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Saturday 5 July 2008

Not even funny

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I've never 'got' Peregrine Worsthorne. He's revered by a lot of good people, but I've never finished a piece of his and been grateful that I started it.

This fatuous piece today is typical:

 

Not enough people, apparently, are trying to climb up the social ladder; far fewer, sad to say, than in the bad old days. In the name of social justice, they all intone, 'something must be done about it'.

What none of these pundits ever consider is the possibility that a lack of social mobility might be a healthy development; a sign that most people nowadays - apart from the underclass - are content with where they are and do not want to elbow themselves up a rung or two of the social ladder.

To my mind that should be regarded as progress rather than retrogression, since the whole point of the welfare state, I would have thought, was to make life agreeable in Britain at all levels, not just at the top: to do away, that is, with the old necessity for social climbing.

So that's ok then. It's a good thing that people born into poverty stay in poverty because anything else is 'social climbing'. And most people don't want any better standard of living and comfort than welfare provides because they find life 'agreeable' as it is. Tee hee.

Does anyone actually believe this sort of bilge? Does Sir Peregrine actually believe it?

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