Saturday, December 24, 2005
WTF?!?!
Tories back wealth redistribution
The Conservatives should try to narrow the gap between rich and poor, the party's new policy chief has said.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Oliver Letwin said a future Conservative government should make wealth redistribution its goal.
New Tory leader David Cameron has put Mr Letwin in charge of an 18-month overhaul of party policy. Labour said the Conservatives lacked credibility on poverty and had opposed moves to reduce it.
Mr Letwin is in charge of six policy review groups, including a social justice team chaired by Iain Duncan Smith.
In his Telegraph interview, the Dorset West MP and former shadow chancellor said: "Of course it should be an aim to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
"We do redistribute money and we should redistribute money. But we have to find ways that empower people rather than reduce them to dependency."
*sigh*
I'm just amused its come to this. Someone had the genius idea that the way the Conservatives can beat New Labour is to sound like Old Labour. Totally bizarre. I wish they'd legalise dope already so I'd have some kind of method for coping with this insanity.
Well, if medical marijuana doesn't appeal, there is always Simon Heffer:
In an interview with my colleague Rachel Sylvester, Ollie decided to give millions of people the reason they have been searching for not to vote Conservative. He told them that his masterplan is to take the money they strive to earn by hard work and ingenuity, and that is already in the view of many of them incontinently taxed as it is, and give it away to others.
[...]
Ollie's commitment to Socialist-style redistribution is simply one of the most awesome and astonishing gaffes by a senior Tory in opposition that I can ever remember
[...]
With luck, the feast of alcoholic beverages over the next few days, and the general continuing irrelevance of the Tories, will help people to forget that Ollie ever went out in public and said something so humungously stupid.
I would warn his boss, David Cameron, however, that Ollie is likely to prove a serial offender in this regard. A period of permanent silence might be the best Christmas present for all concerned.
# posted by Chris Hughes @ 2:44 am 
