If there are pockets of generation-to-generation "exclusion" and wasted human potential in the UK - and that means low birthweight babies, doing badly at school, tragically narrowed life chances, unemployment, ill health and early death - then it is because for a child born in those places the odds are stacked so heavily against them that only the most exceptional and determined could ever have any hope of overturning them.
And it's a lot to ask of a newborn baby to make up its mind to be so exceptional and determined by the time it is 3 years old.
The reason those odds are so stacked is because through a mixture of history, bad government and malice aforethought we've ended up with a political rule set designed so that the included, for example this retailer of bankers' culture, can shamelessly game the system to their own advantage through old school connections, lobbying, political party funding, corporate hospitality, corporate sponsorship, slack corporate regulation, internships for each other's children, board membership of private companies and public institutions and so on and so on and so on.
Welfare for the rich, taxes for the poor.
If you haven't noticed that over the last 18 months, you really haven't been paying attention.
And if you give any sort of a shit about human beings having the freedom to waste their lives on their own terms and not on anyone else's then you've really got to be asking about system-wide structural changes to the rule sets.
And it's a lot to ask of a newborn baby to make up its mind to be so exceptional and determined by the time it is 3 years old.
The reason those odds are so stacked is because through a mixture of history, bad government and malice aforethought we've ended up with a political rule set designed so that the included, for example this retailer of bankers' culture, can shamelessly game the system to their own advantage through old school connections, lobbying, political party funding, corporate hospitality, corporate sponsorship, slack corporate regulation, internships for each other's children, board membership of private companies and public institutions and so on and so on and so on.
Welfare for the rich, taxes for the poor.
If you haven't noticed that over the last 18 months, you really haven't been paying attention.
And if you give any sort of a shit about human beings having the freedom to waste their lives on their own terms and not on anyone else's then you've really got to be asking about system-wide structural changes to the rule sets.
Because if you think that the inclusion problem is going to be solved by the included being nicer, then you'll very soon find yourself taking the piss .
[square brackets]
a report on the freedom to waste your life on your own terms
Comments