"A house built on piles driven into black slime........"

In  a blog a week or two ago I commented that it is in the nature of things that most (all?) parents hope that the world will be a better place for their children than it was for them – that their children will have better opportunities to succeed, that their children will achieve more than they or that their children will simply have a better, more fulfilling, healthier or happier life. In many respects, I suppose, this might be viewed a relatively modern idea – after all, certainly up to Victorian times class divisions and the basic inequalities of life almost ensured that most children would often live very similar lives to that of their parents with little changing through the generations. Having said that, however, I guess that even the most primitive of societies would hope that the hunting would continue to be good and that the berries continued to grow so that their children might survive and thrive without too much difficulty.

It's a tax give away.....oh, and the bit I didn't say was
that I'm also  giving away the future

With this in mind I reflected on a point that I have oft made and relates to the unwritten “trust” and “obligations” that exist from one generation to the next.  Each generation instigates and builds – not just for itself but for those coming after it – it is what is expected and required of us as humans.  We pay our taxes and trust our leaders to maintain and build upon what we have already invested in and to improve things for the future - in trust and for the benefit of people perhaps yet to be born who still are to enjoy and benefit from what we have done on their behalf as well as our own.  Others before me did it for me and so I must do it for those who follow. We build hospitals, roads and railways so that others as well as ourselves can enjoy their benefits both today and in the future – that’s the deal. I think it is called “society”!  Between the generations this unwritten “contract” is extended – not only do we as adults hope that the world will be better for our children and grandchildren we have an obligation to put into place measures and to ensure that it will be better – it is their inheritance and is what, I believe, being an adult member of society is all about. It is common to all societies  - no matter how primitive or advanced. 

The Tory press loved it - but read the article and it's not the fact that
30 million receive a tax cut that they applaud but rather that the tax cut will benefit
the "middle class" most - in other words "He that hath should have some more"

I thought about this an hour or so ago (Wednesday Oct 1^st) as I read the headlines about our Prime Minister’s speech to the Conservative party made earlier today. It was all so depressingly familiar and predictable – and I don’t blame the PM for that he is merely saying what the electorate want to hear and what he knows will get him and his party re-elected at the next General Election. David Cameron said many things in his speech but the bit that grabbed the headlines, as it always would (and, reported the paper, “was rapturously applauded by the delegates”) was: “So let me tell you this today: I want to take action that’s long overdue and bring back some fairness to tax. With a Conservative government, we will raise the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate. It’s currently £41,900. In the next parliament we will raise it to £50,000........I can tell you now that a future Conservative government will raise the tax-free personal allowance from £10,500 to £12,500. That will take 1 million more of the lowest paid workers out of income tax – and will give a tax cut to 30 million more........So with us, if you work 30 hours a week on minimum wage, you will pay no income tax at all. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Lower taxes for our hardworking people. That’s what I call a Britain that everyone is proud to call home.”

Now while we can all applaud a measure that will ensure that those who earn least will pay least – the most basic of tax imperatives – this continual commitment of all politicians  to reducing taxation as a general principle is not only worrying but says much about us as a society. Whilst I might applaud lowering taxes for those who earn little the Prime Minister did not promise to squeeze those who can afford to pay much by raising hugely the upper tax bands – in fact his chancellor, George Osborne, was sending the message loud and clear to the rich and the great multinationals from all over the world “Come to Britain.......we are offering you taxes in Britain [that] will undercut the lowest rates in the developed world if the Conservatives win next year’s election”. All parties are agreed that they will not be elected on a tax raising manifesto. In other words we as a society are unwilling to put up the money to make things better not only for ourselves but for generations to come – and by “better” I mean the basics of life – health, education, general welfare. We might desire these things, we might even want schemes that give us these for the, least expenditure but in the end we don’t want it to personally cost us or to mean that we as individuals have to make sacrifices to create the world we want for ourselves and our children and grandchildren. We like the sound of “making things better” but in reality are not prepared to make the necessary sacrifices.  As I say I don’t blame Cameron – he is merely telling us what most of us want to hear; he knows that we are inherently greedy and want to keep as much of our money as we can........it’s the “I’m alright Jack, pull up the ladder” syndrome. Sadly the consequence of all this can be summed up in the Biblical quote "Selling your birthright for a mess of pottage" - because we are indeed sacrificing much of our future for the sake of something of very low but immediate value; a few pennies off tax today means the loss of future investment in society's needs both for the present and for our children. We should be ashamed. 

A week or two ago I blogged about the vast numbers of people anxious to give away £600 for a new toy – the new I-Phone. I read a few days after the I-Phone bonanza that Apple had benefited to the tune of several billion dollars from the new phone sales – well, good for Apple! But if everyone had put their £600 towards the health provision or education then great strides would have been made towards making our society better both for us and the future. I wonder would all those people willingly put their £600 up front towards the building new hospitals, schools, more nurses, better pay for teachers supporting the poor and the rest?  I guess the answer to that is for the most part a resounding no. In our crazy world a new toy is more important to us than a new hospital or school or provision for the needy, the infirm or the disadvantaged. Walk down my High Street (and any other in the country) and we are awash with trendy coffee bars  where we sit sipping our latte and enjoying a cup cake – and yet we all want tax breaks so that we contribute less for the important things of life and for the good of future generations. And freer to spend on ourselves and our foibles.  And this is the issue – it’s about choices – I might choose to spend my £600 on a new I-Phone or I might prefer to pay more tax to make life for me and everyone else better in the long run. As the old saying goes “You pays your money and you make your choice....! Every week I and, I guess, virtually every other member of society makes those sort of choices  and we are each, in our small way, breaking the contract with the next generation. We are each putting our own self interest before the general good of today and tomorrow – and politicians of all persuasion know this and feed off it.  It is what puts them into power. In short they know that the electorate are like turkeys – they won’t vote for Christmas.

RH Tawney

In this centenary year of the start of the Great War, when those dreadful four years that scarred a generation and the world for all time, have been remembered it is good to remember one man and something that he said after the war. RH Tawney came from a privileged background as a young man served in the Great War  as a Sergeant in the Manchester Regiment. He turned down a commission as an officer because  of his political beliefs. He served at the Battle of the Somme (1916), where he was wounded twice on the first day and had to lie in no man's land for 30 hours very close to death. Luckily for him and us a medical officer evacuated him and although he suffered ill health for the remainder of his life his words and his work as a political thinker and eminent historian left us much of the nation that we know and value today. The war led Tawney to grapple with the nature of original sin and he concluded that. “The goodness we have reached is a house built on piles driven into black slime and always slipping down into it unless we are building night and day”. It heightened his sense of urgency for meaningful social, economic and political change and after the War his thinking and writing set the tone for most post-war social thinking culminating in the great Labour manifesto of 1945 which brought in the Welfare State, the National Health Service and the rest of the “essentials” that we, generations later, take so readily for granted. Tawney was no sentimental fool – he was an idealist but also a political realist; he knew of mankind’s basic  greed and that people (including politicians) would always try to resist spending money unless there was something in it for them. Eighty years ago he angrily commented of the government in power: “..... every artifice has been employed to create the impression that public expenditure on education is recklessly extravagant......”  In other words politicians were unwilling to spend enough on an item such as education – it was not viewed as an essential but as an extravagance.  He knew and argued that this applied to every other aspect of government spending because spending meant taxation and people didn’t like being taxed.  But, following the dreadful years of unemployment and deprivation  between the Great War and the trials of the Second World War society had looked into the precipice and knew that it must look to other priorities. Tawney and his followers fulfilled their contract to the future in 1945 when Atlee’s great government came to power and created much of what we have and hold dear today. In short, Tawney knew that building for tomorrow and for future generations is a basic human responsibility and cannot and should not be seen as an “reckless extravagance” – it is our future. I am now almost seventy years old with a bad back and a failing heart and increasingly I am the recipient of what has been built and dependent upon younger people and that is why the generational contract is so important – it assures our tomorrow by building today. Tawney knew this and that if we failed to build on those pillars then we all slip back into the “slime”. Sadly, our politicians in their quest for votes and the whole of our society has increasingly forgotten this fact of life.

No one wants to pay more tax but as Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked “I like paying taxes. With it I buy civilisation”  - tax is one of the ways that we build for the future and begin to fulfil our contract with those who follow us. When David Cameron and other politicians home in on our basic desire to keep what is ours and not share it with others then they remind us of our inherent greed. Today, when the world is richer than it has ever been before (yes, even in these austere times) we have become lotus eaters, our underbelly soft from the good life and greedy for more of the lotus flower to fuel our whims and fancies. Greed becomes self fulfilling. We don’t want to look into the precipice, we are too self satisfied to worry about others or think about the future.  When I hear politicians today and see how unwilling our society has become to put their hands in their pockets and pay for the future; when I see how happy we all are to pay huge amounts to fund our own pleasures, foibles and entertainments yet are unwilling to pay a similar amount on creating a better future then I fear that we today are increasingly reneging on the basic human obligations as we strive to feather our own nests rather than provide for a better society for us and our children and grandchildren. We might criticise out politicians but perhaps we should look at ourselves for our leaders merely reflect us – we put them there – and they simply reflect our wishes in their policies.