The Angry Mob

The Benefits Street argument just won’t go away. But the unassailable fact is that some people are simply worth less than other human beings… and some of them do quite well for themselves. There are crooked lawyers, coppers, businessmen, sportsmen, entertainers and politicians – you don’t have to be broke to be bent – it’s human nature to grab the opportunities and it takes a lot of training to overcome the temptation.

But it seems there are good crooks and bad crooks. When some ‘loveable rogue’ hijacks the welfare system to live off the labours of others, anybody daring to condemn them is howled down by a chorus of righteous leftie frenzy, yet when it’s an elected official legally claiming expenses or a high earner legally avoiding tax the same mob turns on them instead of their persecutors. Tell me, are there different versions of legal depending on your social status? It’s always seemed that way, but this is the reverse of the traditional ‘them and us’ divide.

On the one hand, some hold that there is no such thing as the undeserving poor – everybody is equally wonderful – but on the other, there is such a thing as undeserving rich. I believe we are mining a very rich seam of hypocrisy here, where it’s fine for Polly Toynbee to be paid much more than most people for writing about the heinous inequity whereby some people’s labours are worth less than others. And it’s fine for millionaire career politicians to dishonestly lay claim to a humble start because they say they speak for the ‘most vulnerable in society’, but it is not okay for other millionaire politicians to accept their good fortune without apology?

Owen Jones repeatedly bemoans the lazy stereotyping and ‘demonisation’ of the Chav – a creature we all recognise as one of questionable values, low education, poor taste and minimal social merit – who contributes little if anything to the sum national worth. But it’s absolutely okay for wee Owen to simultaneously repeat the lazy stereotype of Tory Toff, whose (admittedly enviable) privilege rarely costs the country a penny.

It’s a real conundrum for Labour and the left; how to plough the equality furrow without straying into the politics of hate and envy. Some, indeed, are more equal than others. But Labour long ago lost their working man ethics and are desperate to re-establish any credentials to support their repeated but false assertions that they are champions of the poor. All of which made Prime Minister’s Questions a tricky obstacle course for Ed Miliband yesterday – he had to steer clear of the economy and employment pretty much altogether. And as for Ed Balls, Labour’s front bench Rottweiler remained firmly muzzled as he has been for weeks.

What a shame that the righteous indignation of the left allows them to give no quarter to a supposed enemy – anybody doing what they see as their job. For all the hatred Iain Duncan Smith attracts, for all the brickbats lobbed at him daily, his is the one mission, throughout the whole system of British politics that Labour should be backing to the hilt. Getting people back to work? Ending automatic, lifelong benefit dependency? Attempting to lift people out of the poverty of both mind and pocket? How dare he?

Labour - So angry they could throw the phone down.

And – the horror – what if he succeeds? What if aspiration and self-reliance make a comeback? Will Labour just have to hate everybody then? Or will they just do what they’ve done for almost four years - stamp their feet and jump up and down like a demented little Mr Angry… from Purley?

Exterminate?

In Davos, a bunch of jokers who believe, or at least proclaim, that they represent the populations of the First World are meeting to discuss… what, exactly? What conclusions have they pre-planned to arrive at and what decisions will be made which will affect us all, yet have no basis in anything remotely linked to democracy? In fact how many of the world’s ‘leading’ countries can even lay claim to the dubious distinction of being truly democratic?

Following the current LibDem determination to tear themselves apart over the Lord Rennard debacle, former leader Paddy ‘PantsDown’ Ashdown, without a hint of irony, spoke about how ‘the people’ MUST conform to the ‘new standards’ of morality and acceptable behaviour. The people yes, but obviously not the politicians who routinely behave in ways that reveal their susceptibility to the most base of human frailties – greed and lust feature high on an MP’s CV. Surely people in public office should be held to higher standards first?

Labour talk the talk about being the party of the working class… or is it the middle class now? They talk tough on welfare and making work… er work, yet they oppose every measure the coalition has introduced in order to do just that. But this self-proclaimed Party of the People is so far removed from those same people as to be indistinguishable from any other mob in Westminster. While some of its lowly and increasingly elderly back benchers are grounded in the honourable Labour Movement, the glorious leaders have eyes only for power and the prizes power brings – an invitation to Davos, perhaps?

Meanwhile the Conservatives, long supporters of the wealth producers, seek to remain firmly in the wealth confiscating European Union, approval to join which has never been asked of the British people. Even now, reminiscent of the worst kind of conjuring trick, they hope to fool the people into believing a referendum will both be offered and fought on a level field, while the fifth ace is clumsily sticking out of their sleeve. David Cameron must barely be able to contain his glee at the charade of the private members bill, currently being timed out by the supposed opposition tabling a litany of amendments whose transparently flimsy nature oversteps the border of contempt.

What not one of the established parties has is a valid and representative view of the bulk of the people they seek to control. In fact what most people want from government is not interference in the minutiae of their every waking moment, but the freedom to get on and follow their own paths. The last thing happy people living fulfilling lives are interested in is politics. As more and more freedoms are curtailed and behaviours proscribed, even “the government must do something” is more an expression of impotent frustration than any genuine desire for more top-down interference.

Left to their own devices most of the population will sort themselves out. The only state involvement they need or want is light touch regulation and a bit of law and order. But the group that actively need government are the only ones they tend to squabble over. What a shame then that those people most reliant on the state understand and trust authority about as much as they understand and trust joined-up meat. All they want is bland, Turkey-Twizzler dole-dispensers who will maintain their lifestyles regardless of what it costs everybody else.

On all sides the out-of-touch ‘liberal’ types rail against ‘demonisation’ of those wholly on benefits and say to all who listen that they want nothing more than to be in work, that they need our sympathy and support to become productive members of society. But ask anybody who lives on a large council estate and they will point out the criminals, the idle, the dossers and those who pop out sprogs as if they didn’t know how to stop it. The only thing they want is to be left alone with their benefits.

Which way to the conference?

So, while the political classes squabble over the small number of people who need their charity but won’t vote, the largely uncomplaining majority work on, wondering just when a politician, any politician, will say a single thing to suggest that they understand. When Davos concludes that what the world needs now is love, sweet love, more wind turbines and more EU-style ‘democracy’ it might be helpful to remember that politicians on the whole represent nobody but themselves.

Keep it simple, stupid!

Be nice, they say, be kind. I don’t doubt that those who have “Save our NHS” and “Fight the cuts” in their Twitter bio, usually accompanied by a string of hashtags trumpeting those causes and rendering said bio meaningless and all but unreadable actually believe… er, something. Twitter abounds with these noble folk, fighting the cause of ‘social justice’ from their council flats and old folks’ bungalows. Some of them, no doubt, are actual activists getting out and about to help in their local community. The majority, however, are simple keepers of the absurd and contradictory faiths of various forms of leftism.

But the simple facts of life are these: However you do it – inheritance, investment, business owner or employee: tinker, tailor, soldier, baker, rich man, poor man, welfare-taker  – you need to make a living. If you are poorly educated (blame who you like) and have grown up with a hatred of any kind of authority and have never been pushed, or mentored, to rely on yourself and if you are so inclined, there is a living to be made on the Old King Cole. The dole was never intended as a choice – it was a stop-gap measure, a genuine handout – to keep you alive between jobs. Because (and this is a basic human truth) nobody owes you a living. There are in fact no such things as ‘natural’ human rights. In nature, he who survives, wins.

Keep. It. Simple. That’s the key to success; all the best ideas have resulted from repeating simple formulae that work. The most complex systems are amalgamations of essentially simple, if numerous, principles. The biggest buildings are just pretty piles of bricks. To the socialists you’re just a brick; everybody is. Even the Prime Minister is just an enormous brick. So, to the ‘caring’ left we’re all better as bricks in a wall; as part of the great big human machine.

But somewhere, through a succession of administrations struggling to look effective, it became expedient to hide from sight those making no contribution to holding up the wall and set them adrift on a raft of welfare payments designed to conceal the truth and present a positive spin to the world… and to the dwindling turnout of voters. Some bricks are less equal than others. Of course, any metaphor runs out of steam at some point and I reckon we’ve reached it with the bricks, but you get my point. When we had the means to do it, it was simply cheaper to keep you doped up and docile, courtesy of the state, than to pay the ruinous cost of training you and containing you and creating work you were capable of. But now, after several generations, it is uncertain whether some of you will ever be capable of making your own living. What’s to be done?

Well the simple truth is that no politician, whatever their colour, wants anybody to suffer or die. In fact every politician would be delighted if everybody could be happy and rich. That is an absolute given. Anybody who believes otherwise should take a long, hard look at themselves, because they have fallen for a line of unhelpful propaganda. Both ‘sides’ want health and prosperity for all; they only differ in how to achieve it.

On the so-called right the belief is that everybody has the responsibility to make their own living, by any legal means and if we do so there should be enough left over to prop up the halt and lame when they need it. On the so-called left... well where do we start? Flying in the face of all evidence is the equality agenda, with its outright fictions about the parity of ‘worth’ of individuals. Then we have the potentially contradictory notion of diversity, making us all equally differentiated from everybody else, while maintaining the lie of equality. Then we have the absurd notion of a complex system of taxing you, giving you some back through tax credits and then giving you certain benefits and subsidies whether you need them or not.

On the right the exercise of choice seems fair – you can choose to use the schools, hospitals, housing, etc. that you wish and if you can afford to pay for it you can have the best. To the left, however, such privilege is seen as ugly and elitist and downright unfair, so everybody must use the services provided by the state. If, as they maintain, there is plenty of wealth to go around, these provisions would be the equal of anything the private sector has to offer, but as the news daily reveals the sacred NHS appears to be killing with its over-supply of caring kindness. And state schools have been under-educating for generations.

Today’s biggest news item is the ‘national crisis’ of obesity. It's an enormous problem, apparently. To the right it is a simple case of personal responsibility and a balance between eating and exercising. To the left, obesity is a modern-day ill, caused by a complex and impossibly intertwined set of influences for which costly science alone can provide an answer. The state must spend ever dwindling funds to deal with the issues of body image, life chances and the damage to self-esteem with consequent cost to the nation of these valuable human resources. Odd though, how when very little food was available the entire nation was slim. (Maybe we should get rid of those evil food banks?)

The good life?

It seems to me that whatever you think of left or right it is entirely up to you to make your own living with what wits you have. While you are wondering whether to opt for the simplicity of self-reliance or the complexity of the nanny state you might, by way of research, want to watch Benefits Street tonight and ask yourself if that’s what you really want.