I NEVER cease to be amazed by the numerous varieties of socialism. Let us start at the better end.
There is the honest-as-the-day-is-long socialism of the old style working man – or woman – a member of a trades union, someone who, in the not too distant past, would have been found attending evening classes run by the Workers’ Educational Association.
This sort of socialist would campaign reasonably and articulately for a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.
Then there is trades union socialism.
This is the creed of the boss of that trade union to which the working bloke belongs. He spends all his time preaching equality, while earning ten or fifteen times as much as the working bloke he is appointed to represent.
Then we come to champagne socialism, also referred to as Hampstead or Pinteresque socialism. This allowed surly playwrights to enjoy a millionaire lifestyle while banging on continuously about – you’ve guessed it – the evils of inequality. A variation on this type is the media socialist, typically a TV presenter of impeccably anti-capitalist credentials who yet manages to own tens of millions in company shares.
More exotic even than this kind is what I would call the grace and favour socialist, often a bishop or cathedral canon, who inhabits a palace or somewhere nice in a secluded, leafy close and finds time to complain about the privileged lives of the bankers.
But I confess I have discovered the most recent efflorescence in the myriad types of socialist: this is the municipal socialist. He or she will typically be the head of a Labour council, vigorous in complaint about the socalled “cuts”, but personally earning around £200,000 a year. A hundred such chief executives earn more than the Prime Minister.
They fly everywhere first class and stay in the poshest hotels. They sit, free of charge, in the best seats at top sporting events and concerts. I have seen an official report which records that these town hall chiefs ran up credit card bills, expenses claims and travel receipts amounting to more than £2.6 m during the past three years alone.
They spent £340,000 on hotels alone. No doubt, these municipal socialists enjoy this glamorous lifestyle while protesting, all bleeding hearts, against the predicament of the homeless.
It is against this background of institutionalised hypocrisy that I express some sympathy with those protesting outside St Paul’s Cathedral, just a quarter of a mile from where I live. There is something rotten in the state of England, and indeed in the whole of the West.
And it is not confined to the excesses of some greedy bankers. As we see from the scandal of the MPs’ expenses and from the colossal, largely unaccounted, riches which the apparatchiks in the EU pay themselves, there is a vast and cynical misappropriation of public money going on. The most sickening aspect of this – the first class gravy train – is that it is being operated generally by those most vociferous in their preaching the dogmas of socialism.
There are many words useful in describing these people – but I dare not write any of them down in a family newspaper.
This sickening, hypocritical greed is now leading to violence in the streets throughout the western world. I hope I have helped identify at least some of those who are to blame.
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