Marching towards an imposed morality……..
All law is imposed morality. Law is never neutral; it rewards certain behaviours and agreement with those values doesn’t make them any less of an imposed morality. Despite the fact that it stakes a high moral purpose, particularly after the excessive law making of Tony Blair’s government, and Gordon Brown’s claims to set a moral compass for society, it actually contributes to the wrecking of society and to its taking measures which can only be described as fascist in character.
Society is now divided into victims and villains; even the villains are seen as being a product of their environment, and are thus recategorised as victims themselves. Personal responsibility is dead, buried under an army of outreach workers.
Adwelly writes:
“a significant proportion of our population have been brought up and educated over the last 60 years within a welfare state”
That statement is true in so far as it refers to the 1945 welfare settlement, but I believe it omits a vital point. It is only in the last 40 years that the welfare state has excluded personal responsibility.
Those of us who are old enough to appreciate the morals and mores of the pre-1967 years have a very different perspective on life from those born and raised post 1967.
The spectre of the unmarried Mother who has a baby in order to acquire a council flat is trotted out time and again as an illustration of all that is wrong with the welfare state. It is not, it is an illustration of all that is wrong with a welfare state denuded of personal responsibility by a legislature determined to impose its own top down morality.
Let me take you back to the early 60’s, those of you who are not old enough to remember. There was a welfare state. It provided medical care for the sick, food for the hungry. It didn’t, however, assume that you had no responsibility for yourself.
Young girls had an array of birth control devices. There was the shame of being an unmarried mother; marriage was still seen as the ‘natural’ environment for a child to grow up in, thus ‘maternity benefits’ were only available on your husband’s National Insurance number — no husband, no benefits. There was the time honoured method of ‘keeping your legs crossed’, primitive but effective. Rape was an issue then as now, countered by asking and expecting a brother or respectable friend to ‘walk you home’.
The arguments in favour of the Abortion Act were a product of the feminist movement, women were seen as victims, no longer responsible for their choices. In hindsight, it was an early example of the cult of victim-hood for all. The mini skirt arrived, and women demanded the right to walk home alone and apparently, by the mores of contemporaneous society, half dressed. The Abortion Act would remove the consequences of their actions. Not all women could or would have an abortion. The government decided to abolish the consequences of that choice – in future these ‘victims’ would be given a council flat, and benefits to remove any disparity between them and women who had made different choices.
The National Health Service saw a similar interference. Where once it had been portrayed as free access to a revered professional, it became an ogre that you could easily fall victim to – and thus should be able to sue. The birth of a child with Down’s syndrome, or cerebral palsy, was no longer an accepted factor of life that you rearranged your household to accommodate, but an avoidable tragedy that you had been the ‘victim’ of and should be compensated for. Compensation ostensibly for the child, but the welfare state already did, and continues to, despite the compensation, provide for that child in the form of Disability Living Allowance, amongst the myriad names it has been known as over the past 60 years.
Unemployment benefit was not seen as a ‘right’ to which all who happened not to be employed were ‘entitled’ to, whether they be a 16 year old who had chosen not to remain in the family home, or a fit and healthy 40 year old who had never so far held a job of any description; it was given to those who had held down employment, who were responsible for a family – mostly males in those days – and who found themselves out of employment through no fault of their own. All others were means tested, examined, probed and poked, by the Social Security Board, who grudgingly handed out the bare necessities of keeping body and soul together – no allowances towards the cost of a TV or video, no clothing allowance, merely food and the lowest possible rate of rent. Now the wilfully unemployed are seen as victims who must not suffer, if they choose to live in a £100 a week – or more – apartment, the rent will be paid, they are not responsible for their plight, nor often, expected to do any more to help themselves other than call into the local DHSS office every six months or so.
Adwelly said:
“When I discuss Libertarianism with people, welfare is the point of the discussion where people start getting out the crosses and garlic”.
Again I would say – it is not the welfare state that is the problem, it is the welfare state combined with legislation designed to remove personal responsibility that is the problem. Reinstate personal responsibility and the welfare budget will shrink to a manageable size that could and should be borne by a compassionate society.
I wonder how long it will be before someone tries to say that I am advocating a return to the work house and that taking personal responsibility is demeaning and discriminatory?
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March 17, 2009 at 1:04 pm -
How about a return to people facing up to the consequences of their actions. Or more to the point, getting them to realise that there are some.
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March 17, 2009 at 1:22 pm -
I’m going to think a bit longer on this topic.
The main reason for me surrounds the notion of ‘morality’ as described here. To me this induced process is all about control – not morality per say. The notion of ‘you are either with us or against us’ is not a signalling of a particular ethical/moral code so much as the desire to control – political control. In some ways it doesn’t matter how control is achieved so long as it is achieved. There’s no doubt that the redefining of terrorism that includes any opposition to government policy is at one and the same time a challenge to orthodoxy and a demand for control.
The current government’s use of Behavioural psychology type models in Welfare, Employment, Health etc are all examples of the desire to create stated objectives by a conrolling methodology. It is individualistic, rewards achievement, denies humanity and is highly controlling. But I would argue whether it’s based on a morality or political expediency that is more akin to Nazism
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March 17, 2009 at 1:23 pm -
I AM advocating a return to the work house.
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March 17, 2009 at 6:17 pm -
I would second that Old Holborn. …………….. Just not for feeble, frail people like myself – if I should ever come unstuck.
I must admit that I cannot see any harm in dragging teenagers who are not in education or worthwhile jobs into compounds where they are taught trades and skills that they obviously would not choose for themselves.
I also believe that this is what the current Prison Service should be all about. Rehabilitation should encompass getting off one’s arse and working for a living – Not just lazzocking about in a cell all day waiting for somebody to allow you a bit of exercise.
I would advise the work-house ethic for bankers. I would give them a scrubbing brush …………… and when the bristles are worn out …………. I would give them another brush!
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March 17, 2009 at 8:50 pm -
still thinking Anna, as well as enjoying an unexpectedely fine Vouvray – I now know what to do with all those old ‘I Love Liam’ badges…..
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March 17, 2009 at 10:19 pm -
In my opinion, that is a very interesting and perceptive post.
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March 17, 2009 at 10:51 pm -
If you check the archives young man, you will find more of the same.
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March 17, 2009 at 11:28 pm -
I do agree with you.
The welfare state was conceived as a safety net: a service to be available freely to all, so that no-one would go without healthcare, or slip into poverty.
What has happened is increasing use of the welfare system to do things it wasn’t originally conceived as doing. Instead of basic health care, the NHS moved into providing more and more complex care. Now we’re at the point where its supplying the latest expensive drugs, or cutting edge surgical procedures.The system to support those complex needs has grown at an obscene rate in the past 30 years where now support staff outnumber front-line staff by a huge margin.
The same goes for benefits. Originally a prop to help those out of work for short periods, it has grown into a huge state sponsored social engineering project, the product of government policies where employment (or the lack of it) was used as a tool to change society. In certain areas we have generations of people with no sense of responsibility: the state will provide, the state will heal, the state ultimately, will control these people, because they don’t know how to be independant.
The tinkering by successive governments which has (like the tax system) engineered a mish-mash of conflicts within the system. With no clear plan, only successive opposing dogmatic policy decisions calling the shots we end up with barely organised chaos. That is what is causing the fractured society we have today.
But you miss a more sinister development: Society may have had it’s morals skewed by government policy but government hasn’t in the past legislated directly to define morality, thats a new phenomenon handed to us by the (feel free to swap any of these words to create a label for any NuLab MP) Righteous, Socialist, Christian, Feminist, Dangerous idiots that call themselves New Labour. A case in point being the new law on violent pornography in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act. Like other NuLab laws it goes far further than its original intent. Instead of the old Obscene Publications Act that relies on the members of a jury to decide what is liable to corrupt and deprave, the government via this new law specifically defines what is obscene, what is immoral and ultimately censor what we can view or store on our PCs or get up to in our bedrooms. See backlash’s website: http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/ Now the government has tasted success, I believe we’ll see this law expanded and other laws use this model. The genie is out of the bottle.
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March 17, 2009 at 11:46 pm -
I think what we are witnessing is a runaway train. The buffers (the next general election) are there for all to see. A giant train wreck is inevitable, the big question is, who will be the ultimate victims and who will survive? The tories found themselves in a similar scenario in 1997 from which they are yet to recover. Is it too late to apply the brakes?
I personally think it is time for an end to party politics. What this country needs is government in the best interests of the people, not in the interest of the present incumbents of the Houses of Parliament.The sooner MP’s get back to what they should be doing, representing their constituents, the better.
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March 17, 2009 at 11:56 pm -
A 34 yr old man who started but dropped out of an FE Access to HE course because he got too tired asked if he could join the next course in September. He was asked if he thought he would be less tired 2nd time around and he said yes, he would definitely complete the course.
He was then asked what he would do between now and next September, get a job perhaps? Oh no, he replied explaining he got his rent paid and around £100 in benefits ‘on the sick’.
The lecturer he was speaking to wanted to slap him, but couldn’t. A teacher’s job is often not a happy one.
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March 17, 2009 at 11:56 pm -
Ah. Coco raises the matter of domestic maintenance and the question of the scrubbing brush in particular, relevant points when considering the return of the workhouse.
I have a spooky feeling that if … times gets as tough as what they is likely to, what with the crippling taxes what is a-coming, on accounts of the currency collapsin’ and all, then I is a-feeling also that what you is a suggestin’ aint so very far from the very truth of it, so it aint, and it’s more’n likely we’ll find ourselves in a very sorry state if’n those guvvy men keep pullin’ our ‘ouses off us an’ rippin’ up our money an’ printin’ more wot isn’t worth anyfink. We’ll ‘ave nowhere to go and we’ll be sent orf to the workhouses cos it’s we who’s in line to pay back this newly printed money when the current bossy-boots, clever-clogs guvvy men all retire onat least £13,000/week. So…
I justify my willfully slap-dash attitude to home-maintenance by claiming to have always ‘known’ that idle, indulged women like me would be the first ones waddled into to the workhouse for a bit of raw-knuckled graft when times got harder and pickin’s got thin: I’ve always been of a weepy disposition and have claimed a slightly spooky ability to predict things. Therefore as the era of hard labour looms, I throw into the air my triumphant fist (still unwithered by washing up liquid and other harsh household chemicals) and let out the defiant cry; “There! I told you anything beyond the bare minimum of housework was a waste of time! Do you think your dust-free skirtings are going to save you now? I told you scrubbing floors was a waste of oestrogen! Ha! I’ll see you in the workhouse where for the first time in my life I might be forced to iron a pair of pants….
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March 18, 2009 at 12:02 am -
Should do wonders for the sales of Marigolds.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:04 am -
And I now apologise for posting my previous post now that I see the thread had gone on to some sensible and serious discussion. I will now go away.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:06 am -
You ought to be ashamed Gloria.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:11 am -
……… And herein lies the problem we are about to face. Never in the history of mankind has any society completely broken down ………… and been repaired again. Whole civilisations simply crumbled into defeat and disappeared.
Maybe this is Gordie’s gameplan. Crumble us all into crumbs ………… and use us as stuffing in his own big turkey of an empire.
Maybe he has never forgiven the Romans for what they didn’t do for the Scots.
Caesar Gordius cometh like a lamb to the slaughter ………… but gets a reprieve because the BBC saw to it that a few floods and bad farming methods would take the public’s mind of their main enemy.
Who voted for you Gordie? Who? How come your name will go down in the anal corridors of British history?
What’s for ye Gordie …………. will nay go by ye. Fact. And it’s coming Gordie. Watch out for Mandy. You ate surrounded by lizards.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:13 am -
Give over Glo! Get back here! We can’t be serious all the time! Do you want to look like Jacqui Schmidt or Harriet Harm’em? No. So get back here or I’m getting mi coat!
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March 18, 2009 at 12:14 am -
Gloria’s in the naughty corner. She can run but she can’t hide.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:17 am -
I am, janes, I am.
I’m going to plunge my naked baby-soft, vein-free mits into a bowl of boiling-hot caustic soda, kneel on some very sharp and widely-strewn cat-litter to sponge away the remnants of a recently eviscerated vole, then I will ’see to’ the neglected downstairs lavatory area and then, just for the penitence value, I promise I will needlessly knead a ball of wire wool until BBC 3 goes off air. Tomorrow I will show show really dedicated contrition.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:21 am -
You have shown suitable penitence and are absolved. Forget the ball of wire, unless you really want to get some kneading in.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:23 am -
‘Ere Glo! We should form a coven!
I predicted that Gordius Caesar would be a a complete knob as well! I just didn’t expect him to bring Mandy in through the back door. Did you see that coming?
I daren’t vote Tory now either …………… just in case they sneak Artful Archie and Painful Aitken back by the same route.
I think that we will have to make a decision very soon about how to completely destroy the Old Boys and Old Hags network.
Talking of the Old Hags network …………… Have you noticed how absolutely unscrupulous the Hags in Government actually are? Even the one whose sister just happened to be Solicitor General not so long ago?
I tell you! My hair is standing on end.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:30 am -
I was honestly shocked to see that Delphius had been back with a long and sensible contribution; just my luck to flubber my way back into the computer chair and let the stubby digits fly on a flight of ‘what ifs’ only to find, once I had arrowed the submit button of no return, that I had posted a notelet-length stream of light-hearted nonsense. Again.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:50 am -
But Glo! You have stopped me from throwing myself off the balcony again.
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March 18, 2009 at 12:58 am -
Janes …………. About that 34 years old guy you mentioned taking a paid- break on the tax-payer …………. I would definitely give him one of the extra-stiff scrubbing brushes reserved for the banking sector!
I think teachers should have the right to decapitate – sorry – ring the housing benefit office and social security office to ensure that they are aware of his tiredness. I have friends who work in job centres and social security because they were bad in a past life and have to pay a penance
………….. but anyway ………….. they would love to get their hands on this chap and tell them how drained and knackered of an evening they are. -
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March 18, 2009 at 1:00 am -
Well I am might thankful for that; this would be a dull old place if you were merely an inert and opinionless splat below a balcony. I am pleased my humble contributions play a small part in keeping you glued to the safety-rail above this dark pool of thoughts into which we trickle our mad musings.
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March 18, 2009 at 1:05 am -
Dya know Glo ………….. I look like a splat that fell from a balcony without even leaving my bed or sofa! :lol
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March 18, 2009 at 1:07 am -
I’m trickling my mad musings into my pyjamas and bed-socks now. I can’t be bothered to take all my diamond rings off tonight so my smoker’s hands won’t be getting even a whiff of anti-ageing gloop – I expect they’ll look nearly as bad as Madonna’s wizzenend old fists tomorrow. Hey ho! Such is real life.
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March 18, 2009 at 1:21 am -
I’m keeping my tiara on.
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March 18, 2009 at 1:44 am -
Have they gone?
Good, there would be Tiaras before bedtime.
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