Sunday, December 04, 2011

How Bad Things Really Are


So, things are really bad. Average income is now back to what it was in those desultory, poverty-ridden days of, um, 2002. That explains why, in the block of social housing I was looking at the other day, the first sign that people have moved in is the satellite dish on the back wall. Yes things are bad for quite a lot of people, and some of us (but only a minority) are thinking about cutting our Christmas spending from the eye-watering sums of previous years to sums which make only one eye water.

There is still plenty of money to go round. Lets just not make the mistake of outsourcing all responsibility for justice and generosity to the government. Or of mistaking feelings of sympathy and angst for 'the poor' with actually doing something about poverty. It would be tragic if we persuaded ourselves that we were all so strapped that being our brothers keeper would have to wait for an economic upswing.

Ht Liberal Burblings.

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