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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 5 June 2009

Why a feral underclass is not in anyone’s interest

• PERHAPS the most chilling remark in Westminster housing supremo Dr Ian Rowley’s rant on “think-tank” Localis is his requirement that “contribution to society should influence access”.
Anyone with even the vaguest knowledge of 20th century history will know where discrimination on grounds of “contribution to society” leads.
He goes on to say (New housing boss ‘is like Alan B’Stard’, May 22) “subsidy levels are an incentive not to improve one’s lot by one’s own effort”. Does this also apply to people who inherit wealth?
The incentive to improve one’s lot derives from the belief that it is at least possible. The most deleterious effect on personal incentive is caused by sheer hopelessness which Dr Rowley’s simplistic approach would exacerbate.
His cri de coeur for a return to what used to be referred to as “Victorian values” has in any case, largely been achieved in the last generation or so and has led us to where we are now; a wrecked banking system, rising unemployment, a greater gap between the rich and the poor than existed 100 years ago and the poorest of the poor brutalised and abandoned. More of the same won’t help.
Wise Victorian philanthropists came to realise that those attempting to inveigle the well-to-do to pick on the poor simply made matters worse and began instead the social housing (and other) projects that Dr Rowley now apparently abhors.
A feral (and expanding) underclass is in no one’s interest; they start voting for political representatives who match their own repellence and begin to make life uncomfortable even for the well-off.
Dr Rowley and his ilk would do well to bear this in mind like their wiser forbears did.
Martin Kennedy
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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