Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

The feckless

So, here’s another idea for helping solve the global economic crisis. Let’s treat the leading banks just like unwashed dole scroungers. Don’t invite them to Downing Street for high-level talks. Make them walk a mile in the rain to a grubby office where they will be met by the distressingly surly indifference of a claims officer (if that claims officer isn’t off ’sick’). Make the bankers do this at the same time every two weeks. Don’t offer them any advice when they’re there or, if you do, make it ambiguous or just plain incorrect.

Yes. That's the shit, right there.

I think there's one very important distinction that informs our view of those evil feckless bastards who dole-scrounge and drain away the hard-earned cash from middle-class taxpayers; and the noble, righteous and decent chaps of the City who are just trying to save our pensions and make it all nice again, and yes, we should intervene and give them as many taxpounds as they want, they're here to help us for God's sake, isn't that what you lefties want?! Put simply, the bankers have our balls in a vice and the doleites don't. It's self-interest, and that's all there is to it.

People feel safe adopting the pack mentality towards doleites because if you take away his money, he's just going to starve and die; if you don't live near to a council estate and you're safely tucked away in a nice suburban semi well away from poor people and blacks - ideally in a gated community that no-one can get into except People Like You - then you're pretty much not going to see the unpleasant effects of Natalie Wooding these folk and casting them adrift. People ignore the reality that modern economic policies have unemployment built in.

Bankers, on the other hand, have got our pensions. They've got our savings. They've got our current account overdrafts and our credit cards and all those means by which the well-off people can obtain stuff to live the consumer lifestyle and impress the next-door neighbours. If we cast the banks adrift, they'd take that away from us, and we would have less stuff.

It's not through compassion or because it's the right thing to do that people are more willing to help out the bankers than the doleites - it's because they're worried about themselves.

But it's pretty much a nailed-on certainty that as this crisis begins to bite deeper, the stories about 'dole scum' will increase and intensify. The Sun's front page today is about an extreme example of a council house - a woman claiming £170,000 rent a year in benefits. The message is simple: poor people are just on the make; they're all like this, secretly bleeding the white even whiter, skilfully milking the bleeding heart for all it is worth. There will be more and more of this as the search begins for cheap targets. We can't attack the banks - they've got our money! - so we must attack the 'feckless' instead.

It's going to get ugly.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

No related posts.