A Parable

THE CAST

The Deciders (who are elected to govern us)

The Money Bags (who look after and invest our money)

The Doers (who work hard for the poor)

The Thinkers (who are paid – or not paid – to think)

The Rest of Us (who are getting on with our lives)

The Chief Banker (one of the Regulators)

The Queen (a wise old person)

It so happened that in the early 1980s the Head of all the Deciders turned her somewhat deranged view of the Rest of Us into laws that enabled the Money Bags to lend more money, make more profits and thus ‘stimulate the economy’. They did this in the sure and certain knowledge that if they did it too much, and got into trouble, the Deciders would help them out.

So it happened that the Money Bags lent so much money for the Rest of Us to buy homes that within 25 years the sum of all this lending was about five times more than it would otherwise have been – thus increasing prices, pleasing the producers of the homes and making the Rest of Us (if we could afford to buy) feel rich. The Money Bags did this by inventing ingenious new ways of lending that were rather too clever for the Regulators to understand.

But this visited many problems on the poorer members of the Rest of Us as they should not really have borrowed so much and some of them could not repay the loans. Some lost their homes or were otherwise sorely pressed. The Chief Banker rang his hands and accused the Money Bags of immoral behaviour – while remaining silent on his failures as a Regulator. Even the Queen was surprised at the turn of events and enquired of the Thinkers why they had not warned of it. The Thinkers said ‘Sorry Ma’am, no one can predict such things’.

So the Deciders found a Very Large Sum of public money to help the Money Bags survive since the alternative – Money Bags failure – was unthinkable. But this meant that the spending on many programmes to help the poor needed to be cut – while the more silver-tongued among the Deciders found fine phrases full of empty words – like ‘The Big Society’ – to replace the spending.

Meanwhile the Doers do what they always do – help the poor among the Rest of Us as the programmes that were designed for this purpose collapsed around them and the Deciders savaged them verbally as ne’er do wells. Sometimes the Doers are so busy with their wonderful work that they do not remember every day and every minute what has caused the increased need for their services and they blame themselves for not doing more and redouble their efforts.

So – to all Doers and a lot of the Rest of Us – DO NOT FORGET what has caused all this. It did not just happen. The Deciders made it happen. And it is NOT JUST.

And unless we understand all this and are vigilant it will happen again!!

By: Professor Peter Ambrose

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evolve.humanrightstv.com/professor-peter-ambrose/2011/parable Professor Peter Ambrose www.humanrightstv.com/uk-housing-policy HumanRightsTV www.humanrightstv.com/uk-housing-policy/no-place-like-home/no-place-like-home