is powerless to do anything other than capitulate and allow Sharia courts to be set up.

Almost like living in America. But wait, there’s more

More than 25,000 criminals have been escaped justice in England because the Crown Prosecution Service is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cases. Instead of changing the system they simply drop charges against defendants who have a decent defense.

In 2006 it was reported that homicide rates had soared over ten years of Labour government domination.

Assaults and murders with knives are also on the rise. A couple of months ago it was reported that there is a knife attack every 24 minutes in England.

For someone who killed an old man by stoning him to death with his friends in front of his family, the British consider a two year sentence “tough.”

You can get more time for making a gay slur than for rape in England.

Also making a comeback in England: child sexual slavery.

And female genital mutilation.

Ready to pack your bags yet?