Luck prevents equality

It's not easy to know whether some people are lucky and some unlucky. I can point to examples of people I have met who seem always to land on their feet and others who get the rough end of the deal more than half the time. In fact I once met someone who had won both the jackpot and the second prize on the national lottery, albeit not on the same day. One might be inclined to think that person extraordinarily lucky. On the other hand an old friend of mine bought his first flat just before the massive property price crash of 1989-1992 and managed to lock himself into a fixed-rate mortgage just as variable rates started to plummet. One might be inclined to think him blighted.

If truth be told, these things are bound to happen some time so these people are statistical proof rather than statistical freaks. Good luck and bad luck happen to us all at different times of our lives and I am sure it is a matter of pure chance whether our overall score in the luck casino is positive or negative. That is not to say that you cannot affect your chance of good things happening. For example, working hard and being polite both bring rewards that are not received by the indolent and rude, but that is nothing to do with luck it is a matter of cause and effect. Luck is a very different thing. It is all about factors that are beyond your control.

I am sure I have been very lucky in my life. Three examples spring to mind.

When I was first called to the Bar I couldn't afford to go into pupillage (the year-long apprenticeship you have to undertake in order to be able to practice as a barrister) because it was unpaid in those days and I had no money. I was taking a medicinal beverage one evening and overheard someone say that a particular private law college regularly recruited new lecturers at that time of year. I applied and was given a chance to prove myself. Had I not been at that particular watering hole on that particular evening and had I not been within earshot of that particular conversation, it doubt that I would have even thought of applying for the job.

After three years teaching full-time I went into pupillage and, after serving my year, applied for a place at the same set of chambers. I had one serious competitor whose support was much diminished by his strongest supporter dying just a few weeks before the decision was made whether he or I should become the junior practitioner. Had that man not died I suppose I might have been chosen anyway but my passage was eased by an event entirely outside my control.

In 1993 the London property market was at rock bottom. Two of my best friends owned the property that is now FatBigot Towers and needed something larger. They found the perfect place not far away so I helped them by buying their old shack. Since then the market has shot up to a level that is, to my mind, utterly absurd. Nonetheless, by being in the right place at the right time I have a capital asset with a current market value far above what it would otherwise be. And, to add a further twist, the government's desperate desire to chase the homeowner vote means policies have been targeted at maintaining artificially high prices. Were I to scale-down now, as I might, I would make a nice profit. Not so had I bought, say, twenty years earlier and faced the 1989 recession rather than the 2009 recession.

These three examples of personal good fortune highlight three different aspects of luck. The first was entirely a matter of being in the right place at the right time - the opportunity I enjoyed would simply never have appeared otherwise. The second was a matter of enjoying an advantage due to an external event that disadvantaged someone else. The third is a matter of government policy happening to benefit someone in my position whilst causing problems for others (particularly younger people who cannot afford to buy their own home). The common theme is that the events from which I benefited were outside my control.

One of the most serious flaws in egalitarian political theories is that they can only work if they negate luck. How can they do that? One or two obvious steps can be taken such as abolishing the national lottery, the football pools and all other forms of gaming and gambling. It doesn't take a genius to work out that betting will just go underground if that were done. But that covers only one aspect of the effect of luck, namely businesses that trade on people seeking luck.

Nothing can be done to prevent someone being in the right place at the right time such that he enjoys a benefit that others might be better qualified for but never hear about. Nothing can be done to combat the good fortune of a competitor suffering a blow through an external event that is no fault of his.

Everything can be done about government policies that provide a benefit to some but not others, however nothing will be done about them for so long as there are votes in that benefit. Current policies to maintain house prices at artificially high levels suit me to a tee despite being implemented without the intention to deliver any benefit to me at all. Maintaining house prices is not aimed at me, it is aimed at the potential Labour voter who bought at the height of the market and will be very angry and disillusioned to find himself with a home worth less than the amount he borrowed to buy it. Nonetheless it is not the man who borrowed £125,000 to buy a house now valued at £125,000 who gains, it is a crusty old fart like me who bought many years before, saw the nominal value of his home rocket because of the false credit boom and now sits on lots of equity because the government is scared of losing the vote of the other chap.

Policies aimed at combatting luck will always have consequences. They might prevent the chap with the £125,000 house suffering a capital loss today. That's fair enough, I wish him no ill-will. But they will maintain my windfall profit and will make no difference to the youngsters for whom a £125,000 house is a fanciful dream. Would it be fairer for Mr £125,000 to face a 25% fall in capital value while he has 20 years to pay it off or hope for an up-turn, me to face a 25% fall in capital value and the youngsters have a sporting chance to own their own home? I don't know. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, I'm inclined to think it would.

Very much the same point applies to other policy areas. Combatting discrimination on the grounds of pigmentation or gender is one thing. That seeks to achieve equality of opportunity. True equality of opportunity can never be achieved because there will always be someone who overhears a job opportunity while someone better qualified does not. And there will always be someone who cannot put forward their most important reference because the referee fell under a number 23 bus just before putting pen to paper. What can be done is to level the playing field in other ways.

When you go one step further and seek to achieve equality of outcome you are doomed to failure. Not only can it never happen because different people have different abilities, but you simply cannot legislate against good or bad luck. Some idealists think you can. They think decisions should be taken by an elite group of the super-wise or be delegated to a body charged with applying the criteria laid down by the super-wise. The problem? It's obvious, those who propose the plan appoint themselves to be the super-wise - it can't be anyone else because it was their idea. They might start out with the very best of intentions but they do not and cannot have minds unimpeded by personal preferences and consciences unable too resist temptations wrapped in flattery.

Far better to face reality and accept that some people win the lottery and some don't, some make good bargains and some don't, some are in the right place at the right time and some never are. That's life.

A thought on discrimination

I suppose it is inevitable that every government will try to defend itself by putting as good a gloss as it can on the state of things under its stewardship. Equally inevitable is that some aspects of life are bound to improve under a government of any party, and a government in power for a decade or more will be able to point to quite a number of such issues.

Of course whether a change is an improvement is a matter of taste. Some things that were generally perceived to be improvements in one age might be treated with utter derision a generation or more later and be reversed to (perhaps temporary) universal acclaim. How many "improvements" are actually caused by government is always open to debate.

Looking back over the last thirteen years it is probably fair to say that far fewer people today are refused employment because of their pigmentation, gender or choice of intimate companion. There can be no doubt that each of these "improvements" was intended to be a result of the massively expensive programme of attempted social engineering undertaken by the present government, but no one can measure the effect government policies have had. Perhaps they sped-up the process of open-mindedness, perhaps it would have happened anyway - after all, the acceptance of homosexuals and those of dusky hue progressed at accelerating pace throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

I have long been doubtful of the power of government to do anything other than steer the agenda gently in one direction or another on such social issues. Introducing laws to make it an offence to discriminate on the grounds of gender or so-called race must, I suspect, have had an effect because they brought to the issue to the fore and required employers to think a little more about whether someone was suitable to fill a vacancy. We are a generally law-abiding people, even if we do not like a particular law, and I suspect many an employer who resented having legal limits put on who he might accept or reject for a job nonetheless complied with the law when previously he might have acted differently.

Yet there is only so much that can be achieved by such laws. If they are to be effective I believe they must tap into an existing chain of thought. I remember hearing many a narrow-minded bigot in the 60s and 70s say he wouldn't want a black family in his street or a black colleague at work because they are different or untrustworthy or inherently idle or dishonesty. And there was always a "but". It was always the same "but" ... "but I don't mean Mr Patel at the Merrymart down the road, he's a lovely bloke, keeps that shop open to nine at night, very convenient, much better than old Frank who had it before him" or "but I don't mean Winston next door, he's a lovely bloke, cuts old Doris's hedge, lovely family" or "but I don't mean Mr Khan at the curry house, he's a lovely bloke, does great food he does and he gave our Sharon a job in her school holidays". And so it goes on.

The "but" is nothing more or less than "but those I know are actually just the same as us". And how true it is. All over the world countries are full of the clever and the thick, the idle and the industrious, the honest and the crooked, albeit with a different balance between these various elements, just as they are full of the old, the young and the middle aged. Anti-discrimination laws are just part of a package of factors that steer us towards greater acceptance of people from backgrounds different from our own. To my mind the most important factor in persuading people not to discriminate unfairly is exposure to those against whom they might be inclined to act. The unknown is always slightly scary, it become far less scary when it ceases to be unknown. As time passes we will all experience people from a wider and wider variety of backgrounds. The unknown will not just be countered by knowledge of one Mr Patel, one Winston or one Mr Khan but by knowledge of dozens of people from varying backgrounds.

That is not to say that such knowledge is a one-way street. When immigrants from a particular country are drawn almost entirely from the bottom of the pile the impression they give is unlikely to be positive. That might well be unrepresentative of their country's native inhabitants as a whole, but the evidence available to us will inevitably lead to certain conclusions being drawn whether or not they are fair. We can only form views based on evidence and the quality of the evidence dictates the range of conclusions we are likely to draw.

Similarly, some countries have a greater culture of self-sufficiency than others. In some you work or you starve, in others you work or you get a hand-out from the UN. In some you work and have the chance to improve your standard of living steady throughout your life, in others you can never expect more than mere subsistence. You would be hard-pressed to find someone from Thailand who is content to draw benefits. Not only is their economic system one of work-or-starve, but their culture is that living on the result of another's work is shameful. Not so if you are from, for example, Somalia - a country so poorly managed that it is dependent on vast amounts of aid simply to feed its people engenders a culture of dependency. Not just that, but work is not rewarded there for ordinary people, they cannot hope for anything more than subsistence. It is hardly surprising that they do not understand that working in the UK can produce a standard of living far higher than benefits could ever give them - it is just a different world, a world wholly outside their experience. When you also consider that the standard of living they enjoy here on benefits is higher than they could ever expect in their homeland, it is hardly surprising that there is no work ethic.

No amount of law or regulation will prevent people seeing what is before their eyes. It can, if aimed carefully, point their eyes in a different direction so that they see something that was previously out of focus, but it cannot turn apples into oranges.

There will always be justified discrimination against some immigrants because the culture of their country of origin gives rise to a fair presumption that they are unlikely to be industrious. It would be wrong to make too much of this point, it can only ever be a presumption. However, all true presumptions are based on evidence not on irrational prejudices. Once anti-discrimination policies seek to contradict evidence they are bound to result in practices that are both economically and socially harmful. It is one thing to make the previously unknown known, it is another entirely to pretend that what is known as a fact is actually a fiction.

Are the Conservatives moving in the right direction?

With the Budget speech now only a couple of days away I sit here on Sunday night full of roast pork and delighted that, at long last, there appears to be a difference of substance developing between the economic policies of our main parties. In particular, the Conservative front bench is now making increasingly loud noises about the need to make severe cuts in government expenditure. They are not yet, however, saying the one thing I long to hear.

The Chancellor and his Shadow have been setting out their stalls in advance of Wednesday's Budget, there is quite a nice summary in a piece on the BBC website (here). After a gap of a few weeks following the refusal of the G20 leaders to endorse Gordon Brown's ludicrous call for yet more non-existent money to be used to "stimulate" economic activity, it appears that the spendthrift government is reverting to type. We will see on Wednesday how Mr Darling chooses to package it. What is already clear, however, is that he will continue to borrow and spend in the belief that government can make the world of business take risks it does not want to take. His shadow, George Osborne, is emphasising the need to reduce government borrowing to prevent it being a albatross around the country's neck for generations to come.

Both my regular readers will know that I am no fan of debt. Debt is self-induced inflation causing things you buy to be more expensive than their sticker price because you have to add the interest payable on that price to get the true amount payable. That is as true for a government as it is for an individual. We appear to be facing the prospect of the government borrowing in the region of £150billion over the coming year; it could be a little less or an awful lot more but it cannot be a lot less. They will not able to rummage down the back of chair and find £150billion to pay it off any time soon, after all it is about a quarter of the total amount they spend each year, so it represents a long-term burden unless something radical is done to address the problem.

What should never be forgotten about government expenditure is that it happens because the government of the day considers it necessary. It should also not be forgotten that governments seek reelection periodically and will, for understandable political reasons, not be prepared to cut areas of expenditure that will lose votes in key constituencies even if they believe the expenditure is not merited in itself. There is nothing corrupt in this, it is part of the price of democracy. Yet, like all political pressures, the existence and nature of the pressure change over time. In the 1960s and early 1970s it was inconceivable that a party arguing for the dismantling of massive nationalised industries could be voted into office, eventually the economic absurdity of those industries was so well-proven that the argument became a vote winner rather than a suicide note.

An interesting benefit of the current slump is that there is increasing interest in examining exactly what government spends money on. No one can be surprised at Mr and Mrs Ordinary asking how this that and the other can be justified now, despite expressing no such concerns when there appeared to be money to burn.

George Osborne is identifying a number of areas of government expenditure which can be eliminated without losing votes, such as the identity card scheme and certain of the more pointless quangoes. These represent a tentative first step in the right direction and there must be a significant chance that they are genuine vote winners. More importantly, they establish a precedent for reducing what government does rather than just looking for ways to allow it to do the same things but a little cheaper. Efficiency savings are sought by every government, including the present one, but they are just tinkering at the edges they do not address any point of principle. Mr Osborne seems to be addressing the point of principle, namely that very range and scope of the State operation needs to be challenged because it is unaffordable.

What he has not yet done is explain this principle in terms. To a degree I can understand his reticence because it involves opening up a debate the British people have shown no stomach for over more than a decade. He is dipping his toe in the water, seeing what reaction his current proposals receive and, of course, seeing what effect there is on the opinion polls. How far he and David Cameron want to go in slimming down the role of the State remains to be seen, they have not set out a clear position yet. Others in their party, such as John Redwood, have set out a clear position on this for many years. As those who follow Mr Redwood's blog will know, he is no fan of big government. In fact he is adamantly opposed to big government and high taxes because he believes they hurt the poorest in the country most through increasing employment costs and, therefore, reducing employment opportunities and by requiring such enormous tax revenues that the many at the bottom of the pile have to be hit hard for the government to have any chance of raising what it claims to need. I have written before about how those at the bottom can only be helped if those in more comfortable positions help them (in particular here and here). What is, I would suggest, obvious is that those at the bottom are not helped by big expensive government.

Current economic conditions provide the best opportunity in my lifetime to undertake a wholesale reform of the size and scope of government. A series of very obvious questions arise: (i) if big government is so successful in controlling the economy how was it not able to avoid the present slump, (ii) if big government is so good at running medical services why do we have greater infection rates in State hospitals than in private ones, (iii) if big government is so good at running schools why do so many children leave school at 16 barely able to read and write and why are universities having to introduce remedial classes for state school freshers but not those coming from the independent schools, (iv) if big government leads to safe societies why are we spied-on by the largest concentration of CCTV cameras of any country in the world, (v) if big government is the answer to relative poverty why has it not decreased as government has increased in size? The list can go on and on.

For more than a decade we have had a steady increase in the power and expense of government. Mr Osborne is starting to address the expense side of things. His job will be made easier if even modest changes to the power of the State are also proposed because the more power the State has the more it costs to wield that power. I believe the mood in the country is now receptive to the idea that the State is too big and too powerful. My hope is that Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and their colleagues have the courage to tap into that mood.

Nurture the strong, Part II

As I tried to explain yesterday, I believe it is necessary to look after the strong if the weak are to be assisted. I suppose the principle is that you shouldn't kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Underlying my point is the biblical saying about the poor always being with us. Although I dispute use of the words "poor" and "poverty" to describe all but a very small number of people in this country, I will use them here to refer to those for whom providing themselves with housing, food, clothing, heat and water is a financial struggle. We all search for ways to reduce poverty and some idealists get so carried away with their good intentions that they claim to be able to abolish poverty completely. The error in their reasoning is that they leave human nature out of account.

Let's assume we elect a radical government that nationalises all property and distributes it in equal shares to every adult. For a fleeting moment poverty (in the modern sense of inequality) would be abolished because we would all have exactly the same, but only for a moment. Someone will find a pack of cards and start a game of poker, resulting in some ending up richer and some becoming poorer. Someone will turn his money into cans of lager and thence into an even less tasty liquid. While this is happening, someone else will sit at home learning crochet and find himself relatively richer than the losing player and the boozer and relatively poorer than the winning player and the lager seller. Through a combination of differing personal habits, differing skills and differing luck the same inequalities will arise as currently exist. Current levels of financial inequality might never be matched, but inequality is inevitable as is the loss by some people of everything the State so helpfully gave them. As they walk out of the poker room dressed in nothing but a barrel held up by sturdy braces they might curse their bad luck at running into a straight flush when they held four of a kind, but that's the way of life because people take risks and some lose.

I wrote yesterday of how Mrs Thatcher's famous words "there is no such thing as society" have been misconstrued for over twenty years. She was addressing the concept that "society" is a thing with a mind and body of its own and is capable of doing things; her point was that only people can do things. That is not to say there is no such thing as society in all contexts. A cricket club is a society, a village is a society, a country is a society, but each is a society in a different way. The one thing societies have in common is mutual dependence among their members. The best cricketer in a club is of no use unless another ten player turn out to make a full team. Village society consists of numerous acts by which people rely on others and others rely on them - Mrs A does Mr B's washing because Mr B is housebound and can't cope with that work, Mr C gives Miss D a lift to the shops, the whole village gets together for a jumble sale and a fireworks party and so it goes on. The larger the group the more nebulous the links are that make them a society and the more individual smaller societies exist within the large one. Each cricket club is a society, all the clubs which play in a particular league form a further society and all the teams playing in similar leagues around the country are a larger society again. They all have something in common and they all depend on each other to a greater or lesser degree.

Describing a country as a society is rather more difficult, particularly when, as now in the UK, the government creates or exacerbates divisions to set groups against each other. Nonetheless there is an important respect in which it is possible to see the whole of the UK as a society because some things affect the whole of the country. Decisions taken by the UK government obviously come into that category but so do decisions taken in other countries which affect our ability to look after ourselves.

A fine illustration of this is taking place in eastern Europe at the moment. Back in the days of the USSR the discovery of vast reserves of natural gas in Russia led to supplies being piped to numerous of its neighbouring states because they were all under rule from the Kremlin. The dismantling of the Soviet empire into individual sovereign states did not suddenly give those states their own gas reserves, they continued to rely on Russia for supplies. Gas has become an essential fuel in these countries just as it is in the UK. It not only boils a Ukrainian's borshch it also generates some of his electricity and fires his heavy industries. The tap remains stubbornly situated on the Russian side of the border giving the old Imperial power the ability to cripple its neighbour and demand just about any price it likes. The current huffing and puffing will die down before long, at which time Russia will receive a much higher price than before and Ukraine will have suffered massive financial losses. The simple fact is that Russia and Ukraine are not part of the same society these days, unlike when the pipelines were first built and reliance on gas became established. In those days losses in Ukraine were losses for the whole USSR of which Russia was, of course, the largest part. These days Ukrainian losses do not cross the eastern border.

Nations are the largest manageable societies in history. All the wild celebrations when London was selected to host the 2012 Olympics illustrated a bond of nationhood. It was not so much hosting the Olympics that was being celebrated, it was that a contest was won in which we, as a country, were involved. It was all the sweeter for putting one over the French, and all the more bitter for them because London was chosen rather than anywhere else. That the games will cost money we don't have and will not produce one hundredth of the long-term benefits being claimed for them is neither here nor there. We won, and it was "we" because the concept of nationhood is real and binds people in a way that being European or part of a "world community" never will. It is the same historic and cultural bond which caused artificial political constructs of countries like Czechoslovakia, East Germany and the USSR itself to revert to the units with which their people felt comfortable.

Once a society exists, the point I made yesterday applies to that unit - be it a club, a village a county or a country, each of them can only operate through individual people. But that is only part of the picture. That illustrates how things work looking from the bottom upwards. For example, when it comes to plumbing I know very little, I am weak and poor in my knowledge, I have to look up the chain of knowledge and skill to find someone to help me when a pipe bursts. It is to my benefit if his business remains healthy because he will be available when I need his services again. But what about the top-down picture? What determines whether he is in a position to help me? One factor is the forces on him from further up the chain. He needs a supply of copper pipes, joints, solder and a blow torch, he is dependent on his suppliers and they are dependent on the suppliers above them. In some fields it is inevitable that the ultimate link in the chain is an importer who is reliant on finding a supplier overseas.

As Ukraine and other eastern European countries are finding at the moment, being reliant on another country for regular supplies of an essential product is fraught with risk. In principle it is no different from the risk of plumbers running out of copper pipe because no more copper can be imported, but the stakes are very different.

Part of the task of nurturing the strong so that they can help the weak is ensuring that the nation in which they operate is as self-sufficient as possible in the essentials of modern life so that they remain strong. If you import a large proportion of your food or of the fuels you need to live as you are accustomed to living, you are at the mercy of people who feel no bond to you other than the money you pay them. That is not to say we should seek to exist without reference to the rest of the world, of course there are many things we import which we cannot grow or make here. Life will not become difficult if kiwi fruit are in short supply, it's rather different if the scarcity is of wheat, potatoes or dairy products. But we should recognise that some things are far too important to be at the whim of people over whom we, and our government, have no direct influence.

Nurturing the strong is not just about charitable and voluntary acts, nor is it just about individuals acting individually. It is about realising that we all depend on others to help us in all sorts of ways. We cannot all set up our own businesses, most are employees. Although it is to state the obvious, it is worth stating - no one can be an employee without an employer, and no business can employ someone unless it is a going concern. We cannot all do plumbing, electrics, woodwork or car mechanics, most of us rely on others to provide those services when we need them. We cannot all grow the vegetables and fruit we need or keep a cow, two sheep and a pig in a spare bedroom, we rely on others to produce these things for us and make them available in manageable quantities.

Unless we are as self-sufficient as possible in essential goods and act to keep business strong and profitable the people who will suffer most are those who are most dependent on others. And this leads to one of the great ironies of modern politics.

Talk about reducing the size and influence of government, talk about encouraging self-reliance and self-sufficiency, talk about strengthening the nation rather than international bodies and you will be labelled "right wing". Once that label is attached people will be told by the current government and those who support them that you are concerned only for yourself and have no care for those less fortunate. Yet when we look at real life we find it is the strong who help the weak, the profitable who employ the unemployed, the skillful who teach the previously unskilled and the wealthy who fund the truly effective schemes for the poor.

The left offers nothing other than "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". It is not without reason that Ronald Reagan described that phrase as the nine most terrifying words in the English language. Government help usually doesn't help because it takes too much from those who cannot afford it and delivers it too expensively and inefficiently to too few of those who need it.

The politics of the left says a lot about the government helping the poor but government has not done, and can never do, one thousandth of what is actually done. The only sustainable way to help the poor is to provide them with work and to make available goods for them to buy to improve their quality of life and to do so at a price they can afford. Only the strong can provide those things and they can only provide them if the country in which they operate is itself strong. The beliefs that lead to me being labelled "right-wing" are nothing to do with selfishness and a lack of concern for others even less fortunate than me. They are about putting into place the only effective way of reducing poverty and making it less painful for those few who remain poor.

Nurture the strong, Part I

It is not by chance or out of a desire to promote selfishness that safety instructions on aircraft tell us we should put our oxygen masks on first before helping others. The instruction is a simple matter of practicalities, if you can breathe you will find it easier to do what you can to help those in difficulties. One consequence of the instruction, in extreme circumstances, is that delay in putting on your own mask could lead to the death of someone unable to put on their own. But that is very unlikely to happen, overall more good will be done by the strong ensuring their own safety first rather than risking both themselves and the vulnerable by seeking to be unduly altruistic.

As in aircraft, so in life. In order to help those unable to help themselves it is necessary for the able to be keep themselves fit. Sometimes that means physically fit, perhaps more often in the modern world it means financially fit. There is no money to pay benefits unless profits are made from which tax can be raised. Damage healthy businesses and you not only take money out of the pockets of those owning and employed by those businesses you also reduce the tax they pay and, therefore, the resources available for supposedly beneficial government work. This very simple point is beyond the understanding of the political left. Although they never acknowledge it, at the heart of their philosophy is the concept that it is better for everyone to have nothing than for some to have nothing and others to have something. That is what lies behind their pathetic assertions that Thatcherism encouraged selfishness and greed. They smile smugly while quoting those famous words "there is no such thing as society". Anyone who bothers to read the interview Mrs Thatcher gave to Woman's Own magazine in 1987 will see that she made a point with which no rational person could disagree. There is no creature called "Mr Society" with his own bank balance and limitless resources. It takes people to take action to help others in need. "Society" can't dive into a river and save someone from drowning, only a person can do that. "Society" can't pay for medicines, education and operations, only the money earned by people can do so. That is the point she was making - look to what you can do, don't rely on others in the belief some great green blob of goo in the corner with the label "I am society" round its neck will magically spring into action. Do what you can do, look after yourself and that way you have the capacity to look after others either directly through your own works or indirectly by paying tax to pay for services they need.

I never once heard Mrs Thatcher say we should be greedy and selfish. Many times I heard her say we (individually and as a country) should achieve as much as we can for ourselves in order that we are not a burden on others and that we have the resources to help those in difficulties. For those who believe no one succeeds without squashing someone else underfoot, that message is meaningless. They believe I can only become £100 wealthier by taking £100 from someone else, the concept of the creation of new wealth is beyond their imaginations. In the real world we know otherwise.

Of course, the strong will not help the weak if they feel no need to do so. All sorts of factors contribute to that feeling of obligation. Often it is referred to as a moral duty, something that should be done because the common standards of decency we have developed over many generations recognise it as the right thing to do. There is no need for the law to step in and force people to do it if they feel they should do it anyway. Yet we do not feel the need to sacrifice ourselves endlessly for every cause, we have to choose. The more remote or trivial the problem the less strongly that moral duty operates. At the same time we also weigh in the balance what it would cost us in time or money to help and reach a value judgment about whether we care enough about the problem to go to the amount of trouble required to help. If Aids charities working in Africa asked for donations of at least £100 they would almost certainly receive less in total than if they ask for £2 because we won't really miss £2 whereas £100 is a jolly good evening at Madame Fifi's Sauna and Hanky Panky Parlour. Some of us would never give a penny to a charity caring for animals while others would rank such a cause above the relief of human misery. We all have to form our own view and act according to it. Human character being as diverse as it is, the range of views different people hold means there are plenty enough to look after addled donkeys without the need to close soup kitchens.

The one essential prerequisite to being able to help others is possession of the resources to do so. The choice whether to do so simply does not arise if giving assistance is beyond your physical, mental or financial capacity.

Is there a benefits trap?

It seems to be accepted wisdom that some people living on benefits are trapped by their dependency on welfare. As I understand it two situations exemplify the benefits trap: (i) those who could not earn as much as they receive from the State and (ii) those who could earn a little more but so little that it is not worth the effort. Commonly the latter category are seen as less worthy than the former because they would receive a modest financial gain by working rather than sitting around the house. Little discussion surfaces from the political parties about the former category, it seems to be accepted that because they cannot earn more than they get on welfare so they are justified in remaining on benefits. From time to time suggestions are made about having to undertake some modest form of work to retain an entitlement to benefits, but such suggestions bear all the hallmarks of headline grabbing sops to the taxpayer rather than anything substantive.

My question is: what about those who do work for less than they could get on benefits? Because, you see, there are people like that. Some have always been in very low paid work and others have seen better times but through illness or bad luck find their opportunities restricted. What distinguishes these people from the worthy welfareists, why is it that they choose to work when a cushier option is available? It seems obvious to me that it is all a matter of personal standards. The same explains why some people on low incomes steal things and others say they would rather be poor but proud than engage in dishonesty. It also explains why council estates contain many houses with well tended gardens and clean curtains in the window while others are just storage areas for junk. The standards we have, usually learned from our parents, dictate much of our behaviour and they set the scene for how we live our lives.

The benefits trap is only a trap for those for those who wish to use it as an excuse for idleness. It is certainly a ridiculous state of affairs that anyone should receive so much in State handouts that it could be said to be a disincentive to self-support, but it is wrong to believe that it is a disincentive. It is nothing of the sort unless you choose to treat it as such. Until someone can persuade me that sitting around doing nothing should be the default position and work is just an optional extra, I will not accept that the benefit trap exists at all.

We can look at the position from a different angle. Take the person who would receive, say, £25 more a week on welfare compared to the amount he could earn for the work available to him. Just looking at that sad statistic only tells part of the story. Once he is in work and has a record for honest toil he is better placed to find something that pays more or to seek a raise. Those of us who live in the real world know that employers often take someone on at the minimum wage to undertake a menial task and then increase that person's pay, often through a loyalty bonus or a birthday or Christmas gift, it happens in small businesses up and down the country. The going rate for the job is still the minimum wage but the person doing it with dedication receives a little more. The so-called benefit trap is not a trap at all when one takes into account the increased opportunities that being in work provides. Some will not be able to turn any of those opportunities into more cash, but I can be sure they go home each evening with a great sense of self-worth because they have done a day's work.

It is not the money that traps people on benefits it is their personal attitude, the standards they set for themselves. Any attempt to tackle the problem of the long-term unemployed with no qualifications and no drive must address the issue of standards and then the issue of money will disappear.

Tackling poverty, part three

Poverty is only a potential problem for those in employment, for those without work it is often a stark reality. I suggested yesterday that subsistence benefits should be paid to those who are unemployed but looking for work. My reasoning is that those who are prepared to take any job rather than exist on benefits should not be dissuaded by benefits being too generous. It is a tough stance but one which I believe to be justified because I have great faith in the inherent decency of people including that strand of decency which makes them want to work rather than, let's put it bluntly, scrounge.

One of the strongest justifications for having a national minimum wage is that it guarantees a living wage for those in full time work. I will not pretend that life on the minimum wage is a bed of roses for a couple with children who decide the best interests of their children requires one of them to stay at home, but a full working week will bring in a living wage provided the income tax threshold is increased to a sensible level. But what of those who do not want to work? To what extent is it appropriate to protect them financially from the otherwise inevitable consequences of their idleness? Merely asking the question would label me a fascist in the eyes of the left, but that is no more than a label and I am not interested in being unfair to anyone, my concern is that the system should do everything it can to bring the best out of people and encourage everyone to support themselves if they possibly can. Not only will that reduce the burden of tax on those who work willingly, it will also improve the lot of those who currently live on benefits a little above subsistence level but would do a lot better if they found a job.

I believe two changes to the current system to be necessary. First, permanent dependency on the State by reason of physical or mental incapacity to work should be limited to those who really are incapable of work. Over the last eleven years the government has made it easier to claim incapacity benefit, so much so that something in the region of 2,500,000 people currently claim a benefit which should be available only to those genuinely unable to work. Idleness and fecklessness are not incapacities, they are idleness and fecklessness. Fictitious bad backs are not incapacities, they are bogus excuses. No one knows how many of the 2,500,000 are really unable to work, but we all know that it is good for unemployment statistics if a vast number who are out of work are classified as unwell rather than unemployed. Yet governmental attempts to hide the true level of unemployment do not fool anyone, it is obvious (according to my personal version of common sense) that in a population of some 30 million people of working age it cannot be the case that 8% are incapable of holding down a job. The most dangerous consequence of trying to mask unemployment by calling it incapacity is that the government has an incentive to continue the pretense. For so long as they feel there is political mileage in reducing the headline unemployment rate by attaching a different label to a large number of unemployed people, they have no reason to change the system. In turn that locks the people on incapacity benefit into that state, they receive more than if they were "ordinarily" unemployed and the financial gap between being on benefits and being in work is reduced.

Secondly, those who are able to work should only be allowed to receive benefits of any kind for a limited time. Will this push them into starvation? No, it will push them into work. For quite some time this country has been able to absorb migrant workers for one reason and one reason only, that those who live in this country have been unwilling to do the jobs the migrants have taken. Not unable, unwilling. How many office cleaners, parking attendants, roadsweepers, kitchen porters, hotel chambermaids and dustmen are white and British? In all cases the answer is very few in proportion to their number in the country. That is not because the foreigners who fill those positions have stolen jobs, it is because those sitting on benefits have not applied for the work. This is a systemic problem caused, I believe, by the easy availability of benefits. I do not believe most of those on benefits would think it such a good life if they tasted work and the self-pride it brings, but there is an underclass who have never worked and have no comprehension at all of self-worth.

Recently we saw a fine example of the hopelessness benefit dependency brings. The by-election in Glasgow East highlighted an area in which generation after generation of families never work. They do not need to because they receive housing for free and enough to live on. They are told by those on the political left that they are victims who can never improve their lot because the system does not allow it. I disagree, they are not victims of a wicked capitalist economy, they are victims of those who have told them for decades they have no hope of improvement. By my definition they are not in monetary poverty but they are certainly a lot poorer than they would be if they took the jobs people travel thousands of miles to fill and they are in poverty of expectation.

It will not be an easy task to change the culture on the sink estates of Glasgow East and the other inner city constituencies and there is no painless way of changing that culture. Yet it must be changed if those people are to have a chance of living a life in which they can walk down the road with their heads held high, knowing that they are providing for themselves and their families. It is a harsh method, but imposing a strict time limit on their State benefits is, I suspect, the only way to get them out of their rut and give them an opportunity to live independent lives and enjoy the satisfaction that brings.

I cannot accept that those on the sink estates want to live on the poverty line forever, nor can I accept that they are unwilling to work under any circumstances. What I can accept is that they have been labelled victims for so long that it will take time to persuade them they can cope on their own. The jobs are there, Glasgow East is a short bus ride from vibrant hotels, pubs, restaurants and clubs who need staff, lots of staff. Thousands of jobs currently filled by transient employees from overseas could be filled just as well by locals if only they felt there was a reason to do them. It is time to be cruel to be kind. That would be real social justice.

Social Justice and Humpty Dumpty squared

Humpty Dumpty was a very sensible chap. He could never be wrong no matter what he said because words meant what he wanted them to mean. I mused yesterday on the new meaning of "unnatural", today I want to ask what "social justice" means.

Social justice is a term that trips off the tongue of politicians when they are at their most earnest and their most evasive. "What can you do for me?" asks the man of the parliamentary candidate, the candidate looks him in the eye, lowers his voice and says in his most reassuring tone "I will bring you social justice." Just two words act like Rennies after a vindaloo, all burning is negated and the hope of a good night's sleep is increased. How can these words have that effect? The answer is simple, because they do not have an established meaning and, therefore, can be interpreted by the listener to mean anything he likes.

Taking the words literally "justice" is an adjective qualifying the noun "society". Instead of saying "I will bring you a just society" it is snappier, and still grammatically correct, to say "I will bring you social justice". And Humpty Dumpty told us we can do anything with adjectives.

But what is a just society? It is fairly obvious that it is the type of society someone considers to be just, and therein lies the problem - we all have different opinions about what is just and what is unjust, about what is fair and what is unfair. Not only do we have radically different views about the justness or individual policies, we also have radically different views about the desired economic and social structure of the country as a whole.

On some issues there is probably broad agreement. I doubt few would disagree with the proposition that those who do work which requires great skill and which provides a great benefit should be paid more than those in jobs requiring less skill and providing a lesser benefit. We might compare a brain surgeon and a tree surgeon. Looking at it with a broad brush we can say it is fair for the former to earn more than the latter. We then have to ask the next logical question, namely, how much more? When we get to that level we find ourselves having to put a value on the two jobs and here there is far more scope for disagreement. Should it be twice as much, four times as much, should the comparison be made before tax or after tax, should it be reflected in pension arrangements and so on. The more detailed our examination of the subject, the more there will be disagreement. So we can start with a general proposition which carries broad consensus as one element of a just society and have no consensus at all about anything other than the general proposition.

Governments cannot operate by general propositions, all they can do is put into effect specific policies. When they tried to abolish the 10p tax band they were not met by people in the street saying "this does not accord with my notion of social justice", they were assailed by the poor saying "you are putting my tax up and I am already poor". The catch-all term "social justice" is completely irrelevant to assessment of the merits or otherwise of specific policies.

Any politician who uses the term "social justice" without defining, with precision, the policies underlying the term is being Humpty Dumpty squared. Not only does it mean whatever he wants it to mean but it will be interpreted by his audience as whatever they want it to mean. The reality is that it means nothing.