Comments on: Jeremy Hardy thinks… about entitlement

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:08:42 +0000

Great article. Now take them to task on the “work hard’” and “want to get on.” Rhetoric. Someone needs to ask them to define what they mean. That would really put the cat among the pigeons.

By: Gordon Wilson (mr)

Gordon Wilson (mr) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:26:11 +0000

Mr Hardy & greensalt are both correct (imho), as there is no proof needed , when all public forays by these puplic-frontmen/puppets in public discourse are into well controlled and auditioned dislay showcases like Questiontime etc.All Scripted!!.
All controlled ,these aren’t even showcases ( worth a toss ,as they say!), I assert, In other words , both , guy wigmore and stephen ,should both go and boil you’re collective heads!.

By: greensalt

greensalt — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 21:23:05 +0000

Dear, dear, it appears Jeremy Hardy has been ambushed by two ‘pedantry trolls’ who are hair-splitting on his obviously fair-minded and completely viable viewpoint that it is breathtakingly hypocritical that the very politicians who accuse the poor of a ‘sense of entitlement’ are themselves titled, or heirs to titles, and vast wealth too, born into entitlements.

Did Cameron or Osborne make their own fortunes through hard work? No: they both inherited their wealth. Therefore, they didn’t earn it through ‘hard graft’! And how did Cameron’s father secure his fortune? By being a stockbroker and spending his life siphoning off his money to offshore tax havens! Although, apparently, the PM and Chancellor both find tax avoidance and evasion ‘morally repugnant’.

As for IDS, relative to his mostly upper-class Etonian party, perhaps, he is from a slightly less auspicious background. However, it’s hardly an inauspicious one by any stretch: his father was an RAF Group Captain, his mother was a ballerina (as opposed to ‘dancer’), and IDS went to Sandhurst – the ‘Eton of the army’ – and became an officer in the Scots Guards (hence his intolerant, officious, militaristic and highly patronising approach to ‘debate’). He is also a distant relative (ironically) of socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw. Sadly though the only trait he has in common with Shaw is a hypothetical leaning towards eugenics. IDS is, in this sense, doing his level best currently as head of DWPoundland to wipe out poverty by wiping out the poor through the welfare caps.

Hardy’s dialectic here is crystal clear and absolutely right: those who are born into a culture of entitlement – the aristocracy – have the least moral right to accuse anyone else of having a sense of entitlement, least of all the poorest in society.

You will find that most wealth is accrued through speculation and investments, neither of which constitute by any definition ‘hard work’. Capitalism is all about getting rich quick through the least effort possible.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 23:26:59 +0000

Poor people good, rich people bad.

Isn’t there more to socialism than that?

By: guy wigmore

guy wigmore — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:11:46 +0000

IDS is hardly a “born-to-rule hooray” – he went to a catholic secondary school, then Navy training college. His father was an RAF office and his mother was a dancer. It’s quite easy nowadays to look this stuff up.

Also, who is it you feel is “most deluded?” You can’t seem to make up your mind – is it the arrivistes or the rich who believe their forebears acquired their wealth through hard graft you dislike more?

By the way, I’m self-employed and in your opinion I am one of those poor deluded souls who believes that my earnings are something I’ve earned.