Hot on the heels of Greg Clark's intervention of yesterday, this is what David Cameron will say tomorrow:
“I want to look back over the last 25 years and to look forward to the next 25. Let me summarise my argument briefly. I believe that poverty is an economic waste, a moral disgrace. In the past we used to think of poverty in absolute terms – meaning straightforward material deprivation. That’s not enough. We need to think of poverty in relative terms – the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted. So I want this message to go out loud and clear: the Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty.”
Exactly. People like myself have worked in the party for years with people we liked and respected and we resent the fact that it has been hijacked by the TRG or whatever they are calling themselves these days.
I joined in the heady days of Thatcher when the party was powerful, great and feared. I don't like anything about Cameron and his creepy friends and I have never once pretended to like them.
I'm not hoofing off to join UKIP. I'm standing my ground and fighting the foe, and I toast the day when the Notting Hill Set are sluiced out of the party and decent Conservatives are back in the saddle again.
What we need is a grassroots revolt It'll come.
Posted by: Jamie Oliver's Sausage | November 25, 2006 at 17:12
Perhaps you'd have more credibility in your 'fight' with the leadership if you didn't have such a ludicrous name?
Posted by: malcolm | November 25, 2006 at 17:20
I have just got my pay slip and I have just seen how much tax I pay. With Council Tax, a future mortgage and wedding to pay for plus the paying back of a student loan I really cannot afford to pay a single penny more in tax and that is not me being selfish. Yet it seems that Dave and his friends are going to have me paying a whole raft of green taxes and other taxes to fund yet another generation of feckless people who have no desire to work and who never will work.
Long, long ago taxes were to raise revenue. The window tax reduced natural light not as a policy but as a by-productr of revenue-raising.
Today to make people feel moral purpose in paying taxes they are 'pseudo-hypothecated' so you tax "pollution" or "lifestyle excesses" but the aim is still to raise revenue.
Thus Richard has not understood the moral imperatives the Government is imposing to get him to modify his behaviour.
The student loan only kicks in when he earns over £10.000pa (is it more now ?), so if he earns less than this officially he pays nothing back, or if he emigrates.
A wedding ? You see Richard is being contrarian. the whole system is set up for Richard to cohabit with a variety of women and each to become pregnant; so long as he does nio marry any of them, the State will fund his lifestyle.
The issue is to decide whether you wish to live in accordance with Secular Authority which punishes you for adhering to other Value-Systems such as monogamy, marriage, saving, paying back loans, buying a home, raising a family.............if you see yourself merely as an itinerant sperm-donor with no roots, you will receive the full rewards society can offer.
I remember Margaret Thatcher in 1975 spouting on about such things, now 31 years later we still have a "poverty trap", we still have large families only affordable by those on benefit and those in The City; and we have the plough-horses of the Middle-Class paying the bills to keep the Poor from Eating The Rich
Posted by: TomTom | November 27, 2006 at 08:39
True conservatives believe that the only real long-term way out of poverty is to get educated, get presentable, get up out of your bed/sofa and get a job or career. Work reasonably hard, use what IQ/talents God gave you, and spend or invest your money wisely. Or take a bit of a calculated risk. Getting a wife/husband may help. Cutting down the fags/booze/drugs/gambling/Toynbee-Cameroons --will also help!
Posted by: Dr Alan Patterson | January 08, 2007 at 23:31