Tuesday:
There are really only TWO possible interpretations of the Minister for the Enslavement of the Proletariat's insistence on his plan for people who are kept in poverty on benefits to face being made EVEN MORE POOR, regardless of their ability, situation, needs or desires, through removal of those benefits unless they find employment in the imploding job market of recession-struck Great Britain.
Either… he is the sort of insanely twisted monomaniacal Puritan who in earlier centuries would have gotten his kicks by incinerating elderly ladies for being "a bit different".
Or… no, I'm wrong. There AREN'T two possible interpretations.
Work is NOT good in and of itself. It is ONLY good in as much as it empowers people, liberates people to achieve things they could not do otherwise. As such it IS a good TOOL for liberty, but it cannot, must not be thought of as COMPULSORY.
The desire to work should be a VIRTUE and NOT a REQUIREMENT.
Mr Kant's idea of a CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE can be massively oversimplified to "if everyone did it, would that be ok?"
Clearly, on these terms, you can see that if EVERYONE decided to stop working then we'd all be in BIG TROUBLE and OUT of STICKY BUNS!
But, equally, you can say if we all chose to be PHILOSOPHERS, then no one would till the fields and we'd still be up the creek without a PICNIC… which appears to make Mr Kant morally wrong on his own terms. And THAT is why the CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE is KANT.
We CAN sustain a share of our population doing things OTHER than Mr Frown’s Treasury-approved, One-size-fits-all, Central Government definition of “work”. With his tax collector hat on, Mr Frown might only recognise paid… i.e. TAXABLE… income, but the economy RELIES on the selfless UNPAID contribution of carers, not least PARENTS. But whether it is caring (for their babies, or their elderly parents, or their incapacitated loved ones), whether it is being poorly, whether it is being between jobs, whether it is artistic endeavour, whether it is great philosophy, whether it is dossing about… it really doesn't matter. If people can get by on the contemptuously little we in our infinite generosity hand out then, frankly, WELL DONE!
Just how many kids "dossing about" do you NEED for three or four of them to be the next Beatles? Or the next Bertrand Russells? Or the next Manuel from Fawlty Towers?
We work LONG hours, in Great Britain, and our reward is for the lazy, smug, self-satisfied CAREER POLITICIANS of the Hard Labour Party to BLOW THE ECONOMY to SMITHEREENS and then have the GALL to LECTURE us about it.
Work for NO CAUSE but itself is NOT good; it is called SLAVERY and it is EVIL.
LIBERTY means many things and one of them is LEISURE.
We need to say that Mr Purnell is WRONG!
Work LESS, work for YOU, work for your FAMILY, work for what YOU want, work IF you want, work if you CAN, work for your COMMUNITY, work with your NEIGHBOURS, work with your FRIENDS, work for your DREAMS.
Work to live. Don't EVER live to work.
DON'T WORK for HARD LABOUR. Work WITH the Liberal Democrats.
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2 comments:
Great Cthulhu, that is the best call to arms I have read in ages. I love you, little fluffy heffalump.
Of course he's not evil, he's just a politician clinging to power. This scheme is PR to make him look 'ard and give the tories nowhere to go. It's a mish mash of ideas which will not lead to millions having their benefits withdrawn.
"The real point is that welfare claimants' have no strong motivation to find a job because they lose more in benefits than they can earn in net wages. Until the Powers That Be grasp this simple fact, all this tinkering achieves nothing." Mark Wadsworth
Also check Chris Dillow today.
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