by Captain Flash on Wed May 04, 2005 12:15 pm
Quoting Maddog20/20 above: "As human beings we have an obligation to help those worse off and LESS CAPABLE than ourselves. Do you think it is really fair for Chantelle in Dundee to live in a shithole just because she's not as bright as you?
The reality is that a lot of people at the bottom rung of the ladder are trying hard to get by, and need all the help they can get just to survive...There are a lot of things I despise about capitilism, but perhaps the worst is the way that I can expect my income to be based more or less on my market worth to the economy. Let's assume I take up a job in the city. Why do I deserve to live a life of luxury while nice little Chantelle, who is breaking her back working double shifts in Tesco just so she can afford to feed her weans with a sausage supper, is imprisoned in a council flat that she can't afford to heat?"
Firstly people only have an obligation to help those who make an effort. Being "LESS CAPABLE" in the workplace can only mean that Cahntelle doesn't do her job properly and bums around. Almost all jobs in the modern world are not complicated though they may involve long hours. If you are referring to "LESS CAPABLE" as in less capable at school, I know
a number of ex-public school boys
who have academically underachieved and who will not live the life to which they are accustomed or expect. Should we support them financially to ease our concience? or let them have financially average but no doubt perfectly decent and comfortable life? Returning to Chantelle, her "Shithole", which , maddog, you have never visited, is probably a cosy flat made so by herself, which even without income support or benefit, she would be able to furnish easily by getting togethe r with her friends and starting up some sort
of venture which would keep her afloat. You forget that in a market economy without state benefits everyone AUTOMATICALLY has jobs because the law of supply and demand says so. Look at Russia (I have just spent 11 months
there), where there is no unemployment AT ALL(because you would freeze to death)
when you include the informal economy.But because everyone works no one starves, everyone has a place to live, and the only people left out
are the pensionners who cannot work ( I am sure that even the most unelectable of Tory parties would happily support Britain's pensionners though, unlike in Russia). The population is also proud, because it works, unlike under the socialist/communist regime where everyone felt worthless and took it out on their neighbour.
Maddog, your definition of a "shithole" is somewhere that Chantelle has taken great care to do up and is probably something that she is proud of. The area she lives in is the area she has grown up in (Chantelle rarely moves), and where all her social life, favourite pubs and friends are. DO NOT JUDGE HER BY YOUR MIDDLE CLASS VALUES. Her life isn't shit or unhappy just because you look down on it. Perhaps this is the crux of the matter, there is a myth among some our middle class here in britain which sustains the Labour/Lib-dem movement and stops us from returning to a Tory/Liberal(as in "whig") political debate, and that is that a person who is poorer than average (note: poverty is a relative concept and so cannot be irradicated: A has less money than B so A is poorer than B so "poverty" exists) is unhappy and has a miserable and demeaning life. Hand in hand with this is the silly idea that a person who has a hard life (one with a lot a work) is unhappy. These two, particularly the
first (poor = unhappy) is categorically untrue. I have been to the back of beyond in
China, in Nepal, in Turkey, in Uzbekistan, over the last ten years (in each place for more than two weeks) and in some of the poorest areas I have seen the most contented people. Uzbekistan amazed me by the contented nature of its population (this was in 1995 before most of the troubles, and their peasantry struck me as being happier than us ), in towns such as Bokhara (and its rural outskirts). Yet by
all definitions these people were poor and without safety net. The problem is, to turn the maddog's point on its head, that a cocooned middle class in Britain has built up these strange socialist notions and perpetuates them as enlightened truth when they are complete rubbish and damage our country. Finally, regarding mad dog's talk of jobs in the City of London: jobs in the
city are not a walk over and you will work far more hours than anyone else. My dad's place in the city has a doctor, a dentist, and several restaurants in the building to stop people from going out and becoming unproductive. Where are the Mills you speak of? In the City of London. Vote Tory, they don't make a living out of creating myths.
