Blaming the poor

Tiberius

I don't think I've read a more succinct and eloquent summary of what has gone wrong with this country over the last 45 years.

It should be printed on a 6-sheet poster and hung in the foyer of every prison, school, council office, police station, and government department in the land.

john doe

Good to see the toffs and twits get a just skewering. All those hooray Henry's plastered on Pimms are no role model to the masses. Sorry to see you slipped in a reference to cannabis cake there Melanie. Unfair. I guess you couldn't resist that. It just does not produce the kind of behaviour described in the article you cite. But let's not flog a dead horse. And I'm tired of the brick wall.

Verity

Tiberius - Seconded!

John Doe - (pretentious socialists often use American terminologies, despite loathing America. I wonder why),is there any chance you could make your posts easier to read by learning the difference between the plural and the possessive?

Frank Pulley

You sure hit the ground running, Melanie. Welcome back.

London Calling

There’s nothing more patronising than someone like India Knight looking down their nose as if it was a magnifying glass looking at all the working ants on a field trip to Iceland to buy their four packs in bulk.

If India wants to help the underclass, the middle and upper class might be a good place to start, as it is full of the underclass, the very people who have no excuse to be snorting more cocaine than a dust mite Chelsea and Kensington nightclubs.

Drugs enforcement officers are currently sweeping Kensington clubs and bars swabbing the toilets in each to test for cocaine use, and if found, the swab turns blue and we’re not talking Conservative supporters here, the police are going to issue warnings and threaten to come down heavy on landlords who allow drug taking on their premises and issue them with fines (like moneys a issue here, I don’t think so) raids would be more suitable I think.

So India really needs to remember the saying 'Charity starts at home' before chastising the so called underclass, people are people and people are the same at all levels of society.

Yes we have a problem, but if we approach it by sticking people in pigeon holes and stereotyping them into class groups, then we all might as well eat the moon because it really is made of cheese......or is it cannabis?

Ask India...

Alcuin

Peter Risden nails the slavery that bourgeois liberals entrap those they purport to be trying to help into. His target is a certain Polly T, and hits it with surprising accuracy and effectiveness. The trouble is that such people actually believe that they are doing the right thing, the fly in their ointment being those who don't want what they are being sold.

Joe Strummer

" The money to get itself out of trouble" is so accurate of the middle and upper-classes and spot on the mark.

There will be no Priory clinic or some other private and expensive re-hab for young council sink-estate reared Dean & Shazza after they've stupidly bought into the "lifestyle" of drugs and drink spoonfed to them by their so-called social betters in trashy celebrity magazines and television shows.

For them, they face the long road of either a combination of a life of poverty, addiction, prison due to stealing to feed their habit and eventually death.

Only when they are caught in the lonely downward spiral will they realise they have been conned and cheated and it will be too late for the majority to make the journey back.

They can also have the pleasure of seeing one of their former drug champions being paid thousands of pounds to self-indulgently appear on a chat show to speak about their "drug hell."

Yup, the underclass will always be the losers....

field

I don't think anyone wants to go back 45 years when Communist traitors could pose as loyal subjects, when women had no chance of fair advancement in the workplace, when child abuse was hushed up and when lots of children went to sleep hungry in cold damp rooms, with rats scurrying around the home environment.

A lot of mistakes have been made, but please - let's not hark back.

I'm no fan of India Knight - defender of the child neglect couple we are not allowed to mention - but essentially she is correct. These are underclass problems and result from their immiseration being lifted in the last few decades. No longer half-starved they gorge themselves on calories. No longer consigned to the work house if they don't work at back breaking or tedious toil, they don't work. No longer subject to the cane and the castigation of the priest they lead chaotic personal lives, seriously damaging their children in the process.

We need a new approach for the 21st century if we are to make any progress and that, I am afraid for you anti-statists, will involve lots of state action.

Essentially, we need to create a new structure of incentives and disincentives, every bit as effective as the old brutal methods, and we need to create an almost full time education system for children in these poorer areas.

Tom

I'm so glad you've reported this, it really was an awful article. This is especially so given that:

(1) Knight was expelled from Wycombe Abbey... for smoking cannabais :

"She was bundled off to boarding school, Wycombe Abbey, which of course she found bizarre. She made good friends, but never got used to the cold dormitories and only being allowed to have seven things on the top of your dressing table. She was expelled eventually for smoking pot, but managed to win an exhibition to Cambridge to read modern languages."

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,,338729,00.html

and

(2) Knight's ex-husband wrote this piece:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1852820,00.html

'Overage drug-taking... woo!'

To be honest, yesterday's entire Sunday Times - with Minette Marrin speaking of 'community decline', when she lives in London a place where you're more likely to be a victim of a terror attack than know five neighbours, and Simon Jenkins, celebrating high oil prices - demonstrated that neither right or left is the problem. British society is decaying from the top down..

Jon_Boy

I have always said that the biggest proponents of 'modern values' and issues like drug legalisation are often rich and well placed to survive their own personal excesses.

I have friends who are intelligent, middle classs drug users who are very sensible with their drug use.

Some have come unstuck but many know which drugs they will dabble in and which ones to stay clear of.

However many of these same idiots just have no concept that many other people in society are not so careful or self controlled in their hedonistic pursuits.

More importantly they don't have rich friends and relatives who can come to their rescue when things go wrong.

This sort of attitude seems to pervade our elite ruling class and covers all sorts of issues from drugs to the family. They are arragont enough to claim that they have the enlightened views which they condescendingly then impose upon the rest of us.

They also scynically use the media to programme the masses into accepting this so called enlightened world view.

Therfore I must congratulate melanie on this incisive piece of commentary. As I couldn't agree more with what she says.

elixelx

Any affinity with C19th social criticism in Ms. Knight's critique is NOT coincidental!

General Booth himself could not have analyzed Britain's social problem more subtly or accurately!

No doubt India also believes that the Salvation Army has the answers to the wickedness, idleness, laziness and drunkenness of the "underclass"!

mrjdude

lol, oh Melanie, all I can do is sit here and clap... There's a reason why I read a majority of your articles =).

Eddie Pratt

You neglected to mention the disproportionate affect of mass immigration and its twin, the relativist dogma of multiculturalism, on the working classes. The poor are on the front line. The rich reap the benefits. The poor suffer the consequences of lack of cultural cohesion, unfamiliar, disorientating mores, and fragmented social values.

Commondog

As Tiberius says, this should be shouted loud across the land.

I've never been very convinced by the old 'trickle down' effect, by which wealth is supposed to wend its gravitational way to the bottom feeders. But I think something of that nature is happening as regards the onerous consequences of so much air-headed legislation and the almost total denial of the notion of right and wrong.

The underclass are picking up a massive tab which the middle classes have totted-up. It's going to be difficult to put this right but a drastic re-think is essential. And not a one in parliament seems to have given it a thought.

I've jokingly suggested in the past, that perhaps Melanie might think of running for office.

After having read this, I'm going to have to insist.

Mike

Tiberius: Right on! Eloquence at its best......I've already pasted it to all the folk on my 'loop'. Melanie....you've 'made my Bank Holiday'! The sun is beginning to shine through the rain.

Eddie

A wonderful article. Melanie is a true socialist, really concerned about the plight of the underprivileged.

Water

Absolutely it a problem ubiquitous through out all echelons of society.

Ray

Like Tiberius, I believe Melanie has neatly summed up in two paragraphs precisely why we're in the state we are today.
I would only add that whilst is imperative that David Cameron and the Conservative Party grasp the 'broken society' agenda and make a start with it, let us be under no illusions: it has taken us over half a century of muddled thinking and misbegotten legislation to get ourselves into this mess; hence it going to take longer that one or two parliaments to get us back out of it again.

Ann

Absolutely. The glib nonsense spewed non-stop by smug, patronising twerps like India Knight & co. - a huge number of them prancing across the pages of the Guardian and the Sunday Times - is nothing but self-serving hypocrisy.

lizzy

I'm no fan of the multicultural relativism and the smugness of the haves either but... after all that economic rationalism, isn't it also that "the underclass" is superfluous to a post-industrial society's needs?

Frank Pulley

Hope someone has copied Melanie's post to Call me Dave. Just in case a slight mood of complacency has crept in to his mind-set. Stand by for blasting M; the sisters are not gonna like this. Get you Teflon frock laid out for battle stations.

Fabio P.Barbieri

"Culture is transmitted top-down, not bottom up".

From which one supposes that jazz, commedia dell'arte, French farce, musicals, and any amount of kinds of dance, poetry and folk music are all upper-class inventions? Complete nonsense. Culture moves both ways, and does so constantly. That is not to say that India Knight is not an ignorant twit blaming others for the failures of her own class. But Melanie is totally wrong if she thinks that the only way that culture develops is by imitation from whatever is fashionable among the richest - if nothing else, where would they get their fashions from?

Kiffa

Melanie, if you ever look at the comments to your blogs as Fraser does, I have watched you on Question Time etc. being sneered at for the last 10 years for your comments on society. To be honest, it looked lonely and you looked brave. I often wondered if I was the only one who agreed with you. Could I ask you what it felt like to be that deomnised, and whether you felt like a lonely voice etc. Another courageous person in this was Peter Hitchins. I think both of you were hugely censored as well: [in QT] it seemed to me that Dimbleby would allow you to be interrupted ceaselessly yet let the others run on unchallenged. (Maybe it is me being biased, but if I had been pernickity enough to deploy a stopwatch...?)

Kiffa

London Calling - you are wrong. That is yet more use of the State to regulate personal behaviour. I personally don't want the flipping State anywhere near me.
The true solution is through personal responsibility and to tell UK that their vaguely caring sharing ethos is just so much hogwash. To announce that people are free to conduct themselves as they choose - but to accept the consequences. Solution: media message as to the true cost of cocaine production on poor South Americans (for the vaguely caring to chew over). Random drugs testing at work, companies to be involved (after all, they want productive workers!). ANYONE with metabolytes in their system, publicity, and deeply punishingly heavy fines, to be ring fenced for rehabilitation of drug abusers. Let's see how cool drug taking stays after that.

Ian C

Field, I agree that the situation requires intervention on a mammoth scale, but this only need be State intervention initially – as facilitator, not eternal executor. If you are a statist, we non-statists would only argue about the means not the ends. Once ‘big brother’ ‘nanny state’ who whatever you want to call it takes full responsibility the individuals concerned lose theirs as does their neighbour to lend a helping hand. For this reason the state must only kick start, or preferably only help to kick start, initiatives taken over by local communities in some form. This requires opening space for social entrepreneurs (some of whom will prove to be frightful social engineers), but the responsibility has to be taken away from the state to sort peoples lives out and handed back to them. It will take at least a generation of it is done right from day one. That’s the effect of how invasive the state has become.

Jon-Boy, you are right about the elites who think they can be hedonistic while the rest can do what they like – it is a ‘let them eat cake’ attitude. On Melanie’s ‘Britain’s drug wars’ comment there is a classic example of someone who may not be one of the elite but is a successful ‘IT consultant and family man’ who justifies his own (past) behaviour by not ‘doing any one else any harm’. It is not just the elite. It is prevalent among the better off (some would regard them as elite) as an amoral, non-critical standard of ‘Im alright Jack so sod off and leave me alone’. It is a selfishness combined with a softness of brain induced by the comforts of the modern post-industrial western world. As Melanie says the "supercilious overclass, with its self-obsessed nihilism and the money to get itself out of trouble".

This all begins and ends with Education and the Family. Two areas of personal life that the State has meddled with so devastatingly since World War II. Its intent was honourable: its execution and impact appalling. Now that it has finally become so obvious hopefully we are at the stage when 'up with it we will not put'.

david skinner

No doubt in the time of William Wilberforce , or Lord Shaftsbury there were people who said the identical thing as those today who say “ I don’t think any wants to go back 45 years …Let’s not hark back .”
They are like the “wet behind ears adolescents” who view their parents as idiots and unenlightened .

Elton True blood (1900 -1994)said “One of the reigning tenets of our time is the extreme belief that all our problems are new. I would call this the disease of contemporaneity…associated with it is the really terrible conceit…. The notion that we living in such a fresh time and that wisdom has ‘come with us’ whereas nobody ever hast it before- this I find to bean an absolutely intolerable conceit.” Invariably they invoke the mantra,” twenty first century progress.” It’s enough to make my teeth turn to rubber.

All great social reformers in Western Europe have countered society’s orientation towards the slopes of Gadarene, not by harkening back 45 years but much further to the words of Jesus Christ.
You will not find the so-called enlightened anywhere near the places he went, amongst the outcast and dispossessed. They remain in their comfort zones arrogantly casting contempt on those who pursue justice and righteousness. Is the Christian an escapist, needing a crutch? It is they who quietly roll up their sleeves without fanfare, or obscene displays of charity concerts and red nose days and toil, like their master, amongst the heavy laden and burdened.

Commondog

Field.

Who's harking back to anything? We're on about something here and now.
And don't assume that anyone is 'anti-statist'. I'm just dissatisfied with the state of our State.

Ian G

Melanie! Your Jewish prophetic heritage is showing! Amos and co. would be proud of you. The NT writers would approve as well, especially James. This is what we need. Tiberius is right. It is succinct and should be widely publicised.

Corsair

Given that all our social pathologies are the result of 65 years and more of excessive state interference in society, the very last thing we need is more statism.

Leslie

I see the class system is still alive and well and living in Britain.Yeck.
It would seem that the classification goes something like this,according to Ms.Knight:the upper classes hold their booze better, and wear more clothes.
Definitely something for the under classes to strive for.

EyeSee

It is true that the decay has been happening for decades, but it really has found its true leaders in New Labour. It is what is seen as acceptable behaviour that trickles down and Blair and his band, lacking any morality have given the green light for 'anything goes'. The idiots of the Left tried to say Thatcher ran a country of selfishness. Not true. They said this because she created a country where success, endeavour was rewarded. Those who expected something for nothing (a core value of Labour voters) were aghast. And those who sought centralising power didn't want indepedent, confident citizens. However, Blair really did introduce the concept of selfishness to Britain and he led from the front; grab what you can. A governing Elte with no values created a country that followed them and stole, lied, drank and stabbed to their hearts content and Blair fiddled. Then left. Close call with the Israeli fighters though. Oh well, he can always console himself by getting us to buy him another house.

Water

The incremental approach Ian C is describing is logical. Though a state fuelled skeletal structure would need to be maintained as a safety relapse and hence why common dog seems to be talking sense. For ultimately it’s certain qualms with regards to the state that need to be voiced and addressed, though this is by no means conducive to being 'anti-statist'.
This said there are aspects of what field said that gladdens the heart i.e. that “Essentially, we need to create a new structure of incentives and disincentives, every bit as effective as the old…methods, and we need to create an almost full time education system for children in these poorer areas” for this is true.

Verity

1:36 p.m. It was the toxic socialists who took a wrecking ball to the social cohesion, especially at the lower end as they were so easy to buy off with welfare, of Britain. Not only did they make a vast tranche of them vassals of the state, but they wrecked their hundreds of years old cultural cohesion with the importation of improbable numbers of backward, primitive peoples, and elevated those people above the indigenes. It caused the owners of the country, passed down to them through their ancestors, to feel a sense of dispossession and anomie while it strengthened the incomers by according them special privileges.

France gives people from the Magreb money to return to the home of their ancestors. We should do the same. Money in return for a swab of DNA and a retinal photograph so they can't come back.

There should also be an end to the lunacy of free housing for people who jump on board. If they cannot prove they have the funds to support themselves, they should be turned back, as every other country in the world does. (This is all part of the socialist One Worlder agenda.)

And there should be no right to treatment on the NHS until that individual or family has contributed for five or more years.

David Cameron would never dare. But immigration was never for the national good; it was always a blunt intrument to gain ascendancy over the independent-minded British.

Commondog

Having now read fully the India Knight piece, it seems to me that her wider observations take a stance which is - at least potentially - similar to that of MP?

She (IK) doesn't castigate or denounce the 'underclass' but gives truthful instances of their condition. Moreover, she ends with a plea, quite impassioned, for an honest recognition of their plight and that, collectively, the country should busy itself with providing help.

These two women seem to be on the same side, and it's mine.

Frank Pulley

Commondog

You say, "I'm just dissatisfied with the State of our State."
Amen!

But 'twas ever thus. My dear old Granny used to say, "We're in a worse state than the Free State, and that's in s**t state!" There was witness continuity from 1802 in her testimony, because she also informed me that her granny declamed in a similar fashion; except "China", not "The Free State", was great, great Grannie's comparison, neatly updated by the extant forebear. Plus ca change ... as my paternal Hugenot ancestors would have said, 'cept they did something about it and got the hell out of their predicament. Now, most of us here just hang around and wait for our lot to worsen in passive, rather than active, protestantism within the prevailing culture described so exquisitely in Melanie's post.

Tiberius

You say: >" I don't think I've read a more succinct and eloquent summary of what has gone wrong with this country over the last 45 years."<

Then you are a recent newcomer to Melanie's work. She has previously articulated and encapsulated the State of the Nation a thousand times or more, in an erudite variety of ways, over a decade or two and never less eloquently.

Michael B

Succinct, eloquent and supremely condign - in each and every particular.

Water

I’m still not won over by every aspect of IK piece as I don’t feel that the“binge-drinking problem is largely an underclass problem” it is very much omnipresent though out every strung of society. I am led to this conclusion as I’ve seen individuals (who she would probably class as being of the over/upper class) in perpetually over-inebriated state, regurgitating recklessly like Goldblum at the opening of a vomitorium.

Also who’s to say that the individuals IK spotted outside the potato slaughterhouse weren’t from a good social background and weren’t ‘slumming it’ as is so often the case.

Dominic L-R

Commondog: India Knight does indeed have a similar stance on this to MP (at least in a willingness to state the problem). It seems what has really riled Melanie is the fact that India Knight has not taken the extra step to say that the problems of the underclass are the result of the philosophy of the 'overclass'. Melanie is quite right to point this out, but this doesn't detract from the fact that things like teen pregnancies are mainly a problem of the underclass. Why don't as many upper-middle class teenagers get pregnant? The simple answer is: ambition. They can see what life can offer them (university, career etc), and they seize it with both hands. That many teenage girls from the lower class see little on offer outside motherhood and a life on benefits is terribly, terribly sad, and an appalling indictment of education in this country.

Ellen

The cant of India Knight and all the other media luvvies like her has been tested to destruction over the last decade and yet she has the gall to still trot the same old rubbish out.

It's unreal.

London Calling

HOUSES OF CHARLIEMENT
We uncover scandal of lethal powder smuggled into Westminster under noses of gun cops Druggies snort coke yards from MPs in debates

http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16471110&method=full&siteid=93463&headline=houses-of-charliement-name_page.html

Ian C

There is much to agree with what has been said that is not in total agreement with Melanie and I would like to explore this a little.

Firstly Common Dog and Water, IK’s piece was good until the conclusions that she drew from what she had observed – not the sign of the sharpest mind. They were a leap from what she had described (perhaps why I can never read her of all the ST columnists). Part of her problem is that all are middle class now – unless you are underclass i.e. on benefits.

EyeSee is right that the culmination of all that is wrong came to us in the form of New Labour, but this should not let off the hook the wider elements of ‘non-Nu Labourial’ society that have also allowed the unhappy situation we are acknowledging, in the post 1960’s period and social deocratisation that we have all voted for to some extent, because we did not see it coming, and alot of it was fun anyway, and certainly the easiest way to go. Rather than lay all the blame at the feet of the ‘toxic socialists’ (Verity) – a sentiment many here would go along with – we need to accept that we have all played a part, to some extent or other, in the relative hedonism of our own lives. I know I have.

Verity

I have been banging on about this for several years, so no reason to stop now:

We will only reduce the size of the state when those interested in aggrandising the state are disenfranchised.

(Pause for clutching of hearts and outraged expressions.)

This means disenfranchising the entire public sector - increased, I believe, under Nulabour by 700,000. That's 700,000 adults, folks. Voters.

People who value the vote over job security and very generous pensions can quit and go into the private sector and get their vote back. I somehow don't think there'll be a crush at the door.

The other segment that shouldn't have the vote are the clients, who can vote themselves rises. People living in council-funded housing should not have the ability to vote for local councillors. People on full-time benefits or "disability" allowances would also be disqualified. As would those unemployed for more than six months.

We can do today in a flash with computers what in the past would have been much too cumbersome. People who become employed, for example, would have their vote restored instantaneously.

All those outreach coordinators and street football coordinators and diversity coordinators, counsellors, Urdu translators, all bereft of a vote! Warms the cockles of the heart, doesn't it?

(I'd exempt our armed services. And OAPs. Once I would also have exempted the police, but now they're part of the problem.)

Water

Ian C I would agree once again it's "not the sign of the sharpest mind" on IK's part, too many assumptions.

Augustus

I'm not sure it's the fault of any modern day 'overclass' that can take the blame for the cult of teenage binge drinking in Britain today. The alienation from social norms and mores in the uneducated class of youngsters stems from a lack of parental control and upbringing coupled with an attitude of disrespect for decent behaviour in general. This moral decadence feeds on itself from generation to generation. It can, and will, only deteriorate further until a new age of Enlightenment, Revolution, or World War runs its course through Western 'civilization' and triggers a renewed code of morality for its citizens to follow. This may produce a new form of enlightened bourgoisie who may be able to learn from the barbarisms and decadence of today.

Ian C

Verity,

If you stand for PM on your last piece as a manifesto, and leave out the thoughts on toxic sociliasts (ism yes, ists, no) you would get quite a following.

It won't escape the notice of many that it would amount to a return of the vote to a specific class of citizen - per pre-Reform Acts. It's back to that word classs again!

Would make for a very interesting election!

London Calling

I am re-posting this again as it was lost in trnaslation before my last post
London Calling
May 26th, 2008 5:05pm
HOUSES OF CHARLIEMENT

Kiffa
May 26th, 2008 11:38am

“London Calling - you are wrong. That is yet more use of the State to regulate personal behaviour. I personally don't want the flipping State anywhere near me”

I think you missed my point, in that no one is exempt from scrutiny when it comes to drug taking in toilets, whether its the underclass or any class, in which case India Knight spews hypocrisy on all levels when expressing her caring concern for the underclass’s.

The problem is, swabs for cocaine was also found in Westminster toilets and I have to question what effects drugs are having on the very people we expect to steer our country forward and represent us in voice, are drugs influencing poor judgment or shall we just accept that maybe some members of parliament need cocaine to get them through the day.

I don’t trust the councils either and yes I agree that using drug enforcements officers to sweep Kensington may be just another ploy to generate more money and a police state, but think about it, would you want to your daughter or son exposed to snorters when they go to toilets? we have to draw the line somewhere and the first place would be to accept that drug abuse although controlled by a few, it is not by the many whose lives are eventually ruined.

Without repeating myself, we need to open up the debate in an honest way, but India Knight approach was on its head, simply because she doesn’t get the bigger picture, of which we are all a part of and neither is she honest about her past substance abuse.

Parasite

Sorry, this is rubbish, the typical petit bourgeois autorant against "the toffs". I would've thought a week ago you'd have been laying into the left for those sort of puerile attacks on the upper class at Crewe, but now we see it from the right instead!

India Knight is right - binge-drinking is largely an underclass problem. Teen pregnancies are largely an underclass problem. Teenage crime is largely an underclass problem. Child neglect is largely an underclass problem. The stats bear it out. The question is why?

Melanie Phillips thinks it's because the "toffs" don't set a good example - as if today's chippy inverted-snob underclass look up to any hooray Henrys and Henriettas and copy them!

The real answer is because when you're poor and long-term unemployed you have no hope and no aspiration and don't give a damn if you fall into the pit of degeneracy. The answer is full unemployment. But then solving that would mean - horrors! - breach free-market dogmasm and we couldn't have that could we?

Frank Pulley

Parasite

Dogmasm? Is that canine coming?

Verity

8:42 Ian C - I didn't mention socialism in my post advocating a drastic paring of the electoral rolls.

It makes no sense for people who benefit from money from the state - whether they are unemployed or work for the state - should have a vote in how the state should be run. It should be run for the producers and contributors. Barring OAPs, who we would assume have been contributors one way or another all their adult lives.

Also, once the vote has been wrenched from the hands of the grasping classes, a flood of sanity will pour in.

It is simply wrong that the passengers on the system, rather than the paymasters, the taxpayer, should be raising the ante.

I would also take the vote, except in the House, away from MPs. No public sector employee should be in a position to vote himself a rise taken from the pockets of the taxpayers employed in producing wealth.

I would probably not oppose them voting in local government elections, provided they weren't employed by the council or a beneficiary of the council, like a social housing recipient.

The power of the non-contributors - the welfare class and the public sector workers - is destructive lunacy.

Water

Last week it was wrong, in that you shouldn’t hate a label a person a toff who was lucky in life and has money. Though this different and is by no means a puerile attack, she talking very much in a ‘cultural sense’ (she refers to the “champagne socialist intelligentsia”) i.e. that “All these problems, experienced disproportionately by those at the bottom of the heap, were foisted upon them by the overclass of which India Knight is a member”.

Also she’s not asking for an example to be set, she thinks that a large number of problems that are attributed to the so called “underclass” (and the poverty that is synonymous with them) can be attributed to the so called overclass.

This is not to say I agree with her out rightly, though, it must be said, the problem is ever present through out society not just attributed to the underclass (though it definitely has a strong presence there). As such I feel Mel’s piece is far from rubbish. Also though the so called underclass may not directly look up to the over class the media (which irrefutably supervenes upon their mind frames) is controlled and censored by them, as such they are inadvertently looked up to via means of their marionettes and cultural implements. Now I’m not saying IK is the next Murdoch but Mel is making a much larger statement here then merely reasoning in terms of toffs.

Stewart

Well said Ms Phillips. With regards the drugs issue the next Conservative govt must be prepared to utterly wreck the lives of a few to help the many. The left wing media will paint them as martyrs but only for upholding their belief that drugs should be legal. The police should be made to crack down (no pun intended) on celebrity drug culture. Pop stars on heroin should be jailed for years on first offence. City boys on cocaine, the same. The first year university student caught with his/her first spliff, 3 years jail time and a big fine. Introduce a culture of fear about drugs and the consequences of their use. Scare the parents about their childrens' prospects should they become involved in drugs. Ban anyone from public service with even the most minor drugs conviction. Destroy the Turkish gangs that control the heroin trade in the UK by fair means or foul. Send a message to the criminals who operate in the drugs trade in a language they understand.

Commondog

Parasite.

You concentrate on one thread only of MP's comment.

The greater part describes the role of the 'overclass' as not merely poor examples, but more seriously, as the actual perpetrators of the acts which have brought the former working class to such a degraded state. Some of these acts she mentions specifically.

I'm sure you meant that the answer lies in full employment and as far as that can be achieved, I agree. But it's not about to happen is it, for the very reasons cited: poor education/zero training, decimated families, soft welfare etc.

In short, so many are unemployable and are surplus to requirement.

All this compounded by the influx of workers who have been educated and trained at the expense of other countries, and who can afford to work at a fraction of the rate needed to service the long term housing costs we have gluttoned our way into.

Petit bourgeois? Not even the same postcode.

john doe

Stewart:

"The first year university student caught with his/her first spliff, 3 years jail time and a big fine."

Somebody should lock you up. This kind of twisted, bitter and deranged thinking is downright dangerous. Stalin would have loved you.Why don't you move to Saudi Arabia or China or some other totalitarian hell hole where you belong?

David Raynes

Spot on.
I think there is something very wrong about the India Knight article & the
identification of most of the ills as being with the "underclass".

All classes are involved in the mindless search for drunken or drugged oblivion. The culture that has betrayed the underclass is surely largely the product of educated socialism and Guardianistas who have developed the
welfare state to the point that it has brought social decay, the parentless & fatherless so called "families", brought the education system to the point
that no one can make an effort to get out of the underclass because it just is not possible in the way it was in the 50s & 60s. This article is absolutely spot on about the impact of the left inclined intelligentsia. The drunken ravings of the city boys with their big bonuses, drunkenness
and cocaine snorting are just as desperately mindless as the
"underclass" young teenagers on their White Lightning 8% alcohol cider, or the Scottish underclass on their "Bucky"-Buckfast Tonic wine, their
Temezepam and their smoking heroin. We should be ashamed that we produce these people. We let them down.

The drug culture that fed all this from the mid 60s onwards was not the product of an underclass it was the product of a supposedly educated
liberalism that never understood the long term effect of what it proposed. The educational failure is also systemic and deeply cultural now, with a government that does not know how to improve things. A school culture that sneers at excellence and achievement in many deprived areas, that hates competition, in studies or sport, that gives no hope, to those of the bottom of the heap, that they can improve themselves & achieve. The culture that reduces expectations, removes hope, that robs many of the most unfortunate and deprived kids of a disciplined education. Yes OK as one commentator says, some culture does rise from the bottom (music etc) but the core values of any society comes from the top. It is called leadership. Let us have some.

David Raynes

Spot on.
I think there is something very wrong about the India Knight article & the
identification of most of the ills as being with the "underclass".

All classes are involved in the mindless search for drunken or drugged oblivion. The culture that has betrayed the underclass is surely largely the product of educated socialism and Guardianistas who have developed the
welfare state to the point that it has brought social decay, the parentless & fatherless so called "families", brought the education system to the point
that no one can make an effort to get out of the underclass because it just is not possible in the way it was in the 50s & 60s. This article is absolutely spot on about the impact of the left inclined intelligentsia. The drunken ravings of the city boys with their big bonuses, drunkenness
and cocaine snorting are just as desperately mindless as the
"underclass" young teenagers on their White Lightning 8% alcohol cider, or the Scottish underclass on their "Bucky"-Buckfast Tonic wine, their
Temezepam and their smoking heroin. We should be ashamed that we produce these people. We let them down.

The drug culture that fed all this from the mid 60s onwards was not the product of an underclass it was the product of a supposedly educated
liberalism that never understood the long term effect of what it proposed. The educational failure is also systemic and deeply cultural now, with a government that does not know how to improve things. A school culture that sneers at excellence and achievement in many deprived areas, that hates competition, in studies or sport, that gives no hope, to those of the bottom of the heap, that they can improve themselves & achieve. The culture that reduces expectations, removes hope, that robs many of the most unfortunate and deprived kids of a disciplined education. Yes OK as one commentator says, some culture does rise from the bottom (music etc) but the core values of any society comes from the top. It is called leadership. Let us have some.

Ann Farmer

Melanie is spot on in her analysis as usual - and these patronising attitudes to the poor also dovetail neatly with those of the social Darwinists who will be standing ready to help the poor by sterilising them as public concern grows about high levels of repeat abortions.

Water

"The greater part describes the role of the 'overclass' as not merely poor examples, but more seriously, as the actual perpetrators of the acts which have brought the former working class to such a degraded state." that sounds about right.

PhilBest

I agree, as I usually do with Melanie. There is also an interesting angle raised by Charles Murray in an article called "Prole Models: America's Elites take their cues from the underclass". Celebrities tend to make a fetish out of dressing and talking like prostitutes and other members of the underclass, and young people of all classes tend to be influenced by that.

Frank Pulley

Well said David Raynes; and you should know! Keep up the good work, you and your associates must win, but there is a long struggle ahead, as well as all those past years on the front line.

Frank Pulley

Stewart

Watch out for John Doe, he's up for deporting people who don't agree with him - to Saudi Arabia or China. Marked my cards yesterday - yours today. Perhaps he works for the Immigration Department and wants to up his deportation quota for the month. You're lucky he didn't use the fascist word too, he's quite fond of that, anyone who doesn't inject, sniff or imbibe falls into the fascist catergory, but now he's moved on to 'Stalinist'. Any more from you and he'll bombard you with the fancy names of all the chemicals he uses that make him such a clever fella. His indignation is fearsome to behold if you suggest that the law should be enforced and suitable penalties meted out to lawbreaking, anti-social drugged up twats that he bats for.

Verity

Water - D'acuerdo.

Nick Kaplan

Parasite; have you ever considered putting your brain in gear before you speak? Why do you think those that favour the free-market don’t advocate full employment? It’s not because we are sadists who like to watch people suffer by languishing on the benefits system, fully dependant on a bloated state. I fact, if you had ever read anything by those that favour a free market e.g. Friedman, Hayek, Von Mises etc the first thing you would realise is how much value we place on hard-work and employment. The reason we don’t advocate full employment is because it is physically unattainable. Basic economics and any economist (left or right wing) will tell you there is a natural rate of unemployment termed frictional unemployment which is made up of people who are between jobs, trying to tackle this is impossible, like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Policies aimed at ending this type of unemployment invariably have negative consequences e.g. inflation. However this is the only type of unemployment free- marketers believe we should not attempt to tackle. Other forms of unemployment are a result of structural problems in the economy such as benefits payments that are too high, or a minimum wage which leads to a mismatch between labour supply and demand. Such problems can and should be tackled and free-market thinkers believe that if done correctly policies aimed at reducing such structural unemployment should be pursued. The trade-off between inflation and unemployment exists only in the short term, it is a myth that free-marketers want to sacrifice jobs for low inflation in the long run.

Ian C

A really worthwhile discussion - wish I had more time to indulge further. But most has been said and opposing views dealt with intelligently, not as a slanging match.

Stewart

Thanks for the warning Frank. But John Doe maybe 3 years for a first spliff is too harsh. Lets say 2 years. Final offer. They don't negotiate on these things in Saudi or China you know. The key thing is to threaten little Timmy or Tammy Scumbags chance in life if they deal/use drugs. The stigma of being a known drug user must be brought back amongst the chattering classes. I want to be able to officially look down my nose at my contemporaries who took drugs at uni and those who still do. Also more needs to be done to highlight the destructive effect that drug use has on the third world producer countries.

paul D

It seems somewhat surprising that no-one posting here appears to have any problem with what 'Verity' said, namely: '..with the importation of improbable numbers of backward, primitive peoples..',

'France gives people from the Magreb money to return to the home of their ancestors. We should do the same.'

Freedom of speech is obviously of great importance in arguing a case in an adverserial and indeed contentious manner; and silly name callings (eg fascist, right wing. toxic socialists) does not really advance any cause.

However, how does what 'Verity ' says differ from BNP policy; but more to the point perhaps she would like to actually clarify and justify (with some facts perhaps) her point. To whom is she referring (presumably not the Jews although the Veritys of the late 19th century would no doubt have said something similar about them).

Is she also seeking to exclude persons of colour not born here or even second generation from voting?

I would like to also presume (a dangerous thing to do) that her suggestion of disenfranchising sections of the community is more of a provocative thought experiment than a real policy. However, would this mean that all women claiming child benefit would be disenfranchised because this is a benefit received from the state?

john doe

Verity, Frank Pulley, Stewart and fellow punishers:

If you don't fancy relocating to Saudi Arabia...and who can blame you although ,as I said,you'd feel at home there with your fellow upright citizens and upholders of the 'law' ....then I suggest obtaining a position in the prison service. Working as a warden would allow you to really focus on whipping and terrorising into total submission your hated miscreants and..just imagine..the pleasure you would feel channeling all that ill will and desire to punish, crushing your fellow human beings into obedience and surrender to the 'law' of the land. Ah the gratification of instilling into others that essential understanding of what is right and wrong.The brutal triumph of the moral high ground. You'd love it! And you get to wear a uniform too.

Familiar Clown

Shouldn't it be the vile binge drinkers who should be relocated to Saudi Arabia to dry out?

john doe

Familiar clown:
If you actually did remove all the boozers from Britain, what would you have left? It's the culture. The spiritual and social heart of the two most watched TV shows (Coronation Street and Eastenders) is a pub.
Pretty soon the UK will have transformed into Saudi Arabia Mark 2 anyway...so not to worry, all this deviancy will be corrected.
The price of freedom is what freedom brings. We have a choice...control and suppression and punishment, which has never worked, or a more mature encounter with the chaos that has come about since the 60s, which is an inevitable stage in our progress to a more enlightened way of life. What some commenters are advocating here is a return to the patriarchal,repressive and authoritarian system that engendered the 60s rebellion in the first place.There is such a thing as a middle way that we can endeavour to follow instead.

George Steiner

Fifty some years of social decline as you say. One indignant article. What will change?

Frank Pulley

Ahhhh! The Middle Way, John Doe.
That will sort it all out.

George Steiner: "What will change?" Much and nothing, that is the paradox.

At least Melanie has the courage and passion to define the idiocy when it emerges and posit saner courses of action. Opinion plays its part and always has. I think the Speccy blogs are being very effective at lampooning the current crooks in power. Let's hope they will do the same to the next lot if they turn out to be as self-serving and inept as the current bunch of snouts in the trough - always supposing that the punters don't fall for another rejig from Brown or a shining new successor. I must admit I'm a bit of Giambattista Vico fan myself when it comes to the cycles of chaos, but lying back and waiting for the inevitable isn't as much fun as deluding oneself into believing that we can influence outcomes on the grand scale. And I'm old; you must be in God's waiting room, having been measured up for the shroud. :-) No offence meant, I always enjoy your commentary, you're not usually so negative. What's up doc?

Commondog

john doe.

I think what you portray there is what has come about as the result of the death of culture, not culture itself.

Just because something happens on a frequent basis which involves people, that doesn't give it status as a 'culture'. Yes, OK, there has to be a place for good old Jack Falstaff, otherwise where's the fun. But as David Brent would ask, "Where's your cut off point?"

You insist on this 'middle way' but you only offer the choice between a radical authority and total chaos. What is this middle way? All sounds a bit saffron-robe and dreamcatcher to me.

"Progress to a more enlightened way of life" You wouldn't have something a little more fleshed out would you?

There are by the way, no inevitable stages in our development. And whatever books you've read or whoever has told you about the sixties, you don't know as much about it as you make out.

Michael L. Wagner

Ages ago, Jesus remarked how the rich are never the advocates of the poor...

The World Bank "provides loans for the construction of roads, ports, mines, hydroelectric dams, oil wells and pipelines, and coal-fired stations mostly built, once again, by Northern corporations--who received nearly $5 billion in direct loans and guarantees for this purpose ... last year alone. REVENUES GENERATED RARELY REACH THE POOR. INSTEAD, THE POOR ARE OFTEN DISPLACED FROM THEIR HOMES, SUFFER LOSS OR DAMAGE TO THEIR NATURAL RESOURCE BASE, AND ARE PLACED IN THE FRONT LINE OF CLIMATIC DESTABLISATION THAT THE BANK'S SUPPORT FOR FOSSIL FUELS IS HELPING CAUSE."

Jack London (the writer) temporarily established himself among London's poor, coming away with the impression that poverty drives crime...

john doe

Common Dog:

Nobody told me about the sixties and I don't read books about that time. I was there right in the thick of it. Abandoned a convent and grammar school education, hit the road, became a hippie, got arrested in Paris in '68, went to all the rock festivals,took drugs, lived in communes, went to India, became a Buddhist. Now that's all behind me and I live a life you would regard as respectable and successful in a managerial position in education. Not in the UK. I got out.
So the reckless conclusions you jump to about me are the wishful assumptions of a closed mind. When I mention the sixties I know what I'm talking about.
When I say an enlightened middle way I mean a life of moderation and balance which can only come about through right education and self-knowledge. Part of that education is a healthy rebellion against authority, resistance to the persuasive power of the media that are poisoning the consciousness of young people and the rampant hypocrisy of various corrupt institutions that have led the country to the state it's in. Being able to think for yourself and cultivate a discerning mind characterised by critical original thought, a non-conforming but responsible open mind that is not susceptible to brainwashing and conditioning. The media are instruments of mind control and that's something that Melanie ignores in her critique of British society and its ills. Young people are victims of forces that have deprived them of the kind of intelligence I'm trying to describe.The 60s were inevitable and necessary after centuries of injustice, violence and exploitation but we've entered a period of disintegration, confusion, loss of self-belief and identity, and empty materialism. Our future depends on nurturing a love of truth, beauty and justice in children, not punishing them for being led astray by a cynical washed out establishment.They need healing, tough love and wisdom, not locking up and more brutalisation.
Some posters here see Islam as a threat to their freedom but then damn the same freedom with punitive measures. This is hypocrisy and is disturbingly reminiscent of the very same totalitarian mindset of the radical Islamists they purport to deplore.

andrew robinson

ive always admired you melanie but here you miss indias point - she says the underclass was made not born - like you she kbnows that they have been betrayed by an intelligent elite.....

Verity

[Apologies if this comes through twice.] 2:12 a.m. John Doe - "Our future depends on nurturing a love of truth, beauty and justice in children, not punishing them for being led astray by a cynical washed out establishment. [Or venal, conniving, power-hungry socialists posing as humanitarians.] "They need healing, tough love and wisdom, not locking up and more brutalisation."

Awwwwww. And hug a puppy! I insist!

Frankly, they're brutal already, so your "brutalisation" isn't germane to this argument.

"Now that's all behind me and I live a life you would regard as respectable and successful in a managerial position in education."

No, that disqualifies you from "respectable and successful" in real life although you may get a constant pay cheque in educational la-la-land.

"This is hypocrisy and is disturbingly reminiscent of the very same totalitarian mindset of the radical Islamists they purport to deplore."

Ooooooh! Scary disapproval by a socialist!

Whenever they punch in long streams of Latinate words, that means uppity.

Marwan

For an understanding of the sheer lunacy of the left wing educational establishment I would recommend the new report on gangs and gang culture from the Dept of Children Schools and Families available on www.teachernet.gov.uk.For sheer meanigless nostrums it takes some beating (as should labour MP's)

Nick Kaplan

Marwan, for an understanding of the lunacy of the left wing educational establishment one only has to read John Doe’s blog at 10.27pm. One wonders whether he’s still on the drugs (by the way john I also support legalisation, but probably for different reasons, I myself have never used drugs), surely one would have to be drugged out of their mind to come out with that nonsense.

paul D

It is interesting that the attacks on John Doe coming from the right appear to be made with as closed a mind as you often get on the left. (I don't include 'Verity's' contribution as she does not attempt to engage in sensible debate - just scream the word 'socialist' and she thinks she's scored a point.)(She also does not seem bothered to respond to the charge of making what are clearly racist comments).
I am not suggesting that I agree with all or much of what John Doe says. However, he has gone to the trouble of making some considered points and buried away in there are some points that I think Melanie herself would have some sympathy with.

As I may have mentioned before some of these postings here increasingly resemble some of the more depressing postings on the Guardian's 'Comment is Free' site.

Veriity

Paul D - What does the D stand for? Drip?

"However, how does what 'Verity ' says differ from BNP policy;" ... Well, around a hundred percent would be close.

..." but more to the point perhaps she would like to actually clarify and justify (with some facts perhaps) her point. To whom is she referring (presumably not the Jews although the Veritys of the late 19th century would no doubt have said something similar about them)." What are you on, my good man? You make a up a stream of rubbish (reading comprehension not one of your strengths, then?) that you claim I wrote when I didn't, and then affect outrage. Sixth form debating society, Paul Drip.

"However, how does what 'Verity ' says differ from BNP policy; but more to the point perhaps she would like to actually clarify and justify (with some facts perhaps) her point. To whom is she referring (presumably not the Jews although the Veritys of the late 19th century would no doubt have said something similar about them). I see that, for you, the Sixties never really went away. Do have all John Lennon's CDs? "Imagine" ...

"Is she also seeking to exclude persons of colour not born here or even second generation from voting?" Why would I want to do that, and from what "logical" trajectory do you derive this bizarre assumption? Incidentally, I don't like that phrase "persons of colour". It's patronising and rather precious and Victorian, don't you think? Why not just refer to legal immigrants and their descendants? Why mention their pigment? Seems a wee bit obsessive. Or perhaps you see black Britons as ammunition in your endless fight to impose the hippy New World Order.
You socialists really do salivate poison, don't you?

Paul D continues in full sail: "However, would this mean that all women claiming child benefit would be disenfranchised because this is a benefit received from the state?"

Yes indeed. The welfare system would have to be wrenched from Gordon Brown's febrile,fidgety grasp and the tax credit system re child benefits axed. He has made even productive middle class parents clients of the state. I'm sure it was an accident. However, yes, once the system is overhauled to reflect a sane mind (in other words, not a singer of The Internationale), every mother who was dependent on the taxpayer to feed, clothe and house her children would be disenfranchised until she was self-supporting. This would mean she couldn't go down to the polling booth and vote herself a rise out of the revenue-producers'pockets.

Still on the plangency known as Paul D, he accuses me thusly: "She also does not seem bothered to respond to the charge of making what are clearly racist comments."

It's a big world out there, and I know that you realise this because you have referred to Saudi Arabia! So you know there are other countries in the world. I live in one of them. Different time zone. I don't make racist comments because it's stupid. Jumping up and down and throwing out accusations, like apes throwing poo, doesn't give them legitimacy.

I notice the ever-balanced and urbane Paul D closes his last post with a smarmy suck-up to our hostess.

Commondog

john doe.

Well you certainly put me right there with the sixties thing. It was the naivety of your ideas that foxed me, usually indicative of a mind much nearer to the start of its development.

I wasn't a million miles away though. The spiritual bagatelle all present and correct. And you "got out" from the UK. Interesting phrase. How are things in Etherealia?

Thanks for the fuller details, but quite what most of it was trying to do?... must be me and my closed mind.

I don't think you've quite twigged the general direction of what goes on back here though:

"The media are instruments of mind control and that's something that Melanie ignores in her critique of British society and its ills."

On this one you miss the target by a mile. If you just check back and close read, you'll see that a recurrent theme is precisely the insistence that the media are heavily involved in 'mind control'.

Lastly, I'm puzzled. So much of your comment refers to Saudi Arabia as an authoritarian hellhole (that many of us should experience). Then this belter:

"Some posters here see Islam as a threat to their freedom but then damn the same freedom with punitive measures. This is hypocrisy..."

Well if THAT ain't hypocrisy, it'll do till some gits here, as the man says.

I don't know what this thing is you have with brutalising children. Just a smokescreen if you ask me.

And pretty pungent smoke it will be I'm sure.

john doe

All these lads and ladettes, yobbos and wasters you all loathe on here so much are indeed brutalised...by the government through neglect, by the media through manipulation and brainwashing, by their lousy dumb parents or no parents,by corporations bombarding them with brand fever and envy for the wealthy, and by the intolerant,bigoted,morally decrepit and superficial nitwits personified by most of the commenters on here, who clearly have a very limited experience of life and the world but insist on arrogantly pontificating from their cosy armchairs as if they know what is going on.
And yes I 'got out' of England...'like lice abandon a dead animal' And when I read some of the comments here I am reminded why.A bunch of provincials.

Ian C

I think I spoke too soon, seeing what followed my last comment!

Lance Grundy

Excellent post Melanie. Thanks for taking the side of those at the bottom of the heap.

India says of the underclass in the article you link to “I know they’re hard to love…”

Err…no India, they’re not. It isn’t their fault that they’re the way they are. The people who are “hard to love” are those who have brought all this about and done this to them. Those at the top of society who have recklessly promoted a life of rampant, selfish, individualism to those without the resources to indulge themselves in such a fashion.

But hey, who cares? Its all pretend for the liberal-left and the glitterati. They don’t have to live with the appalling consequences of actually living out the degenerate fantasies they promote - their wealth cushions them from that. They never spare a thought about what the effect will be when the debased lifestyles they seek to glamorise are practiced by those less fortunate than themselves. A sort of noblesse oblige in reverse. They make me sick - like Marie Antoinette playing ‘farm maid’ in Versailles.

Verity

Lance Grundy - Interesting post - especially the Marie Antoinette analogy.

However, I don't entirely agree with you. I think the scheming classes are a good deal more thoughtful than you give them credit for. The destruction of Britain society and British values has been deliberate. This is also why large numbers of people from a society which has nothing in common with Britain and Christianity, or the Christian-Judao tradition, and who, in many instances don't speak our language and are encouraged not to learn it, have been imported: destabilisation.

They are trying to destroy the nation-state and so far are making a fair fist of it. Don't forget, these are the people who sing The Internationale. One Worlders.

Nick Kaplan

Verity; you might find this an interesting read, it’s a little extreme, but nonetheless an interesting analysis of the cultural destruction Gramscian leftist are apparently trying to bring about: http://www.candidlist.demon.co.uk/hampden/culturewar2.pdf

sohbet

Thanks for your work.

TGGP

Was there ever a time when it wasn't the underclass that disproportionately had social pathologies? Even ignoring any other factor, social pathologies will tend to bring one down to and keep one at underclass level. Also, see Derbyshire on "culture", as well as Is it Really Bee-Cause of Culture?