Modest Proposals: Sobriety Test
The case against reparations. And why social smokers will save the world.
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Hold on to those tax receipts. Better yet, why not petition our graceful leaders to save us the bother of earning and spending their money?
Would it not be simpler, say, for the political class to claim one hundred percent of all earnings, and instead, hand us citizens a daily allowance like the children they assume us to be?
This modest proposal would rid us all of past, present, and future wrongs. Within twelve months, our humble and benighted leaders would cure ignorance and abolish want. The blind shall see. The lame shall walk.
Commonwealth leaders have their hands out. Frederick Mitchell, foreign minister for the Bahamas, this week said the Caribbean nations want a “meaningful conversation,” on reparations. Ignore the therapy-speak. What Mitchell means to say is that British taxpayers must cough up fantastic sums to cure history of its wrongs.
At a two-day summit in Samoa, 56 government leaders, including Prime Minister Starmer, signed a document calling for ‘discussions on reparatory justice’ for the transatlantic slave trade. Starmer insisted that no talk of money left the mouths of any attendee. “Our position on that is very, very clear,” he said.
Best of British luck with that, mate. Frederick Mitchell missed the memo. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that, sooner or later, Britain would pay reparations to Caribbean nations.
The murky chorus grows louder. Last year, a UN judge said British citizens owe a hilarious £18 trillion—a quarter of global GDP—for our role in slavery. That said, Mia Mottley, prime minister of the Bahamas, proves herself a cheaper date. Mottley wants a mere trifle—Four Trillion Pounds—for her troubles. Her nation’s annual budget tickles five billion a year.
Essentially, British people who’ve never owned slaves must pay larcenous sums to people who’ve never been slaves. Nice work, if you can get it.
Once the mouldy preserve of resentful, crude-minded nutters, reparations have seeped into the mainstream.
Last month, vice-president Kamala Harris told an audience at the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia that “we need to speak truth on the matter.”
Here in Britain, foreign secretary David Lammy, a man so dense one could mistake him for a block of iridium, routinely calls for Britain to cough up money it doesn’t owe, to racketeers owed nothing.
Supporters dress their arguments in the cloaks of humility. They are anything but humble. The bucket is so leaky it’s a sieve. This ailing, pustulated discourse fails high school logic.
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