Maurice Saatchi is wrong

Okay, I'm no expert. I state that right at the beginning because although I have opinions, I don't pretend that they hold much weight.

The piece by Maurice Saatchi in the FT (here) needs to be answered; as I'm sure it will be by people with more knowledge and better arguments than me, but I'm going to add my two pennyworth anyway.

Let's start with the first sentence: 'Everyone wants to be immortal'. Well, not me. I'm quite looking forward to the grave - a bit of peace and quiet. What's more important, a good Christian like Margaret Thatcher would not doubt realise that wanting fame is the worst way to get into heaven. Me? I'm a good old-fashioned atheist, so I have no fear of death and none of the absurd prejudices that Christians carry around with them. What an arrogant way for Saatchi to begin an article! - by assuming he knows the minds of every person who has ever and will ever exist!

So, Thatcher's values are timeless and eternal! Anyone can give a clear idea of what she stood for? Well, yes: greed. That just about sums it up! Greed and not caring about others. Not very Christian, is it? Okay, so Thatcher cares for others - let's give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. But let's be clear about something else: when the Tory era came to an end in the 90's, Britain was not a fair society. People did not consider themselves 'free'. People did not mostly consider themselves well off.

The reason is simple: what Torries gave with one hand, they took away with the other. Now, I'm too young to remember the politics and economics of the 70's - or much about the 80's in any depth. But I did go to school with people whose fathers were out of work due to closing collieries. They were not free. They were not better off. They were mostly confused and depressed. Thatcher did nothing for these people. Now, I'm not a socialist. I don't think that people should be paid to do nothing or to produce something that isn't worth the effort. But there is good coal in those mines. They would have been cost-effective but for the stubbornness of the unions on one hand and the government on the other. The polarisation that the Torries effected was as much to blame as the pig-headedness of the NUM. This wouldn't matter a jot if it weren't that there were real people involved. Ruined societies. Ruined lives. Ruined families.

'Britain can be great again'. Again, let me be clear: if there is one prejudice I despise above all others it is nationalism. That vainglorious trumpeting and banging of a hollow drum. Trying to pretend that British people are 'better' than any other people is sickening and is, in my book, a misdemeanour against humanity.

Lower taxes. Not low taxes: lower taxes. In other words a tax system which aims always at lowering taxes. Think about that: schools, hospitals, police, fire service always getting less money. Okay, the right argue that due to wealth creation the government will get more money in anyway. Well, that can work up to a point, but it is foolish to think that the economy will always grow and tax revenues will always increase. They appeared to do so during the Thatcher period for the simple reason that they destroyed manufacturing and so made many people unemployed and at the same time reduced government spending so that teachers and nurses (in particular) were underpaid. Of course, they paid the police well, because they needed the police on the government's side. As the economy recovered after the destruction of many core industries, tax revenues increased. But let's be clear: tax revenues increased because unemployment was falling - unemployment that the Torries had created. A better approach would have been to reduce over-employment in these industries over many years - an evolution rather than a revolution. But the Torries only cared about cold figures and assumed that their economic theories were sound.

This, for me, is the coup de grace for Thatcherism: that as the wealthy get wealthier, the poorer get wealthier too, albeit not at the same rate. The 'trickle-down' effect - that wealth will trickle down from the rich to the poor. This inevitably means a widening gap between rich and poor. This doesn't in itself worry me. I don't care that rich people are rich. I always feel very uncomfortable around rich people, but I'm not jealous of them - I don't want to be in their shoes. For me, I don't find happiness in comparing myself financially or materialistically with others. What does matter is how the general population behaves with a widening wealth gap. The only point to free-market Thatcherism is that people should be happier. But they are not. Happiness in the UK is very low. People were much happier in the 70's than they are now. The key to this seems to be that people are aspirational when it comes to material things, but not when it comes to what they give back. Free market philosophies encourages people think about their own self-interest, and makes them compare what they have with people they can never catch up with.

And so, in the City, we hear people complaining about the 50% tax rate. It's for people who earn over £150,000 per year. Remember: these are the people who got us into this financial mess. The City was allowed to do what it does because it was supposed it knew what it was doing. The huge salaries were justified on the basis that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Well, it seems we got very high earning monkeys: they messed things up good and proper; then they complain that they have to pay! They say they'll all go abroad. Good! Let someone else give them their gold-plated bananas. This country needs to concentrate on creating wealth with the majority of its population, not a privileged minority.

Lower taxes are good 'for moral reasons'. What complete rubbish! The idea that having a bit more money gives you more choice! Well, let me be frank: if you're lucky enough never to need the help of the state, then you may be able to buy a bigger car or a new kitchen or a plasma-screen television. But if you happen to lose your job, your house, your car - in fact everything - then you'll find very little morality in Thatcher's small state. A widening wealth gap is not a moral vision: it is a sickening prospect that does no favours for the children of the wealthy nor for the children of the poor. Not being poor does bring obvious benefits, but it does not follow that the richer you are, the freer you are.

It's really amazing how many stupid prejudices lie in people's morality! What is quite clear is that having wealth as a goal is not a route to happiness.

"But today, those principles of capitalism are under question." Saatchi is making a case for the moral weight of Thatcherism. The problem is, there is no moral weight. It seems to me that the lone thing that Thatcherism brought to this country was a realisation that we cannot ignore economic certainties. You cannot fight inflation by generating money. You cannot ignore government debt. In other words, ignoring the obvious will not get you out of a hole. Let's be clear, though: the free market capitalism of which Saatchi is so proud should be in question, because they themselves ignore quite obvious facts. Firstly, the free market is an ideal, not a fact. It is a concept - markets are never free: they are always influenced by governments, large corporations, national protectionism - remember, even George W Bush was protective of the US steel industry. The free market does not exist. Secondly, inequitable societies are unhappy societies and Thatcherism inevitably creates inequitable societies. As the wealth gap increases, as it must do if you want to generate wealth from the rich, the poor compare themselves not with how they were 10 years earlier, but with the unattainable levels of wealth they see others have. Thatcherites like to think that they support people getting what they deserve - if you work hard, you will get your financial reward. However, the children of those who are wealthy have not worked hard. Those who inherited wealth have done absolutely nothing to earn their wealth. This creates the complete opposite of what Thatcherites seem to intend. What's more, the poor are even poorer in comparison with the rich.

The thing is: asset prices are not fixed. If the wealth of the nation rises, then the cost of a house will rise. If the wealth of the nation rises inequitably, then the cost of larger houses will rise at a larger pace than smaller ones. What's more, some regions will have much higher house prices than others. We have reached the stage in this country where the average wage is woefully insufficient to buy an average priced house. People in the north cannot sell a house and buy one in the south. Therefore, moving from a poorer area to a richer one brings with it a fall in living standards - but that may be all someone can do in order to get a job. In principle, the free market should create jobs in poorer parts of Britain - and yet that seems not be happening. Job and wealth creation is continuing in the South East to the detriment of the rest of the country.

What is needed is not a 'left' and a 'right', but a pragmatic view. A small state is not a good goal in itself. The size of the state needs to be correct for what it wants to do. A large state, therefore, is also not a good goal since it consumes too many taxes. Smaller taxes is not a good goal: what is required is sufficient taxation to do the will of parliament and to fund whatever sized state is required. Wealth should not be a goal because wealth does not produce freedom or happiness as Thatcher stated. A better goal would be reducing poverty. Inequality is not a good goal: this does no-one any favours long-term: economic equality is a much better goal.

My humble conclusion is: don't listen to those who see Thatcher as bringing solutions. Similarly, don't imagine that a class war drives the politics and economics of this country. What people are talking about when they question the free market is a million miles away from the pre-Thatcher period. In fact, when anyone uses old, politically-motivated words to discuss where we are and where we should be, imagine that they are all wrong: we need new words and new ways of thinking - not ones that ignore the past, but ones that build on it to create a new capitalist future: one that is more equitable, more self-aware and more self-critical.

Feminist Wedding?

Here's a link to an article by a feminist who is getting married.

She seems very nice and sensible, but I have a couple of things that I'd like to say to her.

Firstly, I really hate the idea that deciding on how roles are split in a relationship is a 'feminist' idea. Okay, I can see how feminist thinking would need a different split in a relationship to the traditional one. But every relationship is different. Only relationships which aren't very deep are 'traditional'. My wife and I share the housework. I didn't expect her to do more than me. I don't think of this as 'feminist'. It's just how we do things. The point is: it doesn't need a label - it's just you. My wife does think of herself as a feminist. But really this just means that she doesn't want to be a bored housewife.

Secondly, that whole thing about weddings is a bit old-fashioned. It seems to me that the biggest problem you have is not with the notion of marriage but with the notion of a Christian marriage; the answer to which is simple: don't have a Christian wedding.

My wife and I had a humanist wedding. We got to decide exactly what we wanted in the ceremony. There was no 'giving away' of the bride. The structure of the wedding still had some of the traditional aspects: the bride dressed in white coming down the isle; readings, albeit secular ones; but that was what we wanted. We pillaged tradition for the things we liked.

You cannot ignore the fact that one of you is male and one female. To do so would represent an absurd blindness to a biological fact. Men and women are different. That's not to say that either is 'better' on the whole. Men tend to be stronger than women, women tend to be better at remembering and organising than men. It's not universal, but it's not imposed by culture either: it's biological.

What's more, you can never ignore the culture you were brought up in. Without culture, everything is meaningless. Your attitude to cultural aspects will help morph it into something new - and this is where it is important to have an attitude; but don't imagine that you will never be a cultural stereotype. All you can do is create your own idea of a stereotype