Tom Hunter and others tell us we are failing to produce enough new enterprises. Our people are too lazy or stupid or too mollycoddled by a Nanny State to start their own businesses.
Yet many of those who castigate the rest of us for being unenterprising are the very ones who will risk nothing. The modern entrepreneurial class are sad reflections of their Victorian forebears who built the capitalist system. They demand protection from risk and public subsidy before undertaking any "enterprise".
What do I mean? Let's look at some examples from Aberdeen. Allegedly the wealthiest city in Scotland and certainly the most unequal.
Where Victorian capitalism built a huge public transport railway system, First Group offers the people of Aberdeen what is probably the most expensive public transport in Europe. These poster boys of modern capitalism can't even do that without demanding and getting massive public subsidy. The taxpayers of Aberdeen fill the pockets of First Group shareholders to allow them the privilege of charging excessive fares. Madness.
The Duthie Park was gifted to the citizens of Aberdeen in Victorian time with no strings attached. In these days Ian Wood wanted ninety million quid of public money before he would "donate" his fifty million to the "Granite Web" development of Union Terrace Gardens. That's called hubris in my dictionary.
We were promised that the private sector would drive prices down by competition and was somehow magically more efficient than public ownership and that wealth would "trickle down" and enrich us all.
This is a notion as nonsensical now as it was in the Thatcher time. It is the already wealthy who are subsidised at vast expense.
Contrast the public subsidy for the unemployed and the disabled. A pittance which is designed to support no other kind of activity than the fruitless search for non-existent jobs.
But what happens when poor people become enterprising? They get the jail for "defrauding" the benefit system. When the poor top up benefits by doing a little work on the side or by being enterprising in any way they get the book thrown at them.
Even in the Thatcher time, the system recognised that there were simply no jobs and did not force people onto a full-time treadmill of chasing non-existent work and "sanctioning" their benefits if they failed to do so. In that sense, as astonishing as it may seem, these days are even worse than the Thatcher time.
In the recession of the Thatcher time, community arts flourished, writers and poets and musicians were able to use enforced idleness to hone their skills. Not any more. Congratulations to the Westminster coalition, I never comprehended there could be nostalgia for the days of Maggie Thatcher.
If we were serious about promoting enterprise we would be encouraging people to think about benefits as business start up support. This idea is exactly analogous to the way the wealthy subsidise their business costs by avoiding tax. They don't get the jail of course.
As ever the rhetoric of public pronouncement masks inequality, preserves disadvantage and promotes the interests of the wealthy over the poor.
I first met the artist Angus Neil in Glasgow in the early 1980s. I was living in Garnethill and married with a family and gainfully unemployed. This was the height of the "Thatcherschina" and times were hard, particularly in Glasgow. Nonetheless Garnethill was a wonderful community to be poor in. There was a diverse mix of people from a great variety of ethnic groups, The clergy were simply crawling all over the place, with a convent, a buddhist temple, a chapel, a synagogue, a free presbyterian mission and a host of other faiths. My stepson went to a primary school where thirty three languages were spoken at home. The Glasgow School of Art was the most imposing building in Garnethill, in a close contest with St Aloysius' School. The Art School ensured a continuing connection with Bohemians from an earlier age. Bill MacLellan and Hamish MacQueen were prominent in these circles. One very dark and dull day it was a signing on day and as usual the day...
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