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IHT therapy

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[The 50% refers to arts funding and comes from the government's own figures. It's not polemic, it's policy.]

I think it is conceptually incoherent to think you could ever avoid, as Alice put it, people 'being born fortunate'. Clearly there are people on the list who regard being born with more money than most as abhorrent. But why is it more abhorrent than being born with a higher IQ than most, or a prettier face, or being taller or better at basketball? All give you a huge advantage in life, none are due to you, none are sufficient or necessary for success. Dropping the politics, where is the philosophical difference between being born with an IQ or a bank balance higher than most others?

I suppose I'm less interested in theoretical, abstract equality for myself or even my family than having the damn trains run on time. We've been chasing equality as a policy goal since 1997 and every indicator of equality in financial, welfare, quality of life, education, and health is down since then. It's not working. Try something else. Abolishing things that don't match theories of egalitarian origination and distribution has made people's lives (apart from at the politically-connected, corporate top) worse year on year. The government's own statistics, even tweaked, make this the unavoidable conclusion. How bad does it have to become before the government members have a heart, see what they've done, and try something different rather than insisting that PFI hospitals, golden rule economics, job offshoring and corporate governance have worked? When will their supporters drop the nice, neat theory and look around them at the damage that has been done in the real world?

I don't know what the answer is to putting the country back on track. You certainly won't hear it from a Tory leadership candidate or a liberal think-tank. But surely we have to try something else, and it makes sense to try some of the things that were in place when the equality and welfare figures were better, doesn't it? Or is there a logical justification for the horrible 'forwards not backwards' (even when forwards is a big black hole?)

If you ask people what they want arts funding to be spent on, expect them to simply write 'Actually, I'd rather pay a little less tax, thank you'. I hated Thatcher and everything she stood for, but she was right in that psychological observation. Everybody benefits from the BBC, from their questioning of feckless politicians and investigation of the facts of life in Britain, even if they don't watch the programmes or listen to the radio. But the licence fee is one of the most unpopular taxes in modern history. Tax is, and always will be, a paternalistic device. There's just no way round it, you are always taking money off people who don't want to pay it on the whole, and spending it differently to the way they would. You cannot be a government truly in tune with the will of the people.

It's funny that George Monbiot should be raised in the conversation. He's the son of a Tory old-guard and has his excellent education from - you guessed it - old money. So is he a good product or a bad product? I think he's a good thing. He has natural talent (unearnt, genetic), and an extensive education (unearnt, paid for due to genetic accident), but has worked hard to question the world around him (earnt). Ideally everyone should have talent, a great education and work hard. But we can't engineer talent; we shouldn't break down privileged education - the country needs its products like George in the short term - we should *build up* standard education (there's plenty of money to do so if we skimp on things like millenium domes, wars in Iraq, etc.) until the old system is no longer needed; and we have to admit that not everyone *wants* to work hard to meet their full potential for their talents in life.

And I just hate seeing a small, cliquey minority, who were elected by only 1 in 3 of the population, have inspired no-one, have made a lot of bad calls in government, and constantly favour their mates and financial contributors, being proposed as good candidates for deciding what should get funding and what should not. They've got way more influence than they deserve already! Build up some opponents, don't give them any more!

Viva pluralism! Even if equality has to come second place, viva pluralism!

Rab.


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