Left Unity vs James Max on latest Tory MP multi-millionaire (08Nov13)

[ttosca]

Simon Hardy from Left Unity versus LBC Radio presenter James Max on the latest Conservative MP tp become a millionaire.

[claig]

Jeremy Hunt was already a millionaire, now he stands to make approx £17 milion by selling his share in the business that he started up according to reports.

Good luck to him, he earned that money through his own efforts, not as a result of being on some government sponsored quango or paid for think tank or government gravy train appointment.

And the Left Unity Simon Hardy mentions something that the ex-Blairite Alan Milburn - the government's "Social Mobility Tsar" - said to back up some of his arguments in that extract. Is he having a laugh?

Jeremy Hunt deserves every penny he has earned and is doing a great job at Health and I hope he continues to have the courage to expose exactly what went on in our hospitals and I hope he does not refrain from exposing who was responsible for it.

The Left Unity person shows how ineffectual and desperate the Left's envious smear tactics are. Just because someone is rich does not mean they do not know what is right and wrong and cannot empathise with less well-off people and understand what they are going through. That is why the government removed millions of low earners from taxation completely and are talking about scrapping some of the green taxes created by the oppressive progressives, some of whom and whose backers are themselves millionaires.

I choose not to read the Guardian - the paper of the progressive elite and the Labour Party millionaires and consultants and advisers and think tank employees; I choose to read the paper of the people - the Daily Mail.

If tomorrow I won the lottery and became a millionaire, would I change to read the Guardian along with the progressive millonaires and the think tanks and probably some members of Left Unity? Of course I wouldn't, because I wouldn't have changed, all that would have changed is my bank account.

I would still empathise with ordinary people and with ordinary Daily Mail readers and share their views and I would still know what is right and wrong.

Jeremy Hunt hasn't changed just because he will sell the business he created. He will still expose what went on in our health service and he will fight to improve it for himself and the millions of ordinary people who use it and Left Unity won't change and will probably continue to try and knock a good man doing a good job just because he earns more money than them.

[claig]

And on that £17 million pounds that Jeremy Hunt has earned due to his own ingenuity, Jeremy Hunt will pay tax and contribute more to ordinary people and the well-being of society than probably the whole of Left Unity combined.

[ttosca]

As usual, Claig, you're confused and incoherent and what you say is the opposite of the truth.

The majority of Parliamentarians are millionaires, and substantially richer than the public at large. Contrary to what the interviewee and yourself tried to imply, we don't have a Parliament full of highly-skilled entrepreneurs.

If you took ten minutes to Google the background of the members of the government - especially members of the cabinet - you'll find that actually they come from extremely privileged and wealthy backgrounds, and most of their wealth was inherited.

Most of the cabinet and prominent MPs come from Oxbridge backgrounds and were born in to wealthy families. Cameron is, in fact, a distant relative to the Royal Family. It's hard to image a more privileged position than that.

Not only have the majority of MPs come from privileged and wealthy backgrounds and inherited their wealth, but many of them are manifestly incompetent: Ian Duncan Smith is a perfect example of someone who is a complete loser at everything he does or did. If he were actually a manager or someone in a position of responsibility in a company he would have been fired a long time ago.

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Secondly, the argument is a lot more complicated than: "Being rich implies not knowing right from wrong." Firstly, it's a question of representation. The public have a right to expect their MPs to not be entirely unrepresentative of the population at large. The reason why this is important is two fold:

a) There can be a conflict of interest when someone who is rich and powerful and owns several houses, and is related to the Royal Family, and has strong connections with the City and the media representing someone in the public at large. It should be obvious that what is good for one group is not necessarily good for another group. Why should we trust MPs to make decisions against their own interest for the public at large?

b) No matter how well intentioned an MP may be, someone coming from such a privileged background as David Cameron will never, and can never understand and know what it is like to grow up poor on a council estate. They will never know the struggles that take place every day. They simply live entirely different lives. They can't even imagine what it is like, any more than someone who has been poor all their lives can imagine what it is like to live in security and privilege their whole lives.

[ttosca]

Finally, in your weird, upside-down incoherent world, the 'progressives' and the 'left' are the ones who are privileged, whilst the right-wing, millionaire MPs descended from the Royal Family, and reactionaries are for the 'little people'. This is not a world-view that many sane people on this planet share. In that sense, you're quite unique.

If you were to wake up and be a millionaire tomorrow, I have no doubt that you would continue reading the Daily Hate Mail. That's because the paper has always been and always will be a nasty hate-filled rag which hates everybody in the UK who isn't rich, white, male, and privileged.

[claig]

I agree that it is not good to have lots of millionaires with inherited wealth representing the people.

However, Jeremy Hunt is not one of them and that is whom the Left Unity person was talking about. Jeremy Hunt has earned every penny and understands ordinary people and is a very good MP and a great Health Minister.

He has implemented a fantastic scheme that makes top civil servants understand some of the treatment that ordinary people get in hospitals.

"Senior civil servants in the Department of Health will have to work on the frontline of the NHS if they want to be promoted, the Health Secretary is to announce.

From next month, 200 senior officials will have to perform tasks such as mopping floors, emptying bedpans and serving meals to care home residents as the Government responds to the Francis Report into patient neglect at the Mid Staffordshire Trust."

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326517/Civil-servants-told-Empty-bedpans-push-hospital-trolleys-clean-floors-want-promoted.html

Some of those 200 senior officials may well be progressives. They probably won't like it, but Jeremy Hunt has said tough. What matters to Jeremy Hunt is representing and serving the people and that involves understanding what it is really like for NHS staff on the front line and for patients.

So when the progressive from Left Unity criticises Jeremy Hunt because he stands to earn millions from the company that he created and which was not handed to him on a silver platter, then I think that he is misguided, because so far Jeremy Hunt has proved far better than his New Labour predecessors.

[AnguaResurgam]

I'd like to see more MPs, not fewer, with backgrounds beyond Westminster. And I'd like to see them coming to politics after success in their previous career.

[claig]

You are right, Angua. It is not healthy for our society to be represented by so many people who have never worked in industry or among the public and who have done nothing but lived in a cocooned political world of being a special adviser or think tank employee straight after leaving Oxbridge.