Social justice? Not really.

Re: “People power is needed to expand fare-free public transit,” comment, Jan. 7

George Orwell must be turning in his grave at the sly euphemisms of Victoria Coun. Ben Isitt’s piece.

In Isitt-speak, taxing other citizens and giving the proceeds to youth for free bus passes, some of whom come from middle- and upper-class families, becomes “city council removed userfee barriers to public transit ridership as a form of climate action and social justice.”

Taking money from citizens elsewhere in the province to give it to regional Victoria youth becomes “can be expedited, and the impact on local taxpayers substantially reduced, with support from the provincial government.”

Isitt’s careful use of words designed to hide the topics under discussion is really a species of insult to the rest of us. It is quite remarkable how a public figure can, without a sense of shame, repeat this humbug, paragraph after paragraph.

Handing other people’s money to the children of the rich has nothing to do with social justice or with climate change, but rather serves only to confirm Isitt’s vanity.

Here is a challenge for all of us to consider, and which Isitt ignores and deliberately obscures: What policies and expenditures of our tax dollars would actually improve social justice? Let us all have that discussion, in plain English.

Anthony Roy Victoria