The Spirit Level

2789 days ago

If there was a God he'd call down a meteoroid strike on the #PRIinPerson conference in Singapore

When you see that a conference which claims to be business focussed, as is the PRI In Person jamboree in Singapore, but is in fact "supported by the United Nations" you know that it will be a nest of vipers seeking to enrich the 1% at the expense of the 99%. At this point I quote Ayn Rand

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3772 days ago

Owen Jones in my Christmas Stocking – eeeek

Santa (aka the Mrs, formerly known as the Deluded Lefty) included in my stocking a book called “Chavs” by Owen Jones. The Mrs was not fully aware of quite how loathsome Mr Jones is but surely the fact that at the top of the back cover is a quote from Guardian Harridan Polly Toynbee about how wonderful this book is must have been a giveaway.


Toynbee is, as you know, wrong about everything – the Toynbee Rule.

And so the book is dreadful. Mr Jones seems to think that quoting the opinion of some frightful lefty establishes what that frightful lefty believes as a matter of fact. That is even when it has been shown that the factual evidence shows that the views of the frightful lefty in question are just not borne out by hard reality.

I can understand when the students of the Mrs (studying sociology at a former Poly) cite the author of the Spirit Level to demonstrate the “fact” that inequality of wealth causes unhappiness all round. They are just 19 and are not a self-proclaimed one-person think tank for the Left. But when Owen Jones makes the same sort of claim you wonder what fuckwit offered to publish his book? Surely it would have been cheaper to have bought a few essays from her students off the Mrs and republished them?

Jones purports to show how the Middle Classes demonise all working class folks as chavs.

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4312 days ago

The Spirit Level – More Toynbee Twaddle

I am urged by a thoroughly delightful reader from Bristol to check out a book published two years ago called The Spirit Level, the central thesis of which is that the greater inequality of wealth within any given society, the greater the chronic health and social problems caused to both rich and poor within that society. And Britain, the book claims, is suffering from this problem badly. Apparently Call Me Dave and Ed Milliband think it is a great book and have said so publicly. I am not sure what Bono thinks but my guess is that he thinks its fab. And Polly Toynbee? The Old harridan cannot get enough of it – she misquotes it liberally to further her own hyprocital and misguided agenda. So using the Toynbee test the book must be a load of twaddle. It is.

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