Apparently, Gordon says
"it is time to adapt and rethink New Labour"policy. Presumably, that doesn't include the policy of retaining him as PM, sadly. Or, indeed, the policy of New Labour remaining in Government and not standing aside to make way for a party that has popular support.
Gordon said there was a
"need to forge a new kind of government... to rise to conquer these challenges".Would that be a kind of government that ... doesn't include him?
Sadly, that looks unlikely, as he also said:
"We need to be honest with ourselves: while poverty has been reduced and the rise in inequality halted, social mobility has not improved in Britain as we would have wanted"
... which just goes to prove that the "new" ideas will just be more of the same. New Labour cannot understand that social mobility comes from equal access to opportunity. It does not come from confiscatory policies designed to take from those who suceed in upward mobility in order to fund a prescriptive nannying state aimed at trapping the less mobile in their poor, wretched, Labour-voting sink estates (sorry, I don't mean sink estates, I mean thriving publicly-provided local social communities).
And how can you possibly claim that "poverty has been reduced" and "the rise in inequality halted" in the same sentence that you admit "social mobility has not improved"?? Social mobility is the means by which poverty is reduced, the process through which inequality is alleviated. Admit it Gordon, you are either stupid or mendacious. Or, I suppose, both.
Now, as the son of a single parent who grew up on the top floor of a Midlands council high-rise, only to pass the 11+, get a decent education, go to Cambridge, qualify in a profession, work up to partnership level and run the firm, it has been blindingly obvious to me since about the age of 14 that if you want people to rise above the station of their birth, you do so by a meritocratic system in which you reward sucess, offer a good education to anyone willing to receive it, and provide compassion (& a basic level of financial support) to those who are not currently able to support themselves. Otherwise, you (i.e. HMG) leave well alone.
It therefore depresses me, frankly, that we still have to debate this. It is 2008; the Berlin Wall fell over a decade ago. In 1979, I was the age that my son is now - i.e. Thatcherism was literally a generation ago. All the evidence has shown, again and again, that redistributive socialism is an abject failure. Yet here we are, debating this basic, trivial, schoolboy politics.
And we will have to continue doing so until May 2010. If ever there was a thought that makes revolution seem a tempting prospect, it's that one.
Having a debate today about the new proposals to restrict smoking in the home for adults with children.
ReplyDeleteWhilst many on the committee agree it is unenforceable, many more think it should be done to show that something is being done, or that smoking in the home is frowned upon by the state.
"what's the point?" I asked. You cannot police it, you cannot control it? you can't enforce it. Surely making fags £25 a pack will solve the problem if you want it too, without need for new laws?"
"That would be politically unacceptable"
And here is the root of nannying.
HMG shows it feels strongly about something by making up a vacuous policy about it. Then,almost inadvertently, it now becomes responsible for controlling that policy, removing the individual from the equation almost by accident.
My remark, "surely this is the parents responsibility, if we are worried by childhood second hand smoke? " was met by cautious silence.
"are we going to stop drinking in the home too? This is a major cause of abuse too ?"
ermm no.
Our remit is just to tackle smoking at home.
"But we aren't tackling it are we? We are just saying its not a good idea. There are already tv adverts doing that now."
Exactly..that's why we need to investigate this matter.
{and round and round it went}