Peter Oborne is not exactly one of my favourite commentators (to put it mildly) so when I saw people praising an article he wrote called The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom, I was expecting the worst. And sure enough, he falls at almost the first fence:
A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.
I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.
Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?
So Branson and Green get tired of having so much of their wealth confiscated that Branson moves some of his operation to Switzerland and Green takes his profits off-shore, and Peter Oborne sees that not as a sign of the confiscatory state’s moral decay but rather… Green and Branson’s moral decay?
That is a bit like saying the shopkeepers who defended their shops from looters were being ‘greedy’ because they did not want the product of their hard works taken by looters… or in Green and Branson’s case, the looting tax man working at the behest of the parasite classes.
Oborne gets it right when he describes the corruption and hypocrisy of the political looter class class, but his failure to grasp the difference between the looter classes and the people they loot means I will not be joining the Amen Chorus praising this article even if I agree with some parts of it.
It seems to me that he misses the obvious target. Sure, politicians are hypocritical and corrupt but when has this ever not been the case? Surely the real issue here is not the predictably dismal behaviour of the generally dismal sort of people who are attracted into politics in the first place, it is the de-socialising nature of the policies that have been followed by both Labour and Tory since 1945.
There exists a broad consensus between so-called ‘conservatives’ and the ‘democratic left’ across the western world that capitalist wealth producers exist to be taxed to fund ‘social’ welfare, which in turn produces a huge class of people benefiting from these confiscations and this, not the crapulous personal greed and behaviour of MPs, is the root of the problem from which everything else springs.
Moreover, it is worth noting that the looters were not in fact the primary recipients of the ‘largess’ (of other people’s money) being collected and redistributed by the state… it is the huge army of people who find their employment via the Guardian’s public sector advertisements who are the actual main beneficiaries.
I agree.
BTW it’s Oborne.
Yeah I realised that but I am logged on via a rather erratic hospital wireless network and making edits is… challenging 🙂
The trouble with Oborne is that he has an essentially paternalistic view of society: the idea that the chaps from Eton must show the unwashed brutes the way and lead by example. There is something profoundly useless about that level of analysis.
And his digs at Branson and co for failing to be bled white by the taxman are risible: I consider those entrepreneurs who try to minimise their tax by legal means to be patriotic. Branson runs a successful business, and employs thousands of people. How many people does Mr Oborne employ? When was the last time he had to meet a payroll?
Paying 50%+ tax is a moral patriotic duty, eh? And seeking to legitimately minimise that is worse than torching someone’s shop and running them over, is it?
A contemptuous piece of moral equivalence.
Well done to Daniel Hannan in the same paper, however, for pointing to the stoic heroism of Tariq Jahan.
The logic for Oborne is it is up to the Bransons of the world to render the danegeld to Central Command who will efficiently pay it out to keep the Ruffians sedated, even though they are liars and cheats.
?????
Why in the hell should anyone voluntarily give these liars and cheaters financial backing, regardless whether you approve of them or how they (e.g. Branson) conduct their lives?
By filling in the space Oborne doesn’t directly discuss, of course HE would be that efficient distributor of the danegeld and rot at all levels would be swept away.
Just another Philosopher King in waiting.
My response to him is unless those “out of touch” richies are piling up tangible goods and setting them aflame, they are PEACEFULLY producing, consuming, investing, and sharing. If they have more power in choosing how they make those allocations, your envious interventions aren’t any better as far as the rest of society is concerned. And the “rot” is people, such as yourself, who think they get to use Force to interpose their values over the assets of others – whether it’s a thug throwing a trash can through a window, or “liar-cheaters” living it up on the public dime, or financial-political writers who hire agents on their behalf to impound property for proper redistribution.
The rot is using offensive Force instead of maintaining peace, and it is true no matter how you dress it up or rationalize it.
.
This is a point that is rather well obfuscated by the powers-that-be.
If freedom-orientated people do ever seriously get around to looking at the theft of their wealth, they are encouraged to look at ‘benefit cheats’ and other recipients rather than that vast army of desk residents, pen pushers and other non-producers that receives the lion’s share of of the state’s haul.
Until one starts to see the size of the state apparatus being genuinely reduced one can accept there is no good will in the “corridors of power”.
I prefer my jounalistic villians(Link) to have more intelligence.
“The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice – run. Run faster that from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself – that will be the man who’s not after your soul.” Ellsworth Toohey, The Fountainhead.
The Twat, formerly known as i Dave, has bought into this hook line and sinker. I was just watching him on the BBC 10 oclock news, blaming the Bankers, Polititicians equally.
Talk about not being able to smell your own farts!
Point of information. The Guardian no longer has a near-monopoly of senior public sector appointments (the cream used to appear in The Sunday Times and The Economist too). Many of those ads – the ones from central government – have moved online, and the loss of classified revenues is killing The Guardian.
The big irony of this is that people like Branson are often very big contributors to left-of-centre parties. The confluence of big money and liberal/socialist politics seems a bit puzzling on the face of it. Have the wealthy been corrupted by group-think and their own cash, or is it just cynical pandering? I’m reminded of the rationale offered by some Devil-worshipers- God is good, so it’s the other guy you have to butter up.
A few weeks ago Peter Oborne was attacking (in a television hatchet job) Rupert Murdoch for “undermining British democracy” and “running Britain”.
The evidence?
The Sun newspaper attacking Blair over the European Union.
So unless you support total submission to the E.U. you are undermining democracy, and expressing dissent is “running Britain”.
As for this article…..
“Our transport system”.
” Our eduction system”.
There was a time when a conservative would never have written like that.
Transport was a matter of voluntary effort – canal companies, turnpike trusts and so on.
And education also was a matter of voluntary effort – by both for profit schools (often for the poor – they could be both cheap and effective, as Prof Tooley has explained about the so called “slum schools” of India, and H.G. West explained in the British context) and the non profit Church schools (both Church of England and Dissenting).
And, by the way Mr Oborne, “our” transport and “our” schools are terrible.
As for a patriotic duty to pay 50% of your income in tax……
What a total and absolute shit Peter Oborne is.
May he die of the pox – in one of those government hospitals he loves so much.