Rishi has earned the right to splash cash
WHY ALL the fuss about Rishi Sunak’s swimming pool?Why all the fuss about his clothes? If people have come by their money honestly and pay their taxes, then what they do with that money is nobody else’s business.The poor will not benefit if the rich are forbidden to have posh clothes and swimming pools, but the employment market benefits whenever people spend and create demand, whether on swimming pools or pints of milk.
The success of the economy is the sum of the success of the individuals who work in it and we should never resent those who do well.
Similarly, if parents decide to spend their money on their children’s education instead of on cars and expensive holidays, then why not? The children benefit and so do those who will rely on their education when they start working and offering their services. There is no virtue in hating excellence.
Rishi can afford a swimming pool because he was a successful merchant banker. I also have one, though doubtless much less grand, because I spent ten weeks hoofing around a studio being spun, lifted and dragged by Anton du Beke. As nobody has ever sniffed selfrighteously at my pool, I can assume only that the public hates merchant bankers but loves comedic dancers.
THE politics of envy is corrosive. What matters is not that someone has more, but that someone has much less. In short, politicians must concentrate on helping the poor rather than penalising the rich.
Nowhere is that more important than in the supply of health services.We have a three tier system in this country: on the top tier are those who get what they need from the NHS or who choose to go to private; on the next tier are those who are failed by the NHS but who can, often with serious sacrifice, resort to the private sector; but on the third tier are those who are failed by the NHS and who, if they starved for a month, could never afford private treatment and must suffer on. And how much have you heard about that from Truss and Sunak?