Mar 2009 17

Can you be General Secretary of the Fabians without understanding capital letters?8

Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society, thinks he has ‘outed’ us as partisans on the basis of a slide in a presentation by our Chief Executive, Matthew Elliott:

“Assuming that Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive, no longer wants to defend the Taxpayers Alliance's public statements that they are not "on the opposite side of the political spectrum" to Labour, and that "they don't have a party preference", will he kindly now gracefully withdraw that and cease this trust eroding double-talk to different audiences? (I can't see that a weasel words defence based on whether you capitalise conservative or not would do anything more than keep digging – though Elliott's slides go for the capital C "Conservatives in Britain" just to close that route off.”

Take a look at the slide.  You’ll notice that both uses of the term “Conservative” come at the beginning of a sentence.  Now, and I hope Mr. Katwala is paying careful attention, that means it isn’t necessarily the proper noun ‘Conservative’ (i.e. a partisan for the Conservative party) but either the proper noun or the start of a sentence.

So, it could be either but there is plenty of evidence that even the most politically naive could use to discover that Matthew isn’t describing the TPA as a partisan, Conservative, organisation.  Mr. Katwala himself hints at one example of many examples, the cross-party think tank Reform, but there is a more obvious one: the UKIP.  I don’t think that a list of partisan, Conservative organisations would include another party.

The phrase “conservative movement” or “conservative” is used a lot to describe the broad, centre-right, movement in the United Kingdom.  Of course, some people think that doesn’t reflect the libertarian strand in the British centre right properly, but for the lack of a better term “conservative” works.

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has no loyalty to any political party.  As well as criticising the Government in no uncertain terms when they get things wrong, we’ve criticised the Conservatives many times.  Sometimes they get wound up and attack us back, and then we respond in turn.

As a former student of the London School of Economics – set up by the Webbs, I respect the intellectual heritage of the Fabian Society however much I disagree with its objectives and analysis.  It is incredibly disappointing to see it reduced to this kind of foolish sniping.

This is yet another sign that we’re getting our message across; the upholders of the cosy, high-spending consensus are getting desperate.

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  • Hardeep_Singh

    Sniping it most certainly is. Whether it’s the Fabian’s or Polly they simply cannot accept that anyone else can dare have an opinion that differs from their own. What is the point of Mr. Katwala’s response other than to bemoan and generaly bad mouth the the centre right (via a thinly veiled attack on the TPA or more commonly the evil ‘C’ word). Come out with fresh new ideas and which will more often than not sway people to your cause or mode of thinking. Whilst in the process relegate the TPA to having no audience and thus little purpose, it will naturally fade away. Simply ‘slagging off’ the TPA isn’t the noblest of manners. If the TPA or any of it’s foot soldiers were to ammend a small statemennt or comment does that nullify the entire organisation in a single swoop? I think not, does government resign as a consequence of a muddy at best opaque style of apology it offers from time to time, most certainly not so why should the TPA. Are the Fabians now some kind of ‘social justice police’ protecting us all from the evils of rational thought, debate and common sense? Perhaps the fabians can approve what organisations can exist and within which capacity, that’s enough to give communism a bad name. Why can’t the fabians look at the state of their own dear policies that have been rolled out over the years much to the detriment of the UK and the quite frankly poor, self serving performance of the MPs so closely affiliated to themselves?

  • Steve Robson

    You are certainly conservative as you’d acknowledge, and Hardeep, conservative and fresh new ideas don’t go together. More like repackaging stale old ideas. Like attacking the public sector when there’s a recession; happens every time. The one time that its beneficial to work in the public sector, the approx 2 out of 15 years that private sector staff don’t get the best of everything, the public sector has to be attacked.
    And you are not centre right. Nothing centre about the taxpayers alliance. Hard right is the phrase your looking for and that’s why the Tories attack you sometimes. They know they can only win from the Centre and they know that only about 20% of the electorate will fall for your hard right agenda. Labour have won three elections because the public is willing to pay tax for decent public services; they won’t let you destroy that just so your rich donors and prominent supporters can get richer.

  • Hardeep_Singh

    Steve my friend I see myself as a right of centre person. After all why should I attempt to categorise myself for the sake of party politics. You’ll probably also be interested to know that I despair at a number of conservative initiatives and views both past and present, in fact I also have some left of centre views too! You could say I’m a bit of a pick ‘n’ mix really. However I must confess that my views on the public sector are somewhat independent of the economic cycle. I view many things in every life as an aspiration towards balance, not too little and not too much. Thus I arrive at efficiency so that the public get the service they rightfully deserve but at the best possible price.
    Anyway take it easy Steve and have yourself a nice cup of tea :) -

  • Steve Robson

    Hardeep, I’m sure you may be just right of centre; it was the TPA who can’t refer in any way to being anywhere near the Centre.
    thinking about it, the TPA has real problems with self awareness generally. They produce some of the worst research work produced by any organisation in Britain, just lists of figures provided by other people, with little analysis and unrelated statements attached…and then they criticise people in the public sector for failing. suspect its because they wouldn’t get jobs in the public sector, what with objective interview processes, that you can’t just get through by mentioning which school you went to and which clubs daddy belongs to.
    Furthermore, last week, they referred to themselves as a thinktank. Errr, doesn’t that require a bit of objective research and attention to facts and detail. Pressure Group, yes, even succesful pressure group, but thinktank, I think not.

  • Mark

    Matthew, they’re not sentences. You can tell quite easily – neither contains a verb, and neither ends with a full stop.

  • Mark

    Or, to put it differently: can you be Research Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance without understanding sentences?

  • http://www.taxpayersalliance.com Matthew Sinclair

    Mark,
    It’s a title, so doesn’t have the normal structure of a sentence. Are you honestly saying that the only reason that word, at that point in the slide would only be capitalised is if it were a proper noun? Or, are you just being intentionally simple in an effort at lame nitpicking?
    Look at the title of this post. By capitalising “Can” am I suggesting that is a proper noun?
    Matt

  • Hardeep Singh

    unbelievable this has turned into English Language class what next playtime ?