Do you think you can be a socialist and

[Swedes]

1. Pay for your child to be independently educated?
2. Buy a house in right catchment for the right school?
3. Feign religion to get your child into a faith school?
4. Object to a lottery system for school places with urban areas (ignoring all convenient environmental issues)?
5. Vote Tory? (because some people seem particularly confused)

Sounds harsh and it is harsh, in fact, it's bollox, but very nice & convenient for those who have plenty. Anyone they can be Richard Branson if they work hard enough, get their priorities right and save HARD for their kids to go to private school instead of frittering their cash (borrowed on cc) away on the fags and magazines and cheap wine that make life bearable.
I don't disagree with differences in income, I would be an unsufferable hypocrite if I did, it is the SIZE of the gap between rich and poor which is splitting our society inot two clear parts, the "haves" and the "have nots"; this breeds resentment, fuels crime and is the road to hell, IMO.

Spockster, I am not one who has plenty but I see peopel daily complaining about having nothing yet sit on their arses not trying to get anything else.

And then there are people who live perfcetly well within their means, can afford a few luxuries here and there and complain about how skint they are, they should stop being so materialistic, once bills are paid every person has a choice what to do with their extra cash, some choose to spend it on cigarettes, or alcohol, or sports club memberships, or computer games or new clothes etc etc. That is their choice, but they feel they should complain about it because other people have more money than them.

It all depends on what you class as a necessity.

Can't have any rich if you cant have any poor. Bad things happen to nove people, goo things to complete bastards. There really is no such thing as the 'deserving poor' - it's mostly privledge of birth.

In that case those people need therapy or more time in church. So what if someone has more? Lots of people are better off than I am or have other advantages. It doesn't make me green with envy. It's the jealousy we need to address not narrowing the gap between rich and poor.

Jealousy is part of human nature - you can no more 'address' that than Mao Zedong did with the Cultural Revolution.

All I am trying to illustrate is that you can't gloss over real human suffering with empty rhetoric. For many people though, very privileged ones, this is the only ay they can square having their privilege - the logic being they believe (truly if not accurately) that they 'deserve' they privileges and so it follows that poor people deserve their poverty also.

In that case they'll have to lump it then. I'm not going to go up to 20 stone to make fat people feel better or reduce my income or £10k a year. It's silly to expect everyone to be the same and socially engineer so that should be so. It's never worked whenever it's been tried. It is not suffering if people have homes and food just because they'd quite like a foreign holiday or be able to afford school fees or a private jet.

Agree Xenia.

No one is asking you too. For society to be more equiable though makes that whole society healthier. Narrowing the gap between rich and poor, narrowing that stratification is shown to be beneficial to the whole of society on the whole.

You make a huge jump from "foreign holiday" to "school fees" to a ludicrous "private jet". I really don't know how to respond to such a leap in logic.

Well, thats that sorted then.

I never imagined we were talking about holidays or private jets - thats a whole scale removed from what I had in mind.

I'm on about pple who have no choice. Who have to send kids to unpalatable schls, eat cheap food, have no prospects of earning decent money, living in half decent surroundings. Thats the kind of no hope grinding poverty I had in mind. And the gap does just get wider.

I made that leap to show that there will always be someone richer. I am poor compared to many.

Narrowing the gap between rich and poor is supposed to make some people happier. I am not sure we are about making people happier however.

Are you talking about people at the very bottom end getting a bit more? If so where do you stop. What's decent money? I read recently on holiday an account of a very poor inner city Birmingham childhood around 1911 onwards. No one lives in that kind of poverty now. If you humour me and don't believe in relative poverty where do you draw your absolute poverty line?

Who are 'we'?

Lots of people are about trying to make the lives of people better - and in doing so helping them towards what could be termed at least contentment, that's what the welfare system is about, at its pinnicle in easing the physical pain of disease and helping us die with dignity.

I am not going to be drawn by the fallatous 'where do you stop' conservative slippery slope tactic. It's not an argument but a tactic of distraction.

And as for whay consitutes poverty today, you would be suprised - but anyway, human suffering is human suffering, regardless of which continent or century it occurs in.

Do you think you can be a Socialist and shop at Boden?

I know some people have problems managing their lives but state benefits are adequate to relieve absolute poverty. The fact some people can earn what a teacher does or a surgeon or even a hedge fund manager is neither here nor there. What matters in most civilised societies if is we have a safety net for the poor. What that safety net does not have to do is make sure everyone else is not too rich so the poor, bless their little hearts, don't have their feelings hurt.

I was always taught that it is vulgar in the extreme to display your plenty, especially when others are not so lucky. Vulgarity is a much graver handicap in life than having insufficient money.

Think the time of socialism is well over. They knew that in 1997, hence, new labour.

Xenia, people aren't just docile serfs. If unfairness is endeminic in societies, and very public, which it is here, it affects the fabric of that society - greedy, shallow and rotton in the core? It spreads outwards and has an impact in crime and all kinds of things.

I asked you about a year ago to read Polly Toynbee's Hard Work. I guess that you haven;t. Fair enough, you don;t want to put a human face to your politics, you have that right. But I doubt you have any real idea of life living on the breadline - whatever you believe 'absolute' poverty means; without qualification, it's meaningless rhetoric - again.

"No one lives in that kind of poverty now. "

Wake up.
Even if you don't accept that absolute poverty exists right here, right now, the concept of relative poverty is hardly irrelevant; it twists society. Yes, I have an income well into 6 figures; yes, I would prefer to have significantly less and have a fairer society, and that is reflected in the way I vote, as well as the way I educate my kids and choose my health care. There is little else I can do. (I can't kick the Boden/Waitrose habit, but I do try ). Whether others choose to do the same or not is their choice, but at least be honest with yourselves about the way the world is.

Bloody hell Spockster - I just developed a mad crush on you!

Can you be a Socialist and be a lesbian?

I read a link you posted then about people turning up at 5am to try to get work for the day, long bus rides, working in school kitchens etc but that just showed the poor have hard lives. It does not mean there is any moral imperative to even out natural inequalities as long as we do provide for the poor (as we do). Unfairness is in everything we do, our mental and physical health, our looks, our brains, and of course our wealth. I don't think it is a wrong that it exists. It is part of nature and indeed to deny it or seek to exclude could be wrong or a waste of effort.

It would be very dull if everyone were clones or earned the same and looked the same. Clearly most of us don't want the poor starving but I do not think there is any reason to narrow or try to alter gaps between rich and poor or even between the ugly and the pretty or any other inequality.

Blimey Spockster- I'm lucky if my income is into five figures! (as evidenced by the tax return I just filed...) (more like upper end of 4 actually ahem) Luckily this is not our only family income.

I am at my most attractive when I am angry
at the idea of preserving inequalities to stop the place getting dull...!

Duchesse...did I say where the decimal point falls?!

Can you be pedantic and be a Socialist?