Why aren't we more angry? Why isn't blood running, metaphorically at least, in the streets?Because we're not all bitter socialists. Next!
But top pay also suggests political failure, particularly on the left. To put it crudely, why can't leftwing parties harness middle-class anger against the super-rich?Because you can never win (for long) with spite and envy. Next!
Oh, he's all finished with the questions, and on to the statements of fact:
Ah, yes! Ed Miliband! Well, there's another answer to your second question, Peter, eh..?
This generation of the middle classes has internalised the values of individualist aspiration, as zealously propagated by Tony Blair as by Margaret Thatcher. It does not look to the application of social justice to improve its lot. It expects to rely on its own efforts to get ahead and, crucially, to maintain its position.*GASP* How awful...
But as the super-rich stretch further ahead, appropriating, with the assistance of a Conservative-led government, ever increasing proportions of national resources, Ed Miliband and Labour have the opportunity to build a new cross-class consensus for a more equal society.
Could he possibly be smarting more than just a little, at the news that only two people have made private donations to the Labour Party ?
ReplyDeleteA Mr Alastair Campbell .. and some other dork ..
"But as the super-rich stretch further ahead, appropriating, with the assistance of a Conservative-led government, ever increasing proportions of national resources,"
ReplyDeleteIn the same way that Bill Gates 'appropriated' Microsoft I suppose.
I didn't have to mouse over the URL for that article to see it came from the Graun. Once I clicked over, I was struck by the thought "Why do the people in the little mugshots at the top of these articles always look so insufferably smug?"
ReplyDeleteThe true socialist drives her Volvo to her holiday home in Wales. This forms the mindset that can read the Groaniad without blushing. Paying the taxes we do to Microsoft ain't the answer either. In the middle of the road, we get run over trusting Nick.
ReplyDeleteCameron now sounds more like Blair than the Bliar himself - I'll soon be demanding to see them both in the same room at the same time. Osbsourne is a real piece of work, though has clearly never done a day's.
Economics is dud, whether socialist or not - I wonder when this will dawn?
Have to agree on the 'smug' Simon. These are people who wouldn't get it with the red hot poker well up their nether regions. My guess is our public world is dominated by psychopaths. Mugshots of the ones I nicked could easily replace the Grauniad's.
ReplyDelete""It does not look to the application of social justice to improve its lot. It expects to rely on its own efforts to get ahead and, crucially, to maintain its position.""
ReplyDeleteWell slap my thigh! I do that!
Why? Because we don't give a fuck about the 'super-rich', if Elton John makes an extra £30m next year so what?
ReplyDeleteButwe DO know socialists, and we know the disaster they always cause. Their "collective action" (government coercion) is always AGAINST us, not for us.
We loathe you because yes, you are bitter, twisted hypocrites with no positive vision, but mostly because you'll fuck us all over first chance you get.
The equal society?
ReplyDeleteWould those be the ones we hear about around the world packed with leaders who tell lies, populated at the top by the hypocritical selfish while championing murder and repression of their own downtrodden peoples, and all the while supported from afar by weak-willed sycophants and intellectual pygmies?
Or is the one populated with envious lunatic fringes, where so-called green issues ensure that the devious and blubbering grow wealthy at everyone else's expense, where misplaced idealism crushes opportunity, slavish adherence to increasing taxation and stifling regulation inhibits the creation of wealth, where feeble-minded professors demand empty-headed students must believe that life is sweeter in some grim outpost of non-civilisation, where the MSM is supine and cowardly, and where the mostly idle but always chattering politicians line their own nest as they impose an unwanted multi-culti blanket over those who cannot fly off as they can?
I think we should be told which equal society is best before I can decide to join.
Yeah, just look at the superior pug on our communist-columnist.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it just begging for a slap?
...with the assistance of a Conservative-led government...
ReplyDeleteConservative-led? The idiot thinks we have a Conservative-led government?
Ahah hah hah hah hah hah!
"Could he possibly be smarting more than just a little, at the news that only two people have made private donations to the Labour Party ?"
ReplyDeleteYes, it's in a bit of trouble, isn't it. Proving they don't run their own financial affairs any better...
"...I was struck by the thought "Why do the people in the little mugshots at the top of these articles always look so insufferably smug?""
Wilby in particular always looks supercilious.
"My guess is our public world is dominated by psychopaths. Mugshots of the ones I nicked could easily replace the Grauniad's."
All that's missing is the numbers.
"Conservative-led? The idiot thinks we have a Conservative-led government?"
To the CiF columnists, and a fair few of the regular commenters, yes, this government is Maggie Thatcher Part Two. That kind of stupidity should be bottled for posterity....
Well Mr Wilby, to take one practical example...
ReplyDeleteSocialist East Germany produced the Trabant. Occasionally.
Capitalist West Germany produced Audis, VWs, Mercedes and BMWs.
What's not to like about socialism ?