Before I touch on specifics, Polly is irrational. We know this, yes, but what I am saying is Polly is YET AGAIN irrational and here is another example.
When is she going to realise that the Middle Class is basically the Working Class who have entered the professions or made money or, dare I say the term "bettered themselves" which is what most want to do or did want to do before the entropic influences of the Welfare State and the inverted snobbery leeched into them by the Champagne Socialists and Fabian Fifth Column to "keep them in their place".
It is Sisyphean task, for as soon as you have moved "working class" people in, they cease to be "working class". Seeing as there are more working class than middle class and very few jobs in the professions overall, you will end up pushing OUT those who have made it before they retire to make way for the next batch of "working class" based on utterly bankrupt, dysfunctional, wrong-headed but oh-so-predictable quota targets beloved of this administration.
This is before we get to the crux that the State cannot "give" opportunities. Opportunities, by definition, are not "given" but "seized". Scholarships are an example of an opportunity seized. The poor-but-bright kid has solid proof of their worth vs. their richer peers who might have got in more by inertia than talent, though to generalise is to also be moronic - many children of Middle Class families are exceptional human beings and have every right to be at the top.
Just as the State cannot "give" opportunities, it cannot "empower" by positive action. Empowerment is, basically, NOT oppressing, micro-managing, second-guessing or interfering. Not controlling, in fact. The State is UESLESS at not controlling areas it is involved in. It is usless at stopping itself controlling more things as it is, let alone being sensible about areas it IS involved in! It is about letting the individual have authority and responsibility over their own future. That is empowerment. That is something the State can only hope to grow by LEAVING PEOPLE ALONE and GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY. It would be appreciated.
Not sure if I want to pick apart Polly's blatherings now, but I will just touch on a few points, one or two of jaw-dropping inanity. And she is PAID to write this? Oh, forgot - The Guardian is subsidised by all those Public Sector jobs...and this policy by Harman is likely to spawn a whole rash of new "equality advisors" and "empowerment czars". "'Polly publishes puff piece' - probe".
First, she says:
Harman's law is Labour's biggest idea for 11 yearsWhich basically says the last 11 years were filled with something worse than total hogwash, spite, second-rate class-war obsession and disingenuous blather. Polly has said a truth.
Next, Polly goes on to say:
A public-sector duty to close the gap between rich and poor will tackle the class divide in a way that no other policy has
Er, dismally? Since when is the Public Sector a tool of social engineering? Oh, yes, we are discussing Socialists here, where EVERYTHING is a "legitimate" tool of social engineering. The public sector is paid to do a specific functional job, not push ideology. The duty of the Public Sector is to deliver the services to the taxpayer, not spend time internally faffing about trying to bend reality into unreality.
Inequality is the root cause of social immobility.Utter claptrap. Social immobility is caused by many things. With no inequality, social immobility would be universal. Without a difference, mobility is not possible! Inequality is the starting point FOR mobility. How can you rise if you are prevented from being above anyone else? In this is the basis for the utter unreason at the centre of Socialism and why it ends up levelling down and not levelling up. Social immobility occurs when it is not a meritocracy. Period. Race, gender, religion, politics, geography, perceived extant income can all stifle social mobility and this occurs in both directions, as discrimination is what we are talking about here. By preventing someone from the South East getting on even if they have the ability because the quota for the NE has not been reached is a hindrance to Social Mobility. Quotas will NOT help. "Positive" discrimination is still discrimination.
However, politicians of all parties are happiest talking about "opportunity", pulling the ablest up the ladders - without too many questions asked about why the ladders are so steep, and why the distance is so great from bottom to top. It is a great deal less controversial than talk of narrowing the gap itself.Well, the first sentence is nonsense as I have said above. The issue is to not police the ladders, but let those who can climb them, climb them. The ladders need to be as steep and as long as necessary so those who reach the top are capable for the roles that exist there. They are that long for a reason. Now, some suggest that some can join the ladder half way up because of good education and family environment. Do you think it is better to not try and fix the education and family environment and somehow guess who would have made it up the lower section? How can that possibly be determined. The best way is to remove negative influences on the family environment - Welfarism being one massive example - and fix the educational system by, you guessed it, getting the dead hand of the State out of the way. No, it is not "perfect" by a long way, but it is the least bad way of doing things and the most sustainable. It is also the simplest and cheapest. Fix the causes, not try and mitigate the symptoms.
Labour gets round this by promising to increase the demand for top jobs
I include this as an example of the dysfunctional control-freakery and delusion of Socialists that they can actually sustainably change things in this way. Companies will increase demand for top jobs. The only way the State can is to create non-jobs in the Bureaucracy and QANGOcracy. Note they will then have to "do" something, which will be to interfere in the lives of the population. Pure Fabianism. Ghastly. Damnable. Authoritarianism on the road to Totalitarianism.
The entire premise is wrong-headed. It is stupid in the extreme. It is typical of Harriet Harman, who cannot see beyond her own prejudices and addled thinking. You cannot have the working class making up an equal ratio of the top jobs unless you constantly churn people into and out of the Middle Classes, and thrust those in already down again. It is just a reality. Frankly, I can see this as being a nice way to make sure people only remain in post if they "behave" and are "good little Fabians". It makes everyone beholden to the fickle whim of the State. It is a Fencepost. A way to ensure people can be removed not because they are bad - they can be very good - but because they do not behave. The White Paper provides an easily justified but centrally managed excuse - "make way for the poor".
So let us outline the Fencepost. It is to implant a totally unrealistic and unachievable target/metric that is centrally controlled as an arbiter to the right of employment. First the public sector, then spreading to the entire economy. Of course the system will not work in the public sector, but the excuse will be that it is "just" the public sector and so "must" be widened as all those nasty private sector companies are undermining the "good work". This fencepost will be lined up neatly with another which covers the right to the Public Sector to only give out contracts to companies who conform to their employment or other criteria, which is either in place or on the way as I blog. This other Fencepost lines up with the moves for the State to get involved in more and more aspects of the commercial sector or be an arbiter on greater an greater areas of commercial activity because of its distorting influence and asymmetrical legal power. It is, basically, the new generation of Enclosures, the State being, in effect, Nationalised Feudalism. The Harman plans are like a Feudal Lord dispossessing Yeoman to make way for landless peasants just because the Yeoman has grown from a landless peasant. It is, indeed, "Socialism in one clause" - it is entropic, levelling down...unless you are a good little lickspittle, for the decision criteria is made by the party, not by a huge plurality of independent companies.
It is another Fabian wet dream.
What will the Tories or Lib Dems do with this turd if they got into power? Tinker, I suspect.
The Libertarian Party will repeal this legislation at the first opportunity.
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