Not only is business good for society but so are bosses.

Andy is a local businessman. Employs about twenty people. Works hard - pretty much non-stop. Pretty typical of his sort. I want to tell you about his sort by way of response to this piece of Marxist bigotry:

...neoliberal bosses have something in common with child molesters. Both lack restraint in the pursuit of their own self-gratification in situations where they think they can get away with it.

I'm not beating up on Chris Dillow here for the crass correlation of businessmen with paedophiles but rather with his perpetuating the myth that the operation of trade - business - is merely a matter of "the maximal pursuit of money".

Andy had an employee who was diagnosed with cancer. It turned out pretty soon that this young man wasn't going to make it and, more to the point, he wouldn't be able to do the job for which Andy employed him. In Chris Dillow's fantasy of the businessman as an exploitative, MaxU, utilitarian, Andy would see the employee onto sick pay and that's end of it. Let me tell you what actually happened.

The dying young man was kept on the payroll - full wages despite not being able to work - right up to the day he died. When Andy discovered he'd no life insurance, he organised a fundraiser to get some cash for his wife and young kids. And he spent the last days of this man's life helping his family deal with what was happening.

There is a common shtick among left-wing (and not-so-left-wing) commenters that trade - doing business - attracts the worst sort of people and is, you know, just a little mucky and common. Wherever we look - film, TV, literature - business people are portrayed as bad people. Yet the reality is that the typical businessman or woman is no better or worse than the typical social worker, academic or Marxist columnist. And this means that, every day, business people act without consideration of maximising profits because they want to do the right thing. It's not just high profile things like paying for a woman's cancer treatment but a whole host of little things made possible because the business people have made some cash - anybody who has worked raising money for something like building a new village hall know just how businesses, large and small, are willing to help out. As 'Secret Millionaire' showed us, the idea of giving back, of helping, of making a place better is as central to business life as deal-making.

The late Barry Pettman, one of the founders of Emerald publishing, ran his other publishing businesses from his home at Patrington in Holderness. To make sure that the village post office kept open, Barry shipped everything to Patrington to go out through this little post office. For sure, Barry (who was born in a Hull council estate and was an academic economist) liked buying very expensive wine and grand cars (plus second and third homes in the USA and NZ), but his urge to make money was matched by his desire to see that money help the community where he lived. And what Barry did is repeated again and again across the world, business people are not soul-less Randian automata motivated solely by maximising utility but flesh and blood people with strong personal ethics, courage, faith and love. It's time we recognised this and put an end to the narrow "bosses are bad" perspective of people like Chris Dillow.

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Marco, who owns around 150 properties internationally, including six in Preston, said he is willing to give extra support to the winning candidate as well as the keys to the top-floor flat, including footing the council tax bill for as long as necessary.

Read more at: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/millionaire-businessman-is-giving-away-a-flat-in-preston-for-free-1-8358210

Marco, who owns around 150 properties internationally, including six in Preston, said he is willing to give extra support to the winning candidate as well as the keys to the top-floor flat, including footing the council tax bill for as long as necessary.

Read more at: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/millionaire-businessman-is-giving-away-a-flat-in-preston-for-free-1-8358210

Free speech: some lessons on politeness from the 18th Century

Free speech is a pretty simple concept. It means I can say what I like, doesn’t it? Perhaps it does but what about deliberate offence? Bullying language? Prejudicial language? Where does the limit to free speech lie? Today we have become less worried about sexual swearwords or blasphemy that would have been the case with our forebears. But where they worried greatly about “fuck”, “shit” and “Jesus Christ”, we now obsess about “nigger”, “poofter” and even “paddy”.

Perhaps we are right, maybe making such prejudicial words beyond the pale is correct. For sure, using them is rather asking for a smack in the gob but we do appear to have lost – among all the legislative frenzy – the idea of politeness. Yes, politeness is often a deception – a white lie (are we still allowed to say that). But is its loss making it harder for us to justify the defence of free speech?

In his magnificent examination of English culture in the 18th Century, “The Pleasure of Imagination”; John Brewer looks at the conflict between politeness and sensibility:

“Many of the ideals of sensibility seem to contrast with those of politeness – authenticity rather than show, spontaneous feeling rather than artifice, private retreat rather than urban sociability, the virtues of humble rank rather than high station. They appear to stand in opposition to the values of polite London society.” (Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination, Pg 115)

Such a comment reminds us of the explosion of “spontaneous” feeling at the death of Diana, of Oscar winner bursting into tears and rambling about their inspiration and of the slight discomfort some of us feel at the seeming need for every comedy to have at least three swear words in every sentence.

However, politeness was not enforced by statute. There were no laws requiring polite behaviour in the 18th Century. People were polite because it was expected of them and for them to play any role in society failing at such expectation was to risk being rejected. Today we have begun to seek legal remedy to the enforcement of selected standards of behaviour – these may be the vast collection of law and case around so-called “equalities” or the growing judgmentalism of “standards boards”.

If we are to rescue free speech from its emasculation by self-interested groups and their public agents, then we have at some point to challenge the regulation of language that supports the interventions of these agencies. Conservatives should ask whether it is better to regulate politeness through society rather than through the law. It is incredibly rude to call someone a “paki” but is it really any ruder than calling that person a “cunt”? The law says it is since it privileges one word as a special condition subject to the possibility to punishment under the criminal law while the other remains just very rude.

I am not one of those people who think that the entire edifice of “equalities” should go. But I do think that the regulation of language through the criminal law is wrong and that those aspects of equalities legislation should be repealed. And the growing collection of “standards” applied to councillors, doctors, public servants and the like are also attempts to use the law to control speech – breeching the principle of liberty.

Free speech comes at a price – that of offence. But since we cannot ban or bar every possible word or combination of words it cannot work to select a few words for special treatment. However, I would point out that using offensive language has a societal price – getting thumped is part of that price but the other part is to colour our view of that person to their detriment.

So – as a good Tory – let’s look to our history. And teach our children this:

“Politeness created a complete system of manners and conduct based on the art of conversation. It places the arts and imaginative literature at the centre of its aim to produce people of taste and morality because they were considered a means of achieving a polite and virtuous character.” (Brewer, Pg 111)

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