He said:
We as a society have been far too sensitive. In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said. We have seen a decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification. Instead we prefer moral neutrality, a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong behaviour. Bad. Good. Right. Wrong. These are words that our political system and our public sector scarcely dare use any more. Of course as soon as a politician says this there is a clamour – “but what about all of you?” And let me say now, yes, we are human, flawed and frequently screw up. Our relationships crack up, our marriages break down, we fail as parents and as citizens just like everyone else. But if the result of this is a stultifying silence about things that really matter, we re-double the failure. Refusing to use these words – right and wrong – means a denial of personal responsibility and the concept of a moral choice.
David Cameron (via anarchaia)
You want to know why we’ve seen a “decades-long erosion of responsibility” David? You couldn’t have a better recipe for rising crime and social decay than ripping the industrial heart out of a community and then leaving it to rot. This demented and wicked act, borne out of the Chicago School and the worship of Milton Friedman, has been repeated throughout the world and always with the same result.
In Glasgow, as with my own city of Sheffield, the resulting resentment of this disastrous encomium to capitalism was left to ferment for a couple of decades by a polity that has now fallen so far wide of reality that it is irrelevant to all but Nick Robinson et ses amis. The urban regeneration of Glasgow city centre in the 1990s never reached here and the concomitant social problems that always come whenever an entire community is thrown overboard spreads its tendrils far and wide. Boarded shops and broken windows; drug abuse and despair; alcohol and violent crime; life expectancy below that of a resident of the Gaza Strip; twenty Bensons and a scratchcard (“How will you feel if you win?”) and above all the feeling that the good times are happening somewhere else.
This is the reality for the residents of Glasgow East and from this fractured society come the feral, illiterate, innumerate children of those broken homes, who have seen what society served their parents and are now so filled with hatred and confusion and incomprehensible rage, that they wander the streets in gangs looking for something to fuck or fight.
This is the legacy his party bequeathed to Glasgow East from their last period in office, a legacy built upon by the New Labour project, seriously relaxed about the rich and pretty fucking comatose about the poor, whom they knew would have nowhere to go as the triangulation began to squeeze. And whilst they are not standing in Glasgow East, almost everywhere else come the fascists, knocking on doors, crowbarred into their suits, with undiagnosed colorectal problems causing a persistent itch, drawing from the same deep well of hatred as Cameron himself hoped to do just three years ago, when he penned one of the most sinister party manifestos of recent times.
No, I don’t need a lecture on self-discipline and respect from a bully. I don’t need a lecture on responsibility from somebody who had it handed to him on a plate. I don’t need a lecture on instant gratification from a political party whose entire ethos, as with that of the world from which it draws much of its funding, is predicated on us buying more and more of that which we do not need. I don’t need a lecture on morality from a fucking PR man. I don’t need a lecture on “fail[ing] to say what needs to be said” from a man who used immigrants as a punch bag when it suited him.
No, I don’t need a lecture from David Cameron.
This piece was also published at Liberal Conspiracy.
July 11, 2008 at 5:25 pm |
I don’t know anything about Cameron, so I am not commenting on your personal feelings about him and his policies. I am curious if someone else had said such things, what would you have thought?
You may not need a lecture… but do you not think that some people do? I damn sure think a lot of people need a swift kick in the pants.
“drug abuse and despair; alcohol and violent crime”
Are these not things that individuals choose to do? Of course they are more likely to do them due to the environment they live in (Cameron acknowledges this), but people do have an influence in the environment that they exist in, and how it evolves.
July 11, 2008 at 6:56 pm |
I think the point, which you may have missed, is that delivering a “swift kick in the pants” only gets us so far when dealing with a legacy of social and urban despair that stretches back decades.
None of this should obscure the point that, to a certain extent, we must all take responsibility for our actions and that our personal spheres must have an element of self-determination if we are to live a fulfilled life. Environment almost certainly plays its part, but if we’re not going to deal with the causes of decay then we’re really just wasting our time.
If David Cameron had instead acknowledged the damage done, not just by his party, in areas such as Glasgow East, and were his words to presage a real and serious change in attitude to the real and serious problems that have resulted in an entire swathe of society falling off the radar, then we might have cause for hope.
The reader will see that I cannot adequately answer your first question without initially creating a series of hypothetical straw men with which to argue, but my point would remain the same in almost all circumstances.
July 12, 2008 at 2:06 am |
Mr EG, can we use this as a guest post on Liberal conspiracy blog? Do you mind emailing me if you’re ok with that?
July 14, 2008 at 7:04 am |
All that you say is true, and most especially the tone that you say it in is most definitely true, nevertheless I still don’t mind Cameron saying these things but I just wonder who he is saying these things to?
If it’s to the grasping, self-interested, self-obsessed narcissistic, hubristic liberal middle-class then good. It’s about time they shaped up, stop being such stupid, thoughtless individual consumers, subsidy swallowing, greasy pole climbers and become, well, more socialist – to spare a thought and a kind act toward their fellow man.
However I suspect this is not who is aiming at. I suspect his aim is to begin to wash his hands of past political failure by his kind and shift responsibility onto us (the working poor and the least economically active). It’s our fault really. We weren’t responsible enough. We only worked hard, paid the punitive council tax, privatized gas, water, electric et al. We only obeyed the law, and lived in further squalor and deeper deprivation which of course only further underlined the
“decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification”
If Cameron spells out more clearly who is speaking to, then I really don’t mind him speaking. If he targets the above as well as the market men of the square mile and ad agencies, privatization and social policies (as you said) target driven quantitative analysis rather than human aspirational qualitative analysis, if he comes out and says it is wrong for banks to post half yearly profits in the billions but to be bailed out by the working poor’s taxes when their greed and hubris overtake them, if he comes out and says that it is right for those that can to contribute a little more to help those that can’t (those working poor again) to try to get out (and there’s a thousand ways in which that can be done) if he comes out and says this and oh so much more, then I’ll be happy to listen and post him my vote. But I shall not hold my breath as I’m just a mite suspicious. I just doubt he has the balls to take responsibility himself and say ‘yup, we’re to blame. Our economic and social policies were deeply flawed and misguided and have inexorably led to the
“decades-long erosion of responsibility, of social virtue, of self-discipline, respect for others, deferring gratification instead of instant gratification”.
Will Cameron take responsibility for his and his heirs past, and start naming and shaming those that are responsible? I hope it starts a debate, though I agree, it does leave a nasty taste and a frown on my mouth that a toff tory boy is the one that feels best able to kick start this particular debate.
October 6, 2008 at 10:58 pm |
I nicked this block of text for my collection of quotes because it perfectly encapsulates our society’s misanthropy.
” . . . from this fractured society come the feral, illiterate, innumerate children of those broken homes, who have seen what society served their parents and are now so filled with hatred and confusion and incomprehensible rage, that they wander the streets in gangs looking for something to fuck or fight . . . ”
Your prose is beautiful.