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Weekend plans

Things you learn on CUK. Whatever happened to honest, upright citizens grafting for Queen & Country?

Thatcher's no-such-thing-as-society cult of individualism. Now people will just calculate the best economic outcome with no concept of duty. At one end you've got PC with his benefit dodges, at another the too-big-to-fail banks, and in-between the contractors who are whining they've been stung after extracting their professional service fees as loans from an offshore trust, or whatever the dodge was.
 
Thatcher's no-such-thing-as-society cult of individualism. Now people will just calculate the best economic outcome with no concept of duty. At one end you've got PC with his benefit dodges, at another the too-big-to-fail banks, and in-between the contractors who are whining they've been stung after extracting their professional service fees as loans from an offshore trust, or whatever the dodge was.

Those that quote Thatcher saying ‘there is no such thing as society’ can’t have read it in context:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it: 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society.

There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

I see no problem in this, and it applies as much today as it did then. It's certainly not about individualism, but personal responsibility.
 

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