"1. Well, I have certain guiding principles, namely Freedom, Equality and Fairness. You can put them in any order you like because no one is more important than the other. If you fetishise one thing, you end up in a bad place. Treating everyone equally when their needs are different, isn't fair, but few of us are likely to say that we should set out to create inequality. Freedom is essential, 2. but when it's freedom to continue being unfair, it simply entrenches privilege which in turn promotes inequality. So we have to navigate a way forward that honours all three principles. We're never going to agree on the precise route, but if we agree that we want a society in which people are relatively free, that has low levels of inequality & in which people experience fairness, we're all going to have to talk about how that might be best achieved. It requires understanding and compromise. It requires tolerance, and ironically a determination to not tolerate intolerance. And it is likely to work best when we're prepared to look at the facts, at the evidence, and go with what works best for the common good. Unfortunately, what I see of US politics, and 3. much of the politics here in the UK, is politicians who really don't give a shit about the common good, compromise and tolerance, but who are set on self-aggrandisement and self-interest (usually monetary self-interest), and imposing their ideas on others. The answer is to elect better politicians, but given the money involved in politics, and where power currently resides, our choices are likely to be limited. "
Bill,
1. That reads very well, but what the hell is fairness and, just as awkwardly, what equality?
These are socialist mantras I have heard since I became aware of political differences, but nobody I've asked has ever come up with a watertight explanation. There isn't one: these are all concepts that apply to games, to entities/workplaces with set rules and to competitive sports. These have no real application to the vastly more difficult and complex matter of life and making one's way through it.
I have no idea of how you earn your crust, but should you ever have run a business you wouldn't believe in these things as holy grails, because you'd have understood from the first day that no such guidelines exist in the real world of earning an independent living. There is no 'fair', there has never been 'equality'; these are daydreams that simply distract one from the grim reality that it life. If the working life consists of turning up, clocking a card at seven-thirty in the morning and later clocking back in after lunch (I'd done that for years before I left industry) then yes, you will have a strange, conditioned expectation that life runs - or should run - by the clock set, if not by your employer then by your favourite colour of government. Even if it were possible to force all of humanity to live by factory rules, you'd not have achieved any imaginary fairness: the foreman would always earn more than the drudge making the tea or the other one just turning out the widgets as he dreams of the holiday season. Neither would your notion of equality be any the more fulfilled by this, for the faster guy would produce more cash-value widgets per shift than you can, and as for freedom, hey, you left that at the factory gates and sold your soul to the shop steward when you joined the union which was perhaps compulsory in the first place, though such requirements are less common than they were.
2. What do you mean by privilege? The dictionary offers one little group of meanings, but in common political parlance it's used to mean something quite else; in fact, that's being generous: it's really used to imply, to suggest some unspoken and guilty reason or factor that lends one person more success than another. The truth is that success comes from a million different factors, and is seldom based simply on some measureable quantity/quality of ability. It can be as much about your accent, your religion, your schoool, university or even on whether you have bad teeth or, worse, bad breath. Be a woman, and these things are multiplied many times over. Is that fair? What the hell is fair, I have to ask again; it's what it is and what it will always be: human interaction and reaction: do people just like to be around you? Twenty pretty girls turn up at a casting, only one will get the gig. I've had to do that many times, and I truly feel sorry for them, far more sorry than, it turns out, do they feel for themselves; on asking the 'chosen one' when out on trip with her, she said: we do several of these castings a day, sometimes; it's not getting called to the casting that's the problem, the fear. We all know there's only room for one or, perhaps, two on the actual gig.
So why pìck that one? They pretty all much all look equally good, but one may have a better 'book' to prove she has mileage, and that's vital for confidence: you want pictures from her, not a roll in the hay. Your client won't pay you for you to have your jollies, and won't pay you at all if the work sucks! Get confused over that and you won't last long.
So, does the top model create inequality? I use model as example because I know how that used to work; I guess you can interchange her with any other trade or business where personal characteristics come into play. Should all models be kicked out of work because the rest of the women may not match them for looks? (There are many pretty women around who wouldn't dream of doing what models have to do.) Political correctness would seem to suggest so; discrimination against beauty, then.
3. Yes, and seldom has it been more obvious than in the way coats were turned over the Brexit mess. In fact, Cameron, to me, ended up being the most honest of them all: he fell upon his sword. The rest are shameless.
Money resides in all sorts of strange nooks; there are millionaire Socialist benefactors as there are Conservative ones; unions have an obvious agenda and it's not even hidden: they think it perfectly right that a collection of workmen, uncouth union officials, unemployed and unemployables should call the shots from Downing Street and represent Britain on the world stage; the people working for the 'state' are more than willing - usually - to vote for anyone at all who preaches the sanctity, untouchability and pretty pensions of public sector employees; no wonder that so few gave a shit about what was going to happen to the City and all that that means to the economy; borders in N. Ireland? Who cares? Let them all try to kill one another off again; northern, rust-belt Jack's all right! He hopes.
Do you think perhaps that the public sector heroes make for better managers of, and ambassadors for Britain than those with great backgrounds, wonderful breeding and worldwide connections of influence that can be used to British benefit? Yes, I'm sure there would be many fortunes enhanced en route, but at least the fucking train hauling us all behind it would be leaving the station! As it is, I fear we'll end up rusted to the tracks in some old shed somewhere.
But Mr Trump. We do not seem to have anyone remotely as schizophrenic in UK politics - all of ours seem to fly a single party (theirs) flag to which they pretty much adhere. The odd clement gesture is made to the other groupings at some stages, but all in all, you know where you stand with them and their beliefs - or you did, until the Scot Nats and then Brexit! That changed everything, and created a nation of headless chickens.
Rob
