It's ludicrous to say that rightwingers don't care about inequality - (By John Redwood M.P.)
(And it’s ludicrous to think that they do! .... G. R.)
We all want to cut poverty and improve life chances – we just differ on how to do it (- Says Redwood!!)
John Redwood (M.P. for Wokingham, UK.)
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 August 2011 18.59 BST
"John Harris, in his column on the Conservatives' response to the riots, misrepresents my (John Redwood's) views (For a progressive, Cameron is sounding very Thatcherite, 16 August). He asserts: "There is no point in people like me having a pop at, say, John Redwood, for his failure to recognise the importance of inequality." Had he talked to me, or read some of what I have written, he would know that I do think inequality is a vital topic in political discussion.
(‘Vital’, is a key word; a delicate prevarication. It is an overused word, signifying something that should be important, but clearly isn’t; as in ‘vital repairs’, or ‘vital omissions’. The delicate hidden subtext of the word ‘vital’, it that the user of the word is pumping-up something that he knows to be important to others, but not to himself!)
I have spent much of my life in politics working with colleagues, writing and thinking about how more people in our country can get good jobs, receive good education, and enjoy a better quality of life"
(This is a piece of trickery. To claim to be ‘thinking’ or ‘discussing’ or ‘writing’ about inequality really signifies a phoney posture, because Redwood knows full well that the present system of Private School and Oxbridge Entrance through nepotism is the British system of self-advancement. Redwood was at my old college, Magdalen, Oxford. He is an old-fashioned social climber, and seller of grandmothers. And so he is trying to disguise the real heart and core of all Conservative thinking, that ‘Conservatism promises to the many that which is reserved for the few! There is really no possibility that the great bulk of British people can get good jobs, receive good education and enjoy a better quality of life. All good jobs are reserved for the children of about seven percent of the population. Every new face on television is related to somebody who works there. Many of those blaggers hide their names and their family connections. If Redwood were to think seriously about inequality he would campaign for an end to inheritance, nepotism, Private Schools, unadvertised jobs in the city, royalty, House of Lords, honours system, and many more blocks to universal meritocracy, and the abandonment of advancement by family connection. The dark question to the heart of social and financial advancement, is that for poorer people to get better jobs, then the lame-brained children of the rich should be filtered out, and be required to take jobs in keeping with their lack of talent. We should be seeing more and more Private Schoolboys mowing the playing fields and hauling boxes of cauli at the market)
"Like all members of the main political parties I support taxing the rich more to help pay for the lifestyles of the worse off. I am a softy when it comes to more public money and facilities for the disabled"
(A cunning statement! It hinges upon the misleading idea of ‘taxing the rich more’. Clearly, he doesn’t mean ‘taxing the rich a lot more!’ And so he appears to be in support of raising the taxes of the rich a lot more, when, in fact, he means reducing the taxes of the rich so that their taxes are just a little bit more than those of poorer people!
He slips-in the troubling phrase, ‘pay for the life-styles of the worse-off’, -a statement that has a nasty edge to it, suggesting that the poor have lifestyles that they do not deserve. It implies that the rich have earned their lifestyles. It also implies that the poor have deliberately adopted a lifestyle of poverty and welfare, rather that face-up the truth that poverty is a deliberate Conservative goal, because the rich cannot remain rich unless the poor are secretly taxed upon their efforts by the dividends paid to the rich holders of stocks and shares and bonds. The stock market is a private right to tax the efforts of working people. And he ignores the fact that the poor are deliberately priced-out of houses, which are owned in clusters by the rich as investment vehicles.
Just look at that nasty little piece of trickery where hard-man Redwood, pretends to be a softy, but confines his softness to the deserving poor, such as the disabled, rather than the non-deserving poor, such as the forty million children, workers and pensioners)
"Harris says: "Too much of what [David Cameron] said sounded like a rehashed version of the kind of stuff the blessed Margaret uttered back in the 1980s, tangled up with the modern small-statism that runs from the shrill aspects of the press into the rightwing blogosphere." It is irritating beyond measure that some on the left automatically assume many of us that they brand as rightwing have no wish to see the poor prosper or to see equality narrow by raising the living standards of those worst off"
(Pull the other leg! Equality is about equal opportunity, not about the rich claiming that they have a natural right to their wealth, upon the deception that the rich have earned their wealth. And then to propose the economic nonsense that it is up to the many, many poor to drag themselves up by the bootstraps, when everybody knows that poverty is the result of deliberate manipulation of the Free Market by those in power. But there is more. It has been a question of history to ask why someone like Redwood, believed to have been raised in a Council House, should use all his intelligence and articulacy to become a lapdog to the trust fund trash of our nation? We have seen it within the Royal Courts of old, where a few cunning poor make themselves into toadies and flatterers, seeking preferment and reward)
"They should recognise that in many cases in UK mainstream political debate we do not disagree about the aim – we disagree about the means"
(Not true! It is dangerous for Conservatives to admit of the truth, that Conservatives know very well that the greatest fiction in politics is that the poor, without inheritance and family connections, can, somehow join the rich. Conservatives are like the owners of the fast horses, promising everybody else that they have a real chance in the race or life with their donkeys. Say it again, ‘Conservatives promise to the many that which is reserved for the few!)
"I know of no MP who likes poverty or thinks poverty does not matter. I know of no MP who thinks government should stand idly by and do nothing about poverty. I know of many who, after years of pushing public money at the problem, are asking how can we spend it better?"
(This statement is one of the great historical political pieces of deception. One must appear to be concerned about the poor, forgetting to mention that the poor not a troubled minority, but are the great majority, who work and suffer under a system that allows monumental tax-evasion; rampant wealth concealment, trust-funds outside taxing, trivial taxation on non-earned income, -
by making tax-avoidance a criminal offence, by preventing high-paid jobs being open only to family connections, and so forth. There are easy ways to relieve poverty; by taxing second and subsequent homes at 10% of their value annually; and by making nepotism a criminal offence. Redwood uses loaded language in suggesting that it is a waste of money to push money towards the problems of poverty. It is a matter of loose definition. All programs to alleviate poverty can usefully be described as ‘pushing-money’, and all withholding of programs can be described as ‘spending money more wisely’)
"Why are most of the new jobs going to recent arrivals in our country and not to those already here who are unemployed? Why do so many young people in well-financed, inner-city state schools fail to achieve much by way of qualifications?"
(The whole world knows the answer to these question, except John Redwood, who uses these questions as the rhetoric of blame of the poor. Eastern Europeans work in the UK because they are earning so much money compared to the old country, that they can go back and buy a house after a year. It is a matter of comparative income. While a student, I found I could work in California each long vacation and earn ten times the British salary. After three years, and upon coming down from Uni, I bought a thatched cottage, for cash! How come this blindingly obvious truth has escaped Redwood for so long? Wake-up, Redders! And so to the second question. British education is taught in received pronunciation, and is based upon a collection of Middle Class myths concerning knowledge and experience. The problem is not with the youngsters, is with the unrealistic, and pseudo-religious beliefs of teachers. It is a complex subject. Human Sub-Set Theory is discussed in my 1400-page book, Principia Humanitas.
The true debate lies not over the need to conquer poverty or to narrow extremes of income, but over a couple of important propositions.
(Yes it does! Here comes the flim-flam, justifying our nation, in which half a million rich,and their families, amounting to two million people, live a life of hereditary privilege)
"I do not believe you can make the poor rich by making the rich poor. The problem is the rich do not have to hang around if you seek to make them too poor. They have the best lawyers and accountants. They can go on strike when it comes to investing and developing businesses"
(What special pleading! Nobody is suggesting that you make the rich, poor! It is a straw-dog argument. We are suggesting that the rich should be stripped of their privileges of institutional tax evasion; untapped inheritance; nepotism; and so forth. And to suggest that the rich are untouchable owing to their lawyers and accountants is ridiculous.If they go on strike or leave the country, they should lose their nationality. The American way is to tax income from foreign earnings as if it were domestic earnings. The rich are hardly concerned with developing businesses. The sole business of the rich is to manage their wealth and to ignore society as a whole. You cannot say that royalty, or footballers, or celebs launching perfumes or a range of pricey kids clothing is a business! It is capitalising upon their names for unearned income)
"The second source of disagreement is the trickle-down theory. I believe that having more rich people and successful companies here in the UK does allow some of the income and wealth to circulate to the rest of us"
(Ridiculous! Posh Spice’s £800 handbag, or half-million pound watches, or Cartier presents have no part in trickle-down! The rich are consumers of luxury, not household goods; Ronald Reagan, in his simplicity, fell for this bogus trickle-down rubbish. It is a non-starter)
"We succeed in taking some tax off them; they employ armies of professional advisers, set up businesses and create jobs"
(Piffle! Redwood would have a better case if he had advocated more widespread burglary as a means of helping the poor through the trickle-down of stolen goods! Stolen wealth is stolen wealth, no matter how many benefit by it!)
"Mr Harris, do not peddle untruths. I care very much about poverty and life chances. That is why I like grammar schools, academies and other means of lifting educational standards"
(Scrapping Private Schools would do far more for equality of opportunity than spreading crumbs of Grammar School places)
"That is why I want to lower tax rates on effort and work. And that is why I urge people not to be jealous of the Premier League footballer, the pop star or the media personality who hits the big time and earns mega-bucks. It gives others something to aim for"
( Astonishing nonsense. It is like praising cancer because it reminds people to eat healthily! How, for example, can ordinary people become royalty, and have the molten wealth of the country poured down their throats? Obscene incomes have no justification. The activities of celebs and the super-rich act as a profound disincentive to working people. Why bother working, when the wealth of the country is handed-out on such spurious grounds. But the spectre of clever people becoming wealthy through sport, music or the media is a delicious red herring.
There is a cunning deception at the heart of Redwood’s plea to respect those made rich by their own talents? Did you spot the cracked logic behind it all?
Those who become wealthy by their own rare brilliance are a tiny minority in a country where the great wealth in terms of property and investments slide into the pockets of the younger generation according to family connection. Real ‘self-made men’ are a tiny minority in a nation of inheritors. Redwood hopes to bedazzle you by trailing the image of the footballer Beckham, or the brilliant singer, Adele, so that you forget to see that the nation’s wealth is really all about inheritance, from wealthy parents to worthless and useless offspring who make it their life’s work to manage and increase their wealth with the aid of a tribe of clever accountants.
Redwood’s piece is a masterpiece of political rhetoric; a tissue of half-truths and deceptive prevarication. And all the time a discerning reader can glimpse the utter greed and moral bankruptcy of those in power.
Those of us who are ashamed of our nation, whereby posh politicians pretend that wealthy people create wealth, or that deserving people become rich, or that the many poor benefit from the extravagant spending patterns of the rich, - those of us with a conscience, should attack the ‘wealth-creator’ lies with more vigour. The last word to a religious man, Niebuhr…… )
« Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.
....
If psychological and social scientists overestimate the possibilities of improving social relations by the development of intelligence, that may be regarded as an understandable naiveté of rationalists, who naturally incline to attribute too much power to reason and to recognise its limits too grudgingly. Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Whenever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise.
....
The men of power in modern industry would not, of course, capitulate simply because the social philosophy by which they justify their policies had been discredited. When power is robbed of the shining armour of political, moral and philosophical theories, by which it defends itself, it will fight on without armour; but it will be more vulnerable, and the strength of its enemies is increased. »
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man & Immoral Society
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