Excellent post by Alan_F at RAWK:
How can we just "move on"? We are sitting at a crossroads and need to decide which direction we want to go. "Moving on" at the moment will just take us further down the road we have been travelling since the experiments in social engineering of the Thatcher era that created the mess we are in now.
The problem we face (we being the bleeding-heart liberals who give a flying feck about everyone in society) is that the social engineering of the eighties was calculated and very effective. I started going through how and why they did the things they did but I've done it elsewhere and all that matters is where we are now.
The end result was to emasculate manufacturing industry and re-focus on service industries. Most importantly, there was a conscious calculation to ignore or discount anyone that "didn't matter" ie didn't or couldn't be persuaded to vote Conservative.
That was coupled with policies that were calculated to change people's relationship with society from one based on a combination of security, social, moral and economic factors to one based almost entirely on personal economic factors and security. Council house buying, personal share-ownership, privatisation of basic services, selling off pensions, etc. - all sold under the guise of empowerment and choice have instead created a voting population more likely to make selfish rather than 'social' decisions.
And it wasn't just manufacturing - the public service unions were treated in a slightly different way. They couldn't completely destroy public services (though many would have loved to) so they set about undermining and devaluing the people who worked in them - ambulance drivers were 'just professional drivers' according to Ken Clarke.
'Security' is one of the most insidious - create a nervousness about immigration and the 'other'. Not so much policy as propaganda. Mention the problem of immigration at every opportunity whether there's a problem or not. Of course, some of their best friends were and are black - David Cameron even met a black man in Plymouth during the election campaign - and they aren't bigots but... you know... 'they' are coming over here taking your jobs... if yote Tory we'll keep 'them' out. We won't say it openly but come on, you know where we stand... wink, wink...
And security isn't only about immigration, it's also about the 'other other' - the feckless poor, the underclass... As Peter Lilley (then Secretary of States for the Department of Social Security) sang to the Tory party conference in 1992:
I've got a little list
Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out
And who never would be missed
They never would be missed.
There's those who make up bogus claims
In half a dozen names
And councillors who draw the dole
To run left-wing campaigns
They never would be missed
They never would be missed.
Young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing queue
And dads who won't support the kids
of ladies they have ... kissed
And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists
I've got them on my list
And there's none of them be missed
There's none of them be missed.
Oh how we laughed...
Make no mistake - the Tories despise the poor, the downtrodden and the feck-ups who can't make their way in the world. They are there to be demonised and to distract us from the real issues. No-one gives a feck about them and those that do are pinko bleeding-heart-liberals. If they can be used to turn a buck through Rackmanism, extortionate money-lending and the like then all's well and good but as long as they don't vote and stay in their place they can and will be ignored.
And let's not forget "choice" - the best trick the devil ever pulled was to give us all the "choice to..." instead of the "right to...". So instead of us all having the right to a decent school in our neighbourhood, we have the "choice" to send our kids to the school of our choice, except we don't do we. We have the ridiculous postcode dance where parents move house to try and get their kids into a decent school. We don't have the right to demand the government provides good schooling all. No it's our choices that allow schools to fail (and for the schools to be sold off to education conglomerates to be turned into Academies)... We can 'choose' the hospitals we go to. Sorry but if I'm sick I want the hospital that's closest to me to provide the same basic level of care that all the others do. No problem with their being centres of excellence but health should be a basic right.
But I forgot... "rights" are bad things... and "fundamental human rights" are the fecking worst. "Rights" just breed a "sense of entitlement" and "lack of ambition" they stop employers making excessive profits by paying shit wages, they cost us a few quid in taxes by paying for the basic welfare needs of the unemployed, the sick and disabled, they allow asylum seekers and Eastern Europeans to come over here and sponge off the state...
And so on, and so on...
And that's where we are.
They did their job well, you have to credit them for that. Dave's right, we do live in a Broken Britain and I know who broke it. It was broken so comprehensively that like Humpty-Dumpty, it could never be put back together again.
New Labour was about not associating blame and moving on. New Labour was about accepting that most of what the Tories had done was irreversible and trying to tack on as many social values that they could to the right-wing juggernaut that Maggie and her mates had created.
And now we have the Dave and Gideon show. Sorry but I have no interest in going in the direction that those two are going.
I've just read that Milliband has said he'll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Cameron. Bollocks to that, Ed. You saw what happened when you took a moral stand on the NOTW story, or was it just opportunism?
If we stand any chance of altering course, of creating a society where the events of the last few days are less likely to happen again we need to stand up and say yes, I will make political capital out of the riots. Because Cameron sure as hell will. His e-petition big idea is about to make a mockery of social justice in this country.
"The petition entitled “Convicted London rioters should loose* all benefits” has now passed the threshold of 100,000 signatures and has been passed to the Backbench Business Committee to consider for debate. It will continue to be available for signature once the site is re-opened."
*I mean for feck's sake - the person who drafted it can't even fecking spell!
What does the Government do now? Say yes, 100,000 people have spoken in the heat of the riots so we have a duty to pass it into law? These are the people that are making the public running and setting the news agenda.
So I blame Thatcher and anyone who chooses to continue down the path she started us on 30 odd years ago. The first thing we need to do is stop and decide what kind of society we want to be. If we continue as we are I believe the future lies in no-go areas of our major cities and towns, gated communities for the well-off and the rest of us somewhere in between. I have no interest in a society like that.
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