Category

UK Politics

July 21, 2024
0

[on the UK election] In her acceptance speech, Angela Rayner [Deputy PM, UK] said that the result was a response of the electorate to 14 years of Tory failure. I don't think the Tories failed - they have been highly successful for the elite they represent. Since 2010, the country's top few percent have seen their wealth quadruple, while most people have seen their real-term income drop. Bankers enjoy unlimited bonuses, public sector pay has been substantially cut, the tax burden has been significantly switched from rich to poor, privatised utilities profiteer from monopolistic positions without hindrance, and our railways are among the worst in the developed world, while being among the most expensive. These are all amazing achievements from a neoliberal perspective. The chief reason for their being ousted is that they didn't persuade the electorate as successfully as Reform that immigrants were responsible for all this.

Stephen Riley
December 31, 2023
1

The idea that the poor should have leisure and a holiday from work has always been shocking to the rich. In the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.

Bertrand Russell
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