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Sunday 3 November 2024

Yes, lying is wrong



Chancellor Rachel Reeves admits she was 'wrong' to say higher taxes not needed during election


A month before Labour won the election, Rachel Reeves said higher taxes were not what the UK needed - but on Wednesday she raised them by the highest amount since 1993.

A month before Labour won the July election, Ms Reeves said "we don't need higher taxes, what we need is growth".



Not much we can say about that. She's a liar, but we knew that, so is her boss, but we knew that too.

3 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

If I was a politician I would already be composing a dodge around what I had (apparently) said previously.

So no, we don't "need" higher taxes but the unspoken part was "but I will impose higher taxes to punish the rich who send their children to public schools and change the rules on inheritance to break up the large farms into smaller ones, more dependant on government support."

Lies of omission, with misdirection crafted from anticipated interpretations of what was said. Greedy, malicious and stupid.

Sam Vega said...

Well, you might think that lying is wrong, but that's getting to be a rather old-fasioned view. Morality is rooted in social life, and opinions change. I remember being shocked when, probably 30 years ago, I saw the results of a survey showing that young people rated protection of feelings above free speech. And look how rapidly we have moved from thinking that having children when unmarried was morally shameful.

We are probably entering a time when public shameless lying is considered an acceptable thing to do, if it brings about desired consequences. Starmer and Co. don't seem remotely embarrassed by being found out, do they?

A K Haart said...

DJ - yes, greedy, malicious and stupid seems to go with a political career. They seem to be remarkably careless about what they say, as if it's all said for the moment and the future has to be dodged when it arrives.

Sam - I have just put up a post about lying, because it seems to have become an aid to political status - lying to the plebs. It's language again, corrupt the language and nothing holds together. There is no obvious way to straighten it out either, apart from totalitarian lying where the lies are at least consistent.