John Major’s admission
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Yesterday's Metro reports the following from former Tory Prime Minister John Major:
Quote:As for not supporting Britain's impoverished, the Tory added: "They are the dignified poor, or near poor. To the shame of decades of politicians, and I include myself in this, there are still millions and millions of them. Nearly 100 years ago, Lloyd George promised homes fit for heroes. Today, many live in tower blocks, estates and slums that frankly are fit for no one.That's a rare admission of failure from a politicians, but there's little chance of anything be done about it. Both the Tories and Labour have realised that bashing the poor, dignified or undignified, deserving or undeserving, is a potential vote-winner. In any event, besides the reserve army of labour, capitalism has always had a pool of unemployables of at least 10 percent of the population. No government is ever going to divert resources to improve their condition as they are of no use to the capitalist economy. The most they''ll do is maintain them at some arbitrary "poverty level".
But to give Major his due he is probably sincere as, unlike most Tory leaders, he didn't come from a privileged background (according to Metro he is "the son of a trapeze artist and seller of garden gnomes"). Which is why the present Tory leaders are probably laughing up their sleeves at his naivety.
My question to the Conservative party is who are the undignified undeserving poor? And why is this Victorian notion of morality being resurrected.
Is Major real Labour? http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/john-major-shocked-elite-social-mobility Major – who went to a grammar school in south London and left with three O-levels – said: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking." He blamed this "collapse in social mobility" on Labour, claiming that despite Ed Miliband's "absurd mantra to be the one-nation party, they left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration". Major said: "I remember enough of my past to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost "Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born. "We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn't going to happen magically." The Commission on Child Poverty and Social Mobility, chaired by Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister, has found no evidence that social mobility slowed due to Labour policies.
Major said:Nearly 100 years ago, Lloyd George promised homes fit for heroes. Today, many live in tower blocks, estates and slums that frankly are fit for no one.I can’t believe he doesn’t know that in the UK there are 9,000 ex servicemen without any home at all.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/9000-ex-service-personnel-homeless-after-2071049
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