Careless talk
I agree with some of the points Victoria Bateman makes in her piece Social mobility: what really holds people back, 6th August; that a self-fulfilling prophecy driven by the comments of people around you can have a direct impact on one’s aspirations. However I think what needs to be taken into account is the lack of availability of information to counter what she calls ‘careless talk’.
My mother always encouraged me even though she could not guide me properly. As an immigrant from the developing world she didn’t know how far you can go in the UK and how to get there. However, she always drummed into me the importance of a good education. Without older brothers and sisters I’ve had to learn about how to progress my career the hard way, making sure that I learnt from my own mistakes.
Levels of self-belief are largely determined by your peers, so even if you weren’t exposed to ‘careless talk’ I didn’t see people in my area enjoying what I would consider to be a successful career. They might have moved away as they began to taste success.
I’ve now got a good job but think that I could have got to my current position ten years earlier if I knew how to cultivate and take advantage of a network. Whilst state education can get you to a certain point in the UK, it doesn’t teach you those things that you REALLY need to know to get ahead. Who you know is as important as what you know; and this starts right from your parents and their connections.
Provision of information is vital. Without that people from poorer areas will continue to perpetuate myths. But the lasting impression I’ve had in my life is not related to careless talk from people around me, but the influence that people in better positions socially can have on your life. When I was younger I felt emboldened to do well by teachers that encouraged me, but those that don’t have any belief in you can have a more detrimental effect. I will never forget my careers teacher at college telling me that my application to a specific university was a waste of a space on my form. She did he same to a couple of other students too, who listened to her. I still put it down and got into the course at the university I wanted.
That sort of ‘careless talk’ is far more dangerous than from those in your community.
Danny Jack, London, UK | @springjack
Victoria Bateman replies
Danny’s letter makes a very good point and I was very interested and touched to read his story – I’m so pleased he took the time to write in. I personally think information and careless talk are so closely linked that it can be difficult to pull them apart. If careless talk succeeds in putting people off, in the kinds of ways I discuss, then the reality becomes one in which too few people actually succeed. The available information set then includes “few people succeed” and “your chances are minimal”. In other words, the “truth” is not independent of the reality on the ground, it is constructed by that reality.
Through drawing attention to careless talk (which includes talk from friends, relatives, others in the community and from schools), I therefore wanted to dig a little bit deeper than is usual, to see what is going on on the ground. Having said that, I do think that universities and top firms have an important role to play in shattering common myths (which, I know, many frequently attempt to do). Being a Cambridge academic, this was indeed one of the reasons I decided to write the article. The problem is, as Danny so astutely notes, that it can take a lot to overcome the damage done by careless talk and any associated advice which young people receive. People naturally seem to put a lot more weight on what they hear from those around them (rather than from “outsiders”), which is why careless talk has such a powerful and destructive effect – and why I therefore wanted to draw attention to it. At the end of the day, you have to know what you are fighting in order to do the best you can in battle!
Why Corybn rises
In his article, The rise of Jeremy Corbyn is the latest result of the bank bailouts, 11th August, Andrew Lilico concludes that the bank bailouts have “reinvigorated the anti-capitalist left”. He takes the line that the bailouts were about helping the rich at the expense of the poor which, ipso facto, strengthens the anti-capitalists who claim that capitalism is about protecting the rich at the expense of everyone else.
That’s not quite true. While the rich may well have been more exposed than the rest of us by the meltdown, most of those who stood to lose the most would have been ordinary folk, whose mortgages and comparatively little savings would have been vapourised had there been no liquidity intervention.
Had there been no bailouts, I’m willing to bet the hard left would have been left very much in control of world economies as large swathes of the productive middle class, especially small business owners, would have been wiped off the face of the economic map.
The problem was not so much with the bailout, which was a remedial action, but with the failure of our system to protect the meat in the sandwich from being consumed by rampant greed of a few opportunists playing with the investments of millions, not just the rich.
That was the morally indefensible part of it all. Not the remedial action that followed it.
Of course, Lilico asks the pertinent question that if we can use new “bail-in” mechanisms now and in the future, why could we not have used them in 2008?
The answer to that question certainly does expose an uglier face of “wealth capital”, a face that dictates economic policies and laws by leveraging debt. The super-rich shouldn’t have been able to overload the system for their benefit by manufacturing unsecured debt and putting it into the hands of others with the false promises of wealth, health and happiness.
Mike Chandler, Eastern Cape, South Africa | @savourcard
Were Julia Hartley-Brewer to be entirely rejecting the capitalist ideology then this article (Social Corbyn supporters are living in an anti-capitalist fantasy world, 4th August) would have merit.
The formation of cartels and monopolies within markets, and a financial sector partaking in high risk gambling of billions of public money, is not capitalism – it is economic libertarianism: a totally unsustainable system in which the booms and busts of capitalism are so amplified and distorted that the consequences lead to destruction of the fabric of society. Mr Corbyn’s suggestion of taming the greed of plutocratic bank CEO’s in order to nationalise industries that the private sector has failed isn’t a socialist utopia, it’s common sense; or else it used to be.
Corbyn’s Keynesianism is devoted to increasing disposable incomes of the poorest to create a consumer base for privately run businesses isn’t a rejection of capitalism – it is a sensible reform of a ruthless ideology.
Corbyn’s foreign policy of refusing to partake in military action against a terrorist organisation based on an intangible ideology is not waving a white flag to IS. It is looking at the state of countries invaded by the West in the past decade and recognising the mass failure and loss of life that has resulted from it.
Highly intelligent Corbyn supporting Labour members aren’t just voting for him because it suits their ideology. They’re voting for him because his policies make sense to them and therefore make sense and can be sold to the electorate. They can be sold to Labour voters and more importantly to the 70% of the electorate that didn’t vote Conservative in 2015.
Felix Ivers, Leeds, UK | @felixivers
The Migrant Question
I agree with Philippe Legrain’s article – Good for migrants, good for Britain, 10th August –about the benefits which could be achieved if we changed our policy and negative attitude to migrants. People who show such courage, endurance and tenacity would surely contribute significantly to our economy and our society. When I read about the man who walked 31 miles down the Euro Tunnel only to be arrested nearing his destination, I thought “why on earth are we turning away people like that?”. Who is the better man, the migrant prepared to risk everything to work here or the fat cat Prime Minister who shames us all with his actions and attitude?
Patricia Dexter, Nottingham, NG3
I wholly agree with the sentiments Mr Legrain expresses, namely that Britain needs migrants in order to continue to thrive and that it should have some legal means for them to come and settle here.
However, the article completely ignores the two very large elephants in the current immigration debating room, namely fundamentalist versions of Islam, plus Britain’s inherent island mentality and culture.
In regard to the first of these the general growth of fundamentalist Islamism around the world -when combined with increasing globalisation – poses a rational threat to open western democratic societies, simply because the core values of fundamentalist Islam are by default incompatible with the values of those societies. Successful multi-culturalism requires not only integration, but at least some modicum of assimilation over the long- term, but even in wonderfully multi-cultural London there is little visible evidence of this on the ground.
Second, Britain is a small landmass that is completely surrounded by seas, and those seas have historically been our main (if not only) line of defence from all who would do us harm. This is ingrained deeply if not subconsciously into the national psyche – especially the psyche of those Brits who have lived long enough to know the full horrors of which humankind (including ourselves at times) is capable. This national psyche is the reason why Britain is not part of the open-borders Schengen Zone – our national security truly depends on us not being so. The government is therefore right to take a tough stance on illegal immigration.
Helen Williams, Sussex, UK
Liberal Conservatives
Bruce Anderson – William Gladston, Tim Farron and the death of British liberalism, 6th August – misses out a key part of the history of the Liberal Party and its relationship with the Conservative Party, namely the fact that the modern Conservative Party is actually as much the descendant of the Whigs and the Liberals of Gladstone’s day as the Tory Party and Disraeli’s Conservatives. The reason for this is that far from simply absorbing disaffected Liberals, the Conservative Party is actually the product of two separate mergers of the then Conservative Party and factions of the Liberal Party.
The first of these was in 1885 when Joseph Chamberlain resigned from the Gladstone Government taking 77 Liberal MPs with him in opposition to Home Rule creating the Liberal Unionist Party, which took the Conservative whip at Westminster before merging in 1912 forming the Conservative and Unionist Party. The impact of this merger stretched beyond the name, with two of Joseph’s Chamberlain’s sons led the Conservatives (Austen and Neville) showing that the Liberal Unionists had a clear impact upon the Conservative Party.
Then in the early 1930s as the weakened Liberals were propping up the second Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald, who lacked a majority in Parliament, a growing number of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon declared their total opposition and began to co-operate more closely with the Conservative Party. The so-called National Liberals formally split from the rest of the Liberal Party in 1936 when the rest of the Party left the National Government, the National Liberals continued to support the Conservative Party until in 1968 the two parties merged.
Though the National Liberals failed to provide a Conservative Leader as the Liberal Unionists had done they did manage to provide a Deputy Prime Minister as Michael Heseltine stood unsuccessfully as a National Liberal for Gower in 1959, before becoming a Conservative in the 60s. The mergers had a profound impact on the intellectual heritage of the Conservative Party as well.
Leaving aside reverence for the Church and the Crown, the political philosophy of the Tory Party in Byron’s time, with its emphasis on small tight knit communities, rural focus, heavy paternalism and dislike of industry and economic development and sympathy for the Luddites had more in common with today’s Green Party than the Conservative Party.
When we consider the two parties as late as Gladstone’s time and Benjamin Disraeli’s support of tariffs for Corn Laws, the Conservatives of today have more in common with the Liberal Party’s position on issues like free trade and tax.
Tellingly Thatcher said that she hoped that were he still alive she hoped that Gladstone would have felt able to join her party. Perhaps the clearest indication of the fact that rather than dying the British Liberal tradition has merely merged with the Conservative tradition is the fact that Burke, the founder of British Conservatism, was no a Tory, but instead a Whig.
Rufus Morgan, Suffolk, UK
Minding the BBC's business
An issue that has been troubling me is the BBC. I have lived in a number of countries around the world and admire the BBC in many ways – particularly its reliable international news. It has taken me a while however to pinpoint what troubles me about the BBC. Finally it hit me.
Business is significantly under represented in the BBC coverage whether it be Television or Radio. Even a minor US radio station will report on a daily basis what has happened to the Dow Jones that day and give some coverage of what is driving the change. Stock market performance, underlying company performance, innovation, and other business topics are considered newsworthy in other countries – after all it is business that drives our wellebing, our tax base, and our future. No profits – no taxes – no money to redistribute.
The mandate for the BBC should be changed formally to include reporting on business. It should not be just about entertainment and social affairs. I exaggerate slightly but you could listen to Radio 4 for a whole year and not hear any stories about the successes of business. BBC only wants to cover “bad boy” stories about banks or business wrong doings. Lets change the charter to insist on decent business coverage. Doing so would enhance the understanding of many people in our society – it is not just about picking fruit from the money tree- what really matters is creating wealth.
Andrew Doman, London, UK
