On my mind

I USED to think that the UK stood for fairness and equality. It turns out that it stands for the United Kingdom. But the kingdom’s unity is now quite precarious and its government has long recognised that geographical inequality is a major issue.

But, as Peregrine Bloowall, chair of the Hartlepool Brown Hare Shooting Club explained, the government’s ‘top down, level up, nothing to see here’ strategy will be introduced in the next 10 years, or thereabouts.

A recent 28-country study found that the British public believed that one of the most serious forms of inequality today was between more and less deprived areas of the country – not surprising in a London-dominated and centralised state.

Then there was the pantomime, where the Queen last week announced the intention of her government to ‘level up’ while sitting on Westminster’s elaborately carved Sovereign’s Throne, with gold leaf and rock crystals and upholstered in sumptuous red velvet.

Was the irony lost on the nation, perhaps dazzled by the sea of scarlet, gold and white of the robed peers in fancy dress?

Such a blatant display of wealth, privilege and class makes a mockery of the intention to ‘level up’. Hopefully the new Senedd will be more credible with one of its key objectives ‘to ensure that we deliver a more equal and fair society for the people of Wales’.

From Palestinians deprived of their land, the global stranglehold of the rich and powerful, and vaccine nationalism to the huge gap between rich and poor, inequality is the greatest iniquity in the world today.

Yet to be marginalised and disenfranchised is nothing new. It was Plato who wrote: “There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil”.