Middle-class morality

Jesper på Dagens konflikt uppmärksammar en fullständigt bisarrt borgerlig formulering i en rapport från den så kallade Öppna kriskommissionen. ”Egenansvar” föreslås bli en grundläggande princip för att få ta del av den grundläggande välfärden. Minns direkt ett passande stycke ur George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion:

Doolittle: What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s always the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.” But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow’s that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don’t need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don’t eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I’m a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Higgins: I suppose we must give him a fiver.

Pickering: He’ll make a bad use of it, I’m afraid.

Doolittle: Not me, Governor, so help me I won’t. Don’t you be afraid that I’ll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won’t be a penny of it left by Monday: I’ll have to go to work same as if I’d never had it. It won’t pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for myself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to others, and satisfaction to you to think it’s not been throwed away. You couldn’t spend it better.

Higgins: Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall have no convictions left.

(nedkortat av mig)