That attitude is always there in the background, blankly, and it doesn't take much to bring it out. Sometimes it comes out in reverse though:
Every time a Tory says that people shouldn't have kids if they can't afford them, it reminds me that in their belief system no one ever has kids and then loses their job subsequently.
Of course, if you spend your whole life living off the public purse, as all high-ranking Tories do, then job insecurity is never much of an issue (except maybe for people like Andrew Mitchell - fair play to him, he does seem to have been misrepresented by the cops, but it was instructive how
few friends he had in high places when the public mood turned against him). Got to hand it to the Tories. They are highly efficient when it comes to backstabbing and getting rid of their old pals, if not in any other area. The left is also guilty of similar silliness, though, except that they take years to get round to it.
When the Tories were mulling over the idea of using the child-killing benefits claimant Mick Philpott as an exemplar of the failings of the welfare state, I was almost tempted to wish they would go through with it in full.
In counterpoint, I could've said that Sir Jimmy Savile OBE was a fine example of a self-made man and entrepreneur who worked his way up from nothing via his individual talent to become a BBC stalwart, an adviser to the Palace, and an annual guest of the Prime Minister. Pulled himself up by the bootstraps, so he did. Aren't those Conservative values in action?
But they dropped the Philpott thing after realising how dumb it was. They are yet to realise how dumb the rest of their ideas are.
It's probably time for an inventory of what's been or is currently being privatised/sold:
Roads (up for auction)
Railways (sold!)
Schools (up for auction)
Hospitals (up for auction)
Police (up for auction)
Forensics (sold!)
Prisons (partially sold, a bit!)
Job Centres (arguable)
Mines (sold!)
Power Stations (sold!)
Houses (sold... mixed feelings on that one)
Military logistics, and R+D (sold, to a former head of the CIA!)
The channel tunnel (dunno)
Care homes (sold!)
Benefit offices (dunno)
Airlines (sold!)
Airports (sold!)
Sea ports (sold!)
Water (sold, except in Scotland)
Gas (sold!)
Telephones (sold!)
The post (sold!)
The buses (sold!)
The forests (sold!)
The rivers and reservoirs (sold!)
The steel industry (sold!)
The ship building industry (sold!)
The oil industry (sold!)
The rest of industry (sold!)
The NHS (some sold, some still up for auction)
The Tories did not do all of this, and New Labour laid the groundwork for the currently ongoing privatizations, but it's quite a list, innit?
Innit funny how before a thing gets sold, there is hugely increased media attention on it's failings (like with the NHS currently) but there is remarkably little rise in complaints by actual users of the service?
Then, after it gets sold, the media attention on it's failings dies off, while the complaints from actual users rise?
In't that
strange? The NHS in England and Wales will become increasingly shite, and will be increasingly stigmatised in the UK media for being shite, until it is (sold!), at which point they will not report so much on it's failings anymore. At least for a few years. Then we'll all be hearing about it again like it was Network Rail in the nineties.
Always the same.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
