8 December 2008

A dose of pain is needed?

Against the journalist Max Hastings who argues that a dose of hard government and pain, akin to that inflicted by Mrs Thatcher, should follow a probable Cameron victory at the next general election.

Mr Hasting casually talks about a British society which is pampered and unaccustomed to pain.

The truth is that since 1979 under Thatcher and her pupils Major, Blair and Brown many working people have been plunged into and never lifted out of pain: pawns in a flexible workforce, unaffordable housing only available on credit, insecurity over financing their education and retirement.

These, too, are the people who will suffer most in the current crisis.

If Mr Hasting believes that salvation can only occur through pain, then lets have an equality of suffering; an appropriation of the better off (for funds to invest in the collapsing economy) until their pain equals that of ordinary working people.

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