Bernard Ingham: The profound political questions to answer in a very unfair world

The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.

But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.

When he stands like an ox in the furrow, with his sullen set eyes on your own,

And grumbles, "This isn't fair dealing", my son, leave the Saxon alone".

It's a pity the Normans did not heed the advice of one of their own barons to his son.

Otherwise, they might not have felt the need to harry the North into a wasteland circa 1080 to confirm for our revolting forebears that fairness is often put to the sword.

I mention all this in connection with the cuts now "ravaging" the nation. George Osborne's handiwork, it seems, is only acceptable if it is "fair".

Let's agree that we Anglo-Saxons have a highly-developed sense of fairness. But let it not stop us from examining what we mean by it. Can we define it? Or does it, like beauty, exist only in the eye of the beholder, though something we collectively recognise when we see it?

These are profound political questions in an unfair world. In spite of the so-called advance of our civilisation, children still suffer horrible abuse and are now preyed upon by evil men through the

internet. The good still die young. The bad increasingly get away with all kinds of criminal outrage.

The odds are stacked against the little man, even if we partly depend on his entrepreneurial flair to get us out of the present economic mess. The banks still dole out vast bonuses to those who happen to work

for them. Why should some forms of talent – whether playing the money market, treading the entertainment boards or kicking a ball about like Wayne Rooney be so much more lucrative than healing the sick?

I could go on and on. You get my point. Life is unfair.

Yet here we are in the 21st century routinely tolerating all kinds of affronts to any reasonable concept of fairness while at the same time subjecting our governors to its overriding test as they struggle to get public finances in order and the economy on a sound and sustainable basis. It's a funny old world.

It is inevitable that the "poor" suffer relative to the "rich" in any cuts since we would be cutting off our noses to spite our faces if we reduced the go-getters and job creators to penury – unless we opt for a Communist state. This would immediately open the door to another kind of unfairness where nothing is too good for those workers who rule the roost. Witness Arthur Scargill.

Against this background, I find the coalition's response to Gordon Brown's irresponsibility riddled with unfairnesses yet probably just about as fair as you could realistically make it, apart from the discrimination in capping child benefit against mothers who stay at home. Why on earth not simply say it is an offence for any household earning more than 45,000 to claim child benefit?

Meanwhile, I suggest we reflect on a few other glaring unfairnesses in our society.

Why should illegal immigrants be allowed to latch on to our welfare system as if they had paid their way into it?

Why should decent, hard-working people be exploited by millions of their fellow citizens productively practising love on the dole?

Why should the jobless not be expected to get on a bus or bike to find work?

Why do professional single mothers apparently consider we should bring up their brood, while their boyfriends pay not a penny?

Why should criminals, encouraged into a life of crime by a soft criminal justice system, not be put to hard labour beating back the

tide of rubbish that is collected only once a stinking fortnight?

What is fair about an education system that leaves half our youngsters –and, hang it all, even some graduates – struggling to cope in the world of work?

Why should politically-motivated trade union leaders be allowed to inconvenience the public with impunity? Why should public servants be allowed to strike at all?

Why should we pour hundreds more millions of pounds into overseas aid when it only seems to enrich the despots?

What have all these things in common? Answer: exploitation and often oppression. That is the true nature of unfairness. We've been going on about it since the Normans to very little purpose because we are as wet as the Wharfe in spate.