Peter James wrote:Keith S is correct about fairness. As long it is about fairness not envying people who work hard and get rewarded for working hard.
I am sure Comrades Bishop and Granny Slater will not agree because they are too wrapped up their neoliberalism crap and comparing 2017 Britain to the workhouse, kids up the chimneys victoriana. The fact is if you don't work, won't work because you are a drug user or an alcoholic you get paid by the state with housing benefit and other benefits in 2017.In Victorian times you starve and were homeless without a outreach officer from Porchlight helping to fill in the appropriate forms.
I will say that I have concerns about Our NHS ,lack of affordable housing and overcrowding in our schools but my concerns are real and not a political vehicle or bandwagon to jump on.I have been concerned since the 1960s about the NHS being used as political football by all the parties.The Tories under Major brought in Private Finance Initiatives and Labour under Blair/Brown from 1997 to 2010 installed 221 NHS PFIs.
Now I await for the resident Corbynistas to call me an apologist for Austerity or even worse a Tory Fascist.
PJ, I’m afraid I need to disabuse you: I’m not a ‘Corbynista’ (though I’m not even sure what that means: does it include anyone who voted for the Labour Party at the recent election?). So you can remove me from that 'political bandwagon'. But, if that’s intended as an insult, and it makes you feel better, then I’ll take it. (And, by the way, I’m happy to take any others from anyone who feels he or she may derive some therapeutic value or cathartic release from the expressing of it, or if he or she believes it advances political discourse).
As for ‘neoliberal crap’, well, yes it is isn’t it? Crap, that is. I mean, the neoliberal direction of government policy since 1979 (i.e. privatisation, deregulation, austerity, public spending squeezes…) with its accompanying social and economic injustices, and it should be booted back into the 19th century whence it came. What's more, my objections do not arise from 'envy': they are ideological, not personal. Fairness is impossible within it.