They're not stupid... they're just not well

It is generally understood that determined conspiracy theorists  and left-wingers are quick to imagine a causal link between their shitty lives and a legion of dark forces ranged against them. Now a new study proves that it is all Thatcher’s fault! Actually that may not be true – I couldn’t be bothered to read all of it but apparently self-control yourself is less common in left-wingers than conservatives. The authors of the report found those on the right are more likely to believe they have free will and the power to change things. Like all ‘ground-breaking’ studies, this is a statement of the bleeding obvious. We've been here before of course, the left’s fantasy world being a source of some amusement to me. 

But it’s all quite simple really, this business of failure or success, dependence or liberty. In former times, parents who worked hard instilled basic, solid values in their offspring who went to junior school, passed the eleven-plus and took their work ethic off to grammar school. This possibility was open to all with the determination and those few who were able earned coveted places at decent provincial universities. From there they progressed in their solid, if unspectacular careers, stuck at it because that is what you did and eventually retired, mortgage-free to a comfortable cottage in the country.

Meanwhile their children, from a higher starting place, were urged to work even harder and make it to Oxbridge, where they made contacts, got better career advice and went into professional jobs, earned huge salaries, set up companies, employed people and earned even bigger salaries and were semi-retired almost before their parents were, passing on their businesses in turn to their own kids. Patience, hard work, aiming for the longer goal and thriving as a result; nothing sinister or unnatural about any of that. But the left, unable to grasp the rules of this more complex play and favouring some magical egalitarian outcome, dug up the road that made it possible.

Now, to get that better, more reliable education, well-to-do parents opt to send their children to private schools. In theory this should be a good thing; paying taxes yet paying again for non-state services and on top of that, freeing up places in those grammar schools for the kids from less affluent families. D’oh, silly me, the grammar school system is the very crutch they kicked away. Competition? Rigour? Oh no, you can’t expose the wee darlings to the harsh realities of life; better keep them closeted from the need to excel for as long as possible. Yet somehow the left closing down of the principal route to a better life for working class kids is some form of evil Tory plot to keep the masses down?

The left hate anybody freeing themselves from the shackles of state provision because this is seen as typical Tories looking after their own. Where were you, they ask, when Johnny needed rescuing from his abusive parents in that hell-hole sink estate? Where were you when ‘we’ were dividing up your taxes to help those we made poor? Where were you when the marches for equality were going on? Oh yes, helping yourself to the fat pile of magic state cash we have convinced ourselves was somehow stolen from ‘the most vulnerable in society’.

A Labour think tank considers their next move.

It’s little wonder the left are so quick to stamp and scream; with their bizarre logic driven almost entirely by bitter emotional responses to the negative outcomes their own redistributive policies bring about. Legalised equality stifles competition, extinguishes initiative and makes everybody poorer. In the twisted minds of the ‘progressives’ this is preferable to anybody getting ahead. The report ends with the line “Previous research has found that people who suffer from conditions they cannot control – such as epilepsy and panic disorder - are less likely to believe in free will than others.” If I had the reasoning powers of a lefty I’d have to conclude they are suggesting socialism is a form of illness.