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An Open Letter to David Cameron’s Parents
Dear Mr & Mrs Cameron,
Why did you never take the time to teach your child basic morality?
As a young man, he was in a gang that regularly smashed up private property. We know that you were absent parents who left your child to be brought up by a school rather than taking responsibility for his behaviour yourselves. The fact that he became a delinquent with no sense of respect for the property of others can only reflect that fact that you are terrible, lazy human beings who failed even in teaching your children the difference between right and wrong. I can only assume that his contempt for the small business owners of Oxford is indicative of his wider values.
Even worse, your neglect led him to fall in with a bad crowd.
There’s Michael Gove, whose wet-lipped rage was palpable on Newsnight last night. This is the Michael Gove who confused one of his houses with another of his houses in order to avail himself of £7,000 of the taxpayers’ money to which he was not entitled (or £13,000, depending on which house you think was which).
Or Hazel Blears, who was interviewed in full bristling peahen mode for almost all of last night. She once forgot which house she lived in, and benefited to the tune of £18,000. At the time she said it would take her reputation years to recover. Unfortunately not.
But, of course, this is different. This is just understandable confusion over the rules of how many houses you are meant to have as an MP. This doesn’t show the naked greed of people stealing plasma tellies.
Unless you’re Gerald Kaufman, who broke parliamentary rules to get £8,000 worth of 40-inch, flat screen, Bang and Olufsen TV out of the taxpayer.
Or Ed Vaizey, who got £2,000 in antique furniture ‘delivered to the wrong address’. Which is fortunate, because had that been the address they were intended for, that would have been fraud.
Or Jeremy Hunt, who broke the rules to the tune of almost £20,000 on one property and £2,000 on another. But it’s all right, because he agreed to pay half of the money back. Not the full amount, it would be absurd to expect him to pay back the entire sum that he took and to which he was not entitled. No, we’ll settle for half. And, as in any other field, what might have been considered embezzlement of £22,000 is overlooked. We know, after all, that David Cameron likes to give people second chances.
Fortunately, we have the Met Police to look after us. We’ll ignore the fact that two of its senior officers have had to resign in the last six weeks amid suspicions of widespread corruption within the force.
We’ll ignore Andy Hayman, who went for champagne dinners with those he was meant to be investigating, and then joined the company on leaving the Met.
Of course, Mr and Mrs Cameron, your son is right. There are parts of society that are not just broken, they are sick. Riddled with disease from top to bottom.
Just let me be clear about this (It’s a good phrase, Mr and Mrs Cameron, and one I looted from every sentence your son utters, just as he looted it from Tony Blair), I am not justifying or minimising in any way what has been done by the looters over the last few nights. What I am doing, however, is expressing shock and dismay that your son and his friends feel themselves in any way to be guardians of morality in this country.
Can they really, as 650 people who have shown themselves to be venal pygmies, moral dwarves at every opportunity over the last 20 years, bleat at others about ‘criminality’. Those who decided that when they broke the rules (the rules they themselves set) they, on the whole wouldn’t face the consequences of their actions?
Are they really surprised that this country’s culture is swamped in greed, in the acquisition of material things, in a lust for consumer goods of the most base kind? Really?
Let’s have a think back: cash-for-questions; Bernie Ecclestone; cash-for-access; Mandelson’s mortgage; the Hinduja passports; Blunkett’s alleged insider trading (and, by the way, when someone has had to resign in disgrace twice can we stop having them on television as a commentator, please?); the meetings on the yachts of oligarchs; the drafting of the Digital Economy Act with Lucian Grange; Byers’, Hewitt’s & Hoon’s desperation to prostitute themselves and their positions; the fact that Andrew Lansley (in charge of NHS reforms) has a wife who gives lobbying advice to the very companies hoping to benefit from the NHS reforms. And that list didn’t even take me very long to think of.
Our politicians are for sale and they do not care who knows it.
Oh yes, and then there’s the expenses thing. Widescale abuse of the very systems they designed, almost all of them grasping what they could while they remained MPs, to build their nest egg for the future at the public’s expense. They even now whine on Twitter about having their expenses claims for getting back to Parliament while much of the country is on fire subject to any examination. True public servants.
The last few days have revealed some truths, and some heartening truths. The fact that the #riotcleanup crews had organised themselves before David Cameron even made time for a public statement is heartening. The fact that local communities came together to keep their neighbourhoods safe when the police failed is heartening. The fact that there were peace vigils being organised (even as the police tried to dissuade people) is heartening.
There is hope for this country. But we must stop looking upwards for it. The politicians are the ones leading the charge into the gutter.
David Cameron was entirely right when he said: “It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to think that the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities, and that their actions do not have consequences.”
He was more right than he knew.
And I blame the parents.
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45 Comments so far
Show AllMahhhvelous piece save for the ex post haste overrun of the absolutely perfect initial inquiry and opening sentence; use of racist "pygmies" and truly deplorably blind depredation on the honor of "dwarfs" as chosen pejoratives - tsk tsk - your panache would only be increased by the crystal clear distancing from such a bent of positioning
Might I suggest something along the lines of sphincter sphwilling sophistits or perhaps severely constricted crock tots - or pubic serviles
merely suggestions
I don't know about the USA, but in the UK the people formerly known as "pigmies" haven't been called that for many decades and the people formerly called "dwarves" have been called by their preferred term of "little people" for at least as long, both those terms have become restricted--and solely associated--with the kind of morally or intellectually bankrupt people the current writer is talking about.
You're right on point, old goat. A good call-out.
Also, the links in the original article are worth clicking. Instance after instance of money-grubbing and outright looting by our leadership class.
And they have the nerve to pontificate about the looters in the streets.
Excellent piece Mr Tapley!
Recalling GBS ~
"The law is equal before all of us; but we are not all equal before the law. Virtually there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for the cunning and another for the simple, one law for the forceful and another for the feeble, one law for the ignorant and another for the learned, one law for the brave and another for the timid, and within family limits one law for the parent and no law at all for the child."
George Bernard Shaw
what is amazing is so many of these incidents were for so little money considered the power these people wield. Reminds me that Clinton never had sex but a little fellatio. How the mighty have fallen.
brilliant!
Nice to see that this very sharp piece has gone viral big time. Sometimes, laughter in the face of intolerable provocation and a mad world is the best medicine/defence. Remember - the Romanian revolution that toppled Nicolae Ceaucescu began when someone in the crowd, listening to one of his interminable speeches, began laughing at him.
I agree with almost all of what Nat Tapley has written here. EXCEPT the sentence "There is hope for this country. But we must stop looking upwards for it. The politicians are the ones leading the charge into the gutter". The second sentence should have read "But we must stop looking exclusively upwars for it". There ARE politicians -- of the Right and of the Left -- who are right-thinking. Denis Kucinich in the US comes to mind. Nick Clegg in the UK is not hopeless either. A while ago, I was thinking that, if Hubert Horatio Humphrey had been alive today, he would say that a country whose scientists can detect evidence of water having actually flowed on the surface of Mars ought to have politicians who should have been able to see, early-on, the likely disasters of apocapyptic foreign wars, of rapaciousoil-company executives, of mad military contractors to whom illgal wars and torture are outsourced,, of an insane policy of monetary expansion and bailout of hypergreedy banksters, and to have stopped them dead in their course before they could do any significant damage to the nation. But, my main point is not even about that. My main point is about Camila Batmanghelidjh’s argument (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/camila-batmanghelidjh-caring-costs-ndash-but-so-do-riots-2333991.html?service=Print) that “It costs money to care. But it also costs money to clear up riots, savagery and antisocial behaviour” and her high-browed admonition that she “leave[s] it to [us] to do the financial and moral sums”. Wish to point out that her experience as founder of the charities The Place To Be and Kids Company offer, at best, anecdotal evidence of disturbed people’s reactions to constructive engagement. By contrast, personality studies and evolutionary congitive science showa the human personality to be much more complex than her simplistic generalisations purport to teach us. Cameron's determination to be tough should not be dismissed off-hand.
"Nick Clegg in the UK is not hopeless either."
Yes he is. He's impossibly hopeless. He's sold his soul to the devil and got almost nothing in return. Hope is lost when you strike a Faustian bargain.
PS: And, Dear Mr & Mrs Cameron, please see to it that young David pulls up his damn pants and puts on a BELT!
Consult the Swiss to learn how to govern:
http://ni4d.us/fossedal_2002
Direct democracy
Right on! No votes for women in Federal elections until 1971. No votes for women in any Canton until 1958, no votes for women in Appenzell Canton until 1990.
Imagine votes for African Americans under "direct democracy".
Imagine one of the highest per capita incomes in the world despite having few natural resources, no wars in over 200 years despite being surrounded by warring nations, no War on Drugs and few drug problems, no boom and bust economy, the best education and healthcare, a healthy environment and more under direct democracy. http://ni4d.us/
Swings and roundabouts and horses for courses.
Now, what to you imagine the timeline for Federal and individual state suffrage for African Americans would have been under "direct democracy" in the United States?
BTW - Civil wars in Switzerland in 1815 and 1847 but they were before "direct democracy".
"Wrong question. The blacks had the right to vote in 1867 but; as they had nothing to vote for between the dems and repubs - they have been fighting for equal rights ever since. Even as late as the sixties they didn't have the right in the South to ride at the front of the bus, drink from white people's fountains, or even the right to a fair trial (and still don't) before being sentenced to long prison terms or outright lynching for even being outspoken about their lack of rights. So what did they gain? A facade of freedom in an unfree world. Now many ordinary Americans don't have the right to decent health care or education or opportunity. Same thing."
No, not the same thing. Everyone being treated like crap, is not the same thing as one group of people specifically targetted to be treated as a crap, while the other group gets wealthy off their labour.
"First you have direct democracy - wise decisions and prosperity will soon follow as no one votes against their own best interest"
Idealistic and naive.
"Big bucks have always bought elections; and the bought and paid for circuses which surround them have always deprived us of the right to make clear, well reasoned decisions about our future"
Yet somehow, you think that big bucks will not also buy the voting in a "direct democracy".
Hilarious and pathetically naive.
Imagine being a place where dictators and tax avoiding scum stash their money. Imagine being a country supplying mercernaries to other countries, while peddling lies about no wwars.
That is your beloved parasitic Switzerland. Which I guess is why a liberal like you would love it so much.
Wherever do you see me extolling the greatness of America?
And BTW, what you describe as America, is linked, goes hand in hand with my description of Switzerland.
The tax-avoidance of corporations, of the rich in America, is possible because of the existence of countries such as Switzerland, countries that exist to provide a means for these people taxes.
They might "have to", but they still do it.
Imagine being in a place where all residents, whether citizen or not, receive free and sterling health care. Wherein the poor and handicapped are cared for as well.
Better Switzerland, for that is the place I described, than wherever haters like you are from.
And where does the money for that free and sterling healthcare come from.
Oh, right, from the taxes, from other countries. From riches looted from other countries.
What a great country Switzerland is.
Switzerland hardly looted any country. Where on earth do you get your information? Taxes are objectionable to you I note. Then die of some curable disease, but at least you will have your money.
By the by, the USA has looted more nations, destroyed more lives and stolen more resources than any other nation on earth. Yet we have not one tenth of the things that the Swiss citizen takes for granted.
If you intend a response, please make it intelligent or please dont bother.
Wow! Mr. Tapley nails it! But we Americans have to use Google a lot just to understand what his nuanced article is referring to. I guess we have to do it to understand ourselves, too. But I love Tapley's engineered verbal performance.
All I want to say to this is tell it like it is about the hierachal crowd and their high faluting hypocrisy after their heavy dose and even over dose on horror show public polices. For as Carlyle said "No lie can liver forever" not even the ones both the coalition politicians and the Labor front bench is telling right now about this. This-- even though as Mark Twain put it all too aptly "A lie can get half way around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."
Let justice be done, for as Martin Luther King Jr said "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
Dr King and all these other fine people had it right.
All I want to say to this is tell it like it is about the hierachal crowd and their high faluting hypocrisy after their heavy dose and even over dose on horror show public polices. For as Carlyle said "No lie can liver forever" not even the ones both the coalition politicians and the Labor front bench is telling right now about this. This-- even though as Mark Twain put it all too aptly "A lie can get half way around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."
Let justice be done, for as Martin Luther King Jr said "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
Dr King and all these other fine people had it right.
Here's another clue for you all....
"he became a delinquent with no sense of respect for the property of others"
Cameron was a member of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
I would like to add to the list of the wonderfully written quotes from above:
"But the men who enjoy prerogatives which are the result of old violence, frequently forget, and like to forget, how these prerogatives were obtained. We need, however, only think of history, not the history of the successes of various dynasties or rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a small minority, to see that the bases of all the prerogatives of the rich over the poor have originated from nothing but whips, prisons, hard labor, and murder." -from The Kingdom of God Is Within You by Leo Tolstoy
"There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor."- from The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde
Brilliant commentary and super posts,everyone. Errol, you just beat me to it with the Oscar Wilde quote.
Netminnow
I would like to think that that shows that your heart and mind are in the right place. If only some of the talking heads which populate the corporate airwaves would see fit in using that quote as well as the one by Tolstoy. Unfortunately that would seem to be a rather remote possibility as it is unlikely that anyone of prominence, either here or in the UK, would dare risk being thought of as being a [gasp!] socialist.
one of the best things I have read in some time, this is what we need much more of, true investigating and then calling them on it, I will be looking for more from Mr. Tapley.
This is a look into the future of the United States. As the venality of our politicians, whether Jackass or Elephant, leads to further hardships for all but the corporate personhood, leads to less hope for the future from our increasingly under educated children, as well to the further migration of money to ferwer and fewer our cities will burn too.
Too bad these words won't actually fell the UK politicos like flies. There will be no vote of No Confidence to force change at the top. And within a week, the righteous indignation raised by Mr Tapley will be forgotten, and of course will never be broadcast on UK media which is after all complicit in all the immorality listed and much more.
There is an article with a similar argument, in the Telegraph, a bit more comprehensive, in the the Telegraph article expands the focus to tax evaders, and also nails Cameron more directly:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/
This is a fine article and the writer shows great appreciation of the value of "humor" which Thomas Jefferson also valued and that "light goes together with liberty". Why don't we all?
As a young man Cameron used to belong to a gang and used to trash private property. Now as he is matured, he has joined another gang consisting of Obama, Sarkozy etc, and started trashing other countries (Libya comes easily to mind) and expecting to loot their wealth (oil, gold and water to resale to Libyans). Bad habits die hard.
Good God, next time use a Rubber..... Please
I will describe a thug, As a youngster he was not too bright but through his parents perseverance obtained the required bits of paper to enter university. He was just average academically at university and joined a group/gang of hooray Henry thugs who's weekend sport was smashing up the restaurants of the goyim. His rich powerful and influential Jewish parents and grandparents used their influence and money to keep this young thug away from the Courts and any criminal charges. i.e. they paid off the cops the owners of the eateries and the magistrates! His NAME DAVID CAMERON prime minister. Of course he now pretends to be an adult he has the Gaul to criticise today's youth for doing what he did as a youth. more than that, this piece of dog muck now authorises terrorising and destruction of whole countries not just a few shops.
When Cameron was a youth it was called youthful exuberance now of course it is called anti social behavior, vandalism and thuggery!
Whilst the young were looting and rioting in a few English cities Our wonderful Jewish prime minster was busy doing the real Looting of Libya's gold and currency reserves of 30 billion dollars stealing the embassy stealing private Libyan business assets. The rioters damage pales into insignificance compared to Bombing Hospitals Killing babies, Bombing water supplies, civil aviation radar , poisoning the land with depleted uranium for the next 4.9 billion years causing human deformities and DNA damage and diseases such as cancer and leukemia. Although what part of enforcing a no fly zone do these activities form I have no idea. Still these are only Muslims aren't they!!!! and our Jewish premier is after all a friend of Israel doing Israel's dirty work!.
With all these "hidden" skeletons...the stench must be absolutely horrendous. Of course, coming from this 'environment', they would not be able to smell it themselves.
Mr Cameron and other bedwetters ought to think twice before handing out such incendiary rhetoric against their own lowly citizens. Too bad they didn't think about the consequences of their austerity actions. I was taught that it was on ME if I failed to consider these things before acting.
The people might just get really mad one day soon.