Ruth Kelly was on the Today programme this morning and asserted that, under Labour, social justice had advanced. How does Ruth Kelly define 'social justice'? How does she measure it? The concept seems extremely vague. Does it mean giving more to the poor and taking more from the rich? So is the ultimate social justice when everyone has the same wealth? And does that not go by another name: communism? Has the concept of communism not been totally discredited by the vast and disastrous experiments in it during the 20th century?
It leads one to suspect that the phrase 'social justice' is a eumphemism for socialism or communism. And if it is not that, what is it?
Is it 'social justice' that:
The number of pensioners paying income tax has risen by 1.2 million under Labour, official figures reveal.When Tony Blair entered No 10 in 1997 3.9 million men over 65 and women over 60 were in the tax net.
That figure has risen by a third to a record 5.1 million - nearly half the 11.1 Britons over state pension age, according to Government figures for the current tax year.
And later,
The Treasury put the rise down to the ageing population last night.But the number of old age pensioners has only gone by 400,000 since 1997.
The above is from the Daily Mail.
Is the taxation of more old age pensioners a reflection of the greater 'social justice' in modern Britain? It remains the case, as I described in The Welfare State We're In, that the government defines a considerable number of people in this country as being in 'poverty'. It then taxes them. Many of these are pensioners. Rather more of them are now pensioners after Labour's rule. (I was glad to see the Tory spokesman Philip Hammond also making the point yesterday that the government taxes pensioners it defines as being in poverty.)
Incidentally, the Daily Mail is probably the most despised newspaper among the urban elite. But it keeps on picking up stories like this which tell us a great deal. It would be good to see some part of the BBC take this story on. The Today programme, for example.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • Pensions • Tax and growth
Comments (4)
TrackBack (13)
Comments
God knows what Ruth Kelly meant. She is a very confused woman ,totally out of her depth, who resorts to spouting new labour platitudes as a substitute for making a coherent case for anything (which appears beyond her ability). I assume you're talking about the Nicky Campbell interview on radio 5 - he was having so much fun taunting her it was almost cruel.
I dislike many things about the Daily Mail (prurience, moralising, pandering to prejudices and obsession with house prices for a start) but this doesn't mean that they're always wrong or that they don't sometimes pick up on good stories.
Posted by: HJHJ at May 9, 2006 05:59 PM
Kelly is on the way out, just like Neo-labour. As for the Daily Mail, it fulfils the same function The Guardian does for those of us unpersuaded by socialism. The Guardian is the Daily Mail of the left.
Posted by: pete at May 9, 2006 09:59 PM
"The Treasury put the rise down to the ageing population last night.
But the number of old age pensioners has only gone by 400,000 since 1997."
There's also the fact that employment rates have gone up for pensioners and that those in work are earning more (just as everyone is). But why let the facts get in the way of a good screed, eh?
Posted by: Jim at May 11, 2006 08:16 AM
Warning: file(http://63.247.138.2/~bartholo/randomquotes.dump) [function.file]: failed to open stream: No route to host in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/05/ruth_kellys_soc.php on line 318
Warning: implode() [function.implode]: Bad arguments. in /home/bartholo/public_html/archives/2006/05/ruth_kellys_soc.php on line 318
I started a thread on a Political Forum not long ago asking the regulars - many of whom are left wing - how they defined 'social justice'.
I got plenty of responses but none of them matched. There seemed to be a consensus on the fact that there was no consensus on its meaning. Yet many on the forum had been using the term in their arguments for months, and now it had been made clear that no one really knew what they were arguing about. The left like to grab the moral high ground and using the terms like 'social justice' helps them achieve that aim; to argue otherwise would surely mean you're in favour of 'social injustice'.
Posted by: Brad at May 9, 2006 03:00 PM