Why do I write five blogs before breakfast? Because injustice doesn't sleep. I've spent my life exposing how power and money rig the system. And I won't stop — because we need a fairer world. Subscribe, comment, and share. Campaigning isn't a spectator sport.
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This is the transcript:
One of the things that I'm quite often asked is, 'Why do I make these videos, and why do I appear to wake up every morning and write about five blog posts before breakfast?', which, as a matter of fact, I do.
What is it, people say to me, that motivates me to work in this way? Why is it that I feel absolutely impelled to write and to talk to the video camera I'm looking down now?
The answer is very simple and very straightforward: I can't stand injustice, and I was exposed to injustice very early on in life. I'm a twin, and my twin and I are not identical. I love my twin. He's a great guy. I always have. We started out together, literally; we call ourselves the womb mates, and we're still going, and we still talk to each other quite often, but we are very different people.
I realised how different we were when, at the age of 10 or 11, the state discriminated between us.
There was, in those days, a thing called the 11-plus exam. It still exists in some part of the UK, quite extraordinarily, and in Suffolk, where we were, we took that exam. I was sent to a grammar school, and he was sent to a secondary modern school, and the key is in the name.
It was a secondary education, and I was angry about that, and he was angry about that, and I realised that we had suffered state-created inequality, but that there were better options available.
At the age of 12, I campaigned in the 1970 general election on the basis that I wanted comprehensive education. It made me a supporter of Harold Wilson's Labour Party at that time, and he went on and lost, and I had an early education in how hopes don't necessarily turn into outcomes, but it taught me something.
It taught me that inequality poisons opportunity. It destroys hope, and it creates differences where differences do not need to exist, and politics should oppose those things.
One of the ways I've always done this is by writing. I was told by a mentor when I was in my teens that if I really was politically motivated, and he clearly understood that I was, then the best thing that I could do was not become a politician, but become a writer, because, he said, it's writers who change the world; politicians use their ideas. And I've been writing on and off and in different ways ever since.
But as my wife says, the internet was made for me to argue on, and argue I will, and what I'm arguing for is a level playing field for everyone.
I've spent decades as a political economist, as an accountant, as a tax specialist, particularly working in the international arena, in the last case, seeing how systems of power and money management really work.
I've seen how the wealthy use them to establish privilege for themselves and to deny access to others. That experience, real-world experience, based on the reality of what I observed, is what motivated me to challenge those systems.
I want to make the world a better place.
The wealthy shape our laws, they shape markets, and they shape the narratives that are used to protect their interests in those things.
Meanwhile, ordinary people face stagnant wages, insecurity, poor services, and are denied a voice, and this is not by accident. This is a system designed by a few and captured by them for their own advantage. Just look at the way the private media works to see how that happens.
And my belief is that everyone deserves security, dignity, and a fair chance.
I'm not pretending that we will all get equal outcomes. That is not possible. It may not even be desirable.
But what I do believe is that everyone deserves equal respect in life, and everybody must have a chance, whoever they are, whatever they came into this world with, wherever they came into this world, and whoever their parents might have been.
Societies are stronger and healthier when they are more equal. I think the evidence for that is overwhelming, and for that reason, these are the values behind everything that I write.
I write to expose what's hidden and what we need to know that would make it possible to achieve these goals of a fairer, more just world.
So I've written about tax and commercial abuse. I've written about the secrecy provided by tax havens, and the politics of deceit that are so commonplace in the UK and so many other countries.
I talk about who gains and who pays the price from these activities, and I speak out because silence only helps the powerful, and I will not be silent as a result.
I have no intention of being neutral in what I write. I write to demand change; to press for policies that deliver fairness, security, and opportunity. I want to deliver for people with real lives. I'm not interested in academic abstraction, and if that makes me unpopular, so be it. Injustice won't fix itself. We have to create a level playing field. And if my writing does in any way help this fight, I'll keep writing.
So tomorrow morning I will write five blogs before breakfast. I suspect I'll make a video, and I will comment on social media, and you can help.
You can share this video.
You can share the stuff I write on my blog, the Funding the Future blog, there's a link down below.
You can comment here, there, on Twitter, on Blue Sky, on LinkedIn or on Facebook, and I post on all of those.
You can subscribe to this channel and you can donate because this channel does cost money to run, but most of all, as I say, very often, campaigning and democracy are not spectator sports they're participatory, and you too can campaign on what matters to you because we all need to build a better world, and you too can do that by speaking, writing, and even starting your own YouTube channel.
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So very true the world is changed by ideas but these are often constantly evolving.
Here’s a paper by a writer whose ideas changed the world but spot what’s wrong or more correctly what’s missing in the paper:-
https://www.kornai-janos.hu/media/konyvek_cikkek/KornaiJanosEletmuve_Cikkek_0468.pdf
Thanks Richard for this excellent & moving video, well worth actually watching on Youtube (as I did for once).
A very dear friend of mind suffered a similar experience when she passed the 11-plus while her younger brother did not, resulting in feelings of injustice and discrimination that remain with them both to this day.
The rest of this video explains why I was attracted to, and have followed and supported, this blog ever since I discovered it in the wake of the 2008 bank crash.
Many thanks.
Appreciated.
Hi Richard….I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and ask you,for the sake of clarity,to expand your thinking a bit.
I,along with yourself and,I supect,most that visit here have a loathing of injustice,wherever it is to be found, but I struggle with your ‘twin’ example.
You state that “what I do believe is that everyone deserves equal respect in life, and everybody must have a chance, whoever they are, whatever they came into this world with” and “I’m not pretending that we will all get equal outcomes. That is not possible.” From this does it not follow that both you and your twin had equal opportunity (the 11 Plus exam) and the ‘unequal outcome’ (you passed and he didn’t) was a reflection of your differing knowledge and aptitude at the time? Unless are you saying that there was inequality in preparation for the exam?
On reflection my own experience was woeful…with no notice whatsoever I turned up at school one day to be told ‘you’re taking an exam today’, leaving me thinking ‘what on earth is this all about’? Needless to say I didn’t pass!
I think you are overanalysing an unscripted comment if I am honest
@RobC
The “opportunity” was *not* the 11+ exam.
The opportunity was the outcome – the access to tailored learning, teaching to ability and aptitude, accommodation… class size, academic qualifications of staff, the opportunity to rise beyond the limitations of a tri-part sortition.
Those opportunities were lost when Richard’s brother mislaid the key to the gate on one morning of his life.
Let me put it like this: the opponents of the introduction of comprehensive education were majorily the parents of grammar school pupils. Why should that be?
That is still true, sadly.
I like that image “mislaid the key to the gate on one morning”.
Hello Richard, I’ve been a follower of yours for a few years and never responded to any of your posts (on here at least). This one, and your post on how to be a campaigner really resonated however. I don’t have a brother but, like yours, I failed my 11+ and ended up at a dreaded secondary modern which turned comprehensive after 2 years (I think I’m also the same age as you so guess your brother’s school did also). I was lucky and got good breaks at that comp., including having some very small class sizes in the 6th form. As a result I made it to university and had a good career in the tech industry. What your posts have made me realise is two things: 1) How I can use this 40+ years experience as a campaigner of sorts (which would be around my concerns and fears of where we are heading in the world of technology and the inequalities this is creating). 2) The importance of writing, writing and writing (regularly) about this. I am, to say the least a very intermittent blogger but you have made me realise that even at our age, it’s important to make your viewpoint known so you can hopefully change outcomes. Thanks Richard.
Peter
Apologies for the delay, and your comments.
I especially like your point on writing. It is vital.
Thanks
Richard
I admire the effort and clarity of your work, and am also daily dismayed by the near universal messaging on the legacy media….and of course the plethora of (ring wing) output on social media. The current bank/debt and tax/spend model you critique is so dominant the everyone is facing the same question framed in the same way. But at least one bright spot….the BBC yesterday did question the ‘flight of the wealthy’ narrative and highly critiqued the data used by Henley. So perhaps chinks are appearing?