A friend tells me he is about to tell me a funny story. I want to tell him, “Just tell me the story…I ‘ll tell you if I find it funny or not,” but I haven’t the heart to do so.
Victimhood
Politicians of all stripes treat the electorate as babies.
Social security benefits are morphing into a malingerers’ slush fund. There are now millions of adults of working age – excluding students – out of work. Meanwhile, nearly a million vacancies are filled by hard-working immigrants.
Between a fifth and a quarter of the residents of Birmingham, Glasgow and Blackpool are living on out-of-work benefits. The majority, we must presume, are genuine cases, but with human nature being such as it is, of course the system is open to abuse. The malingerers are throwing away their lives, and wasting billions of taxpayers’ cash that could be spent on better things.
Politicians are dodging their duty to tighten the criteria for benefits eligibility for fear of being abused by the media. Anyone who dares to say what he or she thinks risks attracting a cacophony of noise from lobby groups/think tanks/quangos/commissioners/tsars, all poised to scream in self-righteous anger about persecution. Today, victimhood is all.
Get on Your Bike
Thatcher is of course history and sadly political courage died with her. Her doctrine of “Don’t accept being a victim, pull up your socks and get on with it” is long since forgotten. So too are her messages, “The state can’t solve all your problems, it’s your money they are spending, not theirs” and “Money doesn’t grow on trees”. And what happened to “Taxpayers would spend the cash far more wisely than HMG”?
In 13 years of Tory rule, the Iron Lady’s legacy has gone with the wind. The country is today more or less bankrupt, and self-reliance has become a dirty word. We are all victims now in the sense we are unable to tell the truth to ourselves about ourselves.
Former Tory MP James Daly was flayed when he said that struggling children in his constituency were not victims of insufficient money being spent on them by taxpayers but rather of “crap parenting”. His Labour rival responded by asserting that instead of insulting parenting skills, we would do better to face the fact that children in gangs or carrying knives have nothing to do with poor parenting and everything to do with a “failure to invest in public services”.
So now the claim is that parents have no real part to play in the crucial narrative of bringing up their own children, and our lives are shaped by forces beyond our control. The focus of shame has moved from the person doing something wrong to the person who has the gall to point it out! All problems, you see, are caused by government, and must be solved by it.
The person “left” teachers most love to hate is “Britain’s strictest headmistress”, Katharine Birbalsingh. Why? Because she is too “judgmental”. Yet intelligent teachers admit privately that poor grades are all too often about crap parenting. in an ordinary comp school, set in one of London’s most deprived areas, Birbalsingh proves it QED. By insisting on firm discipline and manners, she has produced every teacher’s dream – a silent and happy school that achieves top grades. “A school’s problems won’t be fixed by more money,” she claims, but by “better ideas, by tackling bad behaviour and reducing bureaucracy.”
Will she survive? I doubt it!
Straight to the Point…
Forget small talk. I like a good discussion about sex, money, politics, religion or death. Someone says something, then we discuss it and conclude (or not), possibly modifying our opinions along the way. As Bernard Shaw once said, “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
Sadly, a close friend is not open to changing her views. There’s no point discussing anything or introducing new ideas, for her mind is as closed as a clam.
Her prejudices encompass colonial history and empire (a thing of unalloyed beauty, no criticisms to be tolerated); apartheid (acceptable because pornography was banned); the monarchy (totally for); the EU (totally for – Cameron’s a dolt for the referendum, and the fact that all parties – including the LibDems – promised a referendum is conveniently forgotten); abortion and assisted dying (totally for); and gay partnerships (very much against, and this, apparently, is when the CoE moral rot started – once again, the fault of Cameron. That all free-world governments and their political parties support gay partnerships is overlooked).
No discussion on any of the above issues can be tolerated, for this lady’s iron-clad opinions are primed to be fired even before she opens her mouth. And if you dare to argue with her, she stomps away, quivering with righteous indignation.
Why is she so submerged in “confirmation bias” that she rejects any discussion that might conflict with her embalmed views? I suspect her aggression is down to fear – she runs scared that debate would require her to think. Intellectually lazy, she has simply closed her mind. Her fixed views are water wings – without them, she’s terrified she might drown.
Lots of people are like this. Sad really.
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