Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Fair questions

Both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have put "fairness" as their overarching principle in their manifestos.

Sounds good in theory - but what does it mean in practice?

Is it fair that a straight A student is denied a place in their chosen university because the state decrees that that child comes from the wrong background?

Is it fair that a hard working couple with a couple of kids have to pay for a service that only lazy, itinerant, selfish criminals use?

Is it fair that pensioner who fought for his country in WW2 is not allowed to enjoy a cigarette with his half of bitter in the local pub that he has frequented for forty years? And is fair that that pensioner - who has paid more than his fair share in tax for his smoking habit - is denied health care because he enjoys a perfectly legal pursuit while violent junkies addicted to illegal narcotics are given free health care, expensive treatments and substitute narcotics for their indulgent and illegal behaviour?

Is it fair that a man who has scrimped and saved for years to buy his own home is forced to sell that home just to pay for the care that the lazy, frivolous and wasteful get for nothing?

Is it fair that public sector workers receive pay increases higher than the rate of inflation at a time when private sector workers - whose taxes pay for those pay rises - are facing pay freezes and even pay cuts?

I could go on and on - but my point is simple.

Labour and the Lib Dems have no real interest in fairness - like so many other words and phrases it is just something they bandy about because they know it sounds good. Their only interest is in penalising the hard working, the self reliant, the responsible, the law abiding and the conscientious to fund their every expanding client state.

1 comment:

Antisthenes said...

The UK is becoming just like a totalitarian state in it's fairness as in many other ways. Fairness to authoritarians is distributing largess to supporters and neglecting the others or even penalising them.

Welcome to ZimbabUK.