The Full Monty of Immorality

A mate of mine emailed me the other day as follows: “I’ve just been notified of two new letters on my son’s High School website - I read them in order of timing, they were a minute or so apart. The first one gave notice of strike action by teachers on 5th and 7th July. The second was two pages long and gave dire warnings about attendance levels and the correlation with academic achievement.”

The logical conclusion we both drew from these letters is that wilfully preventing a child from being educated is morally reprehensible, especially when those doing the preventing are the providers of said education and know without doubt that their actions are damaging the children.

Legally it's a requirement for parents/guardians to ensure that their kids receive a full-time education. Should a child miss even one day of school, this could prompt the intervention of the authorities. Home-schooling is an option, but expecting parents to secure such services for ad hoc days at short notice is unreasonable, impractical and likely wouldn’t do a lot to further a child’s education. I’d love to argue in court that teachers are breaking the law by going on strike and should be sanctioned, or even sectioned.

I’ve used the term ‘morally reprehensible’ once already so, à la Beetlejuice (an obnoxious deviant who materialises from Hades when his name is said three times), I’ll say it twice more: Morally reprehensible! Morally reprehensible! And look who’s appeared – Mick Lynch. His latest strikes are forcing thousands upon thousands to change their travel arrangements. Hubby, for example, had already spent a lot of time figuring out the logistics of getting to business commitments at one end of the country immediately before a week-long testosterone binge with his mates, starting at the other end of the country and ending in foreign climes, i.e. Scotland. He booked train tickets, hotel rooms, the works. Now to no avail. His strike-day options are a series of one-way car hires or f-f-f-f-flying, both of which will spew more carbon into the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change, meaning more storms to worsen sewage spills, more air pollution to harm our sick kids, and more heatwaves to kill our grannys. Thanks, morally reprehensible Mick.

It gets worse. Guess who supports Lynch and his climate-destroying antics. Yup – Greenies (as evidenced by their tweets). If hypocrisy isn’t technically immoral, then it should be.

Talking of immorality, the BBC wore its heart on its left wing/sleeve recently about the cost-of-living crisis. They interviewed all these poor, desperate people struggling to make ends meet, demanding the Government do ‘something’. Where were they being interviewed? In a café. No money, no latte, no brainer, or at least that’s how it should be. I wonder where else they could cut back to afford their mortgage repayments. Perm three from three: manicures, foreign holidays, food – most of those being interviewed were overweight and must have eaten a lot of cake, an immoral activity of our time. Pleading poverty when you’re not poor, or you got yourself into that situation by not being prudent, and angrily demanding that someone else, anyone else, including those in genuine poverty (opportunity cost of taxes) bear your burden is, directly or indirectly, six of the seven deadly sins: Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Pride. If any of your money went on sexy lingerie then we can add Lust to the mix and there’s the full monty of immorality.

Trying to help the genuinely hard-pressed, each week I donate some nutritious stuff to the foodbank collection point at the village church. Well, when I say nutritious, one time I accidentally ordered two lots of Jelly Babies from Ocado – Hubby likes Jelly Babies when he’s cycling – so I went to donate those, thinking they would be a nice treat for an impoverished child, in addition to three tins of corned beef. Hubby saw his sweeties being deposited and tried to grab them back, resulting in a tug-o’-war with a bag of jelly babies in the church porch. You had to be there. Now you might think Hubby is selfish and greedy because he tried to deprive a poor kid of Jelly Babies. It wasn't cake ergo, according to today's 'standards', he's not immoral.

The next bit is very sad and I hesitated to include it in this blog but, as a Corbynista callously tweeted, “it’s a modern morality tale,” although not in the way she meant. Five people recently perished at the bottom of the ocean while trying to explore the wreck of the Titanic. When the news first broke that they were missing, I was horrified at the idea of those poor souls sitting in that tin can (carbon-fibre, actually) not knowing if they were going to be rescued, waiting to suffocate, the stench of the increasingly foul air making them sick, the psychological trauma worse than the physical discomfort. When it was reported that the vessel had catastrophically imploded and death would have been instant, it was almost a relief.

To me, they were five fellow human beings, their loved ones traumatised by the fear of what might be happening. It was a time for concern, empathy, compassion and prayers. It was not a time for being judgmental about their wealth and their lifestyle; there’s more to people than a Rolex watch, you know. Unless, that is, you’re a Corbynista writing for the Guardian. Through those bloodshot eyes, they define their fellow human beings, all God’s children, by the amount of money they have – the more they have, the more they’re hated, unless they fund the Labour party. That attitude is, guess what, morally reprehensible.

While the fate of those five people was unknown but presumed to be awful, while their loved ones were also suffering, the Corbynista decided to pass judgement publicly on their wealth. No compassion. No kindness. No tolerance. But plenty of arrogance: arrogance that she felt she knew all there was to know about five strangers in order to score a tacky political point.

Jesus said (Mark 10:25), “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” He said this in the context of a rich man’s assumption that he would go to Heaven because he obeyed all the Commandments and ‘never sinned’. Jesus wasn’t so much criticising his wealth as his arrogance, his sense of entitlement. He suggested that the rich man forgo all his riches in order to pass through the Pearly Gates, which was a step too far for the guy. There’s a difference in the getting-to-Heaven stakes between not doing something, in this case ‘not sinning’, and doing something, i.e. ‘giving your riches away and helping others. 

Regarding our five adventurers and the Corbynista, they were rich and she’s arrogant, meaning Jesus would condemn her more than them. Ironic, eh? He would also condemn her for her lack of compassion. And she’s guilty of bullying – mouthing off against people who are in no position to defend themselves. Her apologists might argue that she was also comparing the world’s concern for the fate of billionaires as being far more voluble than that for the presumed hundreds who died on the migrant boat in the Med a few days previous. Yes, dear, but if you and your like didn’t stymie attempts to break the people smugglers’ business model, there’d be fewer such boats and far fewer deaths. She’s more to blame for the migrant deaths than the five rich guys.

So, while she tried to claim the moral high ground, I’ve actually argued her towards hell in a handcart. To batten down the Hades hatches, and to increase her suffering and those of fellow Corbynistas and Guardian readers, I’ll leave the last word to Boris. I know. That is so cruel. He wrote in the Daily Mail about the Titanic tragedy, “… hubris invites nemesis”. He was referring to the arrogance of those claiming that the Titanic was unsinkable being the cause of its sinking, but he might just as well have been referring to the moral arrogance of the Corbynista being the cause of her own moral downfall.