The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

[Tortington]

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom

"Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be ?reclaimed? by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months? expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television."

but that's ok, becuase as he was STEALING that television, he wasn't wearing a hood

Well he has set out the Tory party analysis of the Blair years. As it's very partisan, it's bound to be largely inaccurate.

What does he hope to achieve? Anyone reading it would end up either feeling smug and vindicated in their own beliefs, or angry at its unfairness. Neither of those attitudes is going to change anything, and back we go round in a circle again.

We need some new ways of thinking about the future, and we need to stop looking at the past through blinkers.

Interesting - two companion articles, and such a different reaction. His standards of acuity and analysis haven't changed. I find it rather telling about the audience, though.

That'd be because in the blog he actually says something different while in the actual printed/online Telegraph article he's churning out the predictable bash Blair stuff.

I find both interesting and do not see them as in any way contradictory.

I don't think ignoring events in the Blair years is likely to be helpful.

I thought of this again after seeing Tessa Jowell on Breakfast TV.

She seems to be completely espousing, for the Labour party, the substance of the second Oborne article (concentrating on a fairly narrow failed group), whereas the coalition response is all about the wider decay of the first article - not concentrating on one group as she did.

It's interesting to see how the parties are coming out - and the amount of acclaim there is here for the more Tory position (which I has to say has surprised me). Sprogger's post in particular espouses the concepts of "Big Society" and stronger local communities (which is also a Charles Murray recommendation in his published works on the underclass).

Putting the emphasis on those at the bottom changing their behaviour is never going to work when we look up to a load of greedy fat pigs with their snouts in the trough at the top - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work that one out. Alas, the decay in society has now also gone too far to rely on the tradition of trying to get those in the middle to behave decently to make up for the crass excesses and nastiness of those at the far extremes (which is what happened in the past, when the extremes got less publicity in any event and the Great and the Good walked the earth for us all to look up to) - the "middle classes" aren't exactly fine and upstanding anymore, either, they've just created a smooth continuum between poor and nasty and rich, powerful and nasty. The ideal would, of course, be for the rich and powerful to change their behaviour and set us all a good example of something other than personal wealth creation for once in their lives, but it will be a cold day in Hell when they do that. I guess they'll just have to force the masses in the middle to prop them up, tolerate them and control the rabble for them, in return for a couple of public libraries. And if the middle won't, then we can all go to Hell.

You put it so well, rabbit.