Miatta Fahnbulleh, a former academic turned policy wonk who has worked for three prime ministers and the Labour party, is not your typical thinktank chief.
Fahnbulleh arrived in the UK from Liberia in 1986 and her family successfully claimed asylum in the UK, settling in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. “My childhood in Liberia had a massive impact,” says the 38-year-old. “You see abject poverty and extreme wealth, you see how the family you were born into affects your life and you understand why inequality is wrong. It’s not just that it perpetuates itself, it’s that it’s fundamentally wrong and it needs to be changed. And that’s my core, that pursuit of economic justice.
“Coming from two of the poorest countries in the world [Fahnbulleh also witnessed the deprivation in her mother’s home country, Sierra Leone] and seeing kids forced to fight in the civil war and being robbed of their childhood can’t help but colour your values,” she says. But while the economic and social injustices in Liberia are extreme, the UK is far from an egalitarian oasis, she says.
You’ve seen true, real, absolute poverty, the less than $1.90 a day kind. Actually experienced it around you.
Then you’re going to spend your professional life wibbling about inequality in the only economic system, ever, which has abolished that absolute poverty?
How damn stupid do you have to be to work for the new economics foundation then?
Well, I suppose dragging every Englishman down to the level of Liberia would increase inter-country equality. Not really sure that that justifies bringing those folks in, though.
It’s well-paid low-output-required work, in generally pleasant surroundings, with no heavy lifting.
It may require a bit of intellectual dishonesty (assuming you are sufficiently accurately educated to realise it) but lots of people would put up with greater hardships for a job like that.
I see the families that live near my wife’s family in the Philippines. So poor that they can’t feed their kids; literally giving them coffee to try to stop them feeling so hungry. But if you give these people money it will all be gone in a day; doesn’t matter if it’s £10 or £1000 it will all be gone almost immediately.
Welfare just doesn’t work. People need to not only earn their own money but learn to manage it. Don’t ask me how we solve that problem.
@Dongguan John: we could go some way towards solving it by stopping giving the time of day to people like Fahnbulleh….
They’ve seen people living on $1.90 per.day, so they’ve focused their attention on people living on ten times that (at least).
It’s not their intelligence I query.
How exciting.
I’m right next to Tim on the Guardian’s comments.
Tim, no touching my internet knee under the table.
Quick answer: very
A simple cycle needs to be established of migrant review.
The first and default option is don’t let them in.
Those already here need to be reviewed on two simple criteria.
1–Engaged in crime or UK undermining activites?(see 2)
2- Supporting, endorsing, involved in or even pals with the left in any form?
Either or both then it is back to the Auld Country double quick.
We have enough scum of our own supporting leftist evil without importing them.
And they can leave behind any wealth etc they have gained from being in our wicked and unequal society.
The clue’s here: ” a former academic turned policy wonk who has worked for three prime ministers and the Labour party”
Nice little earner there. Much better than living on $1.90 a day.
Where’s the stupidity?
These people are not stupid, they are evil. They know what they are doing.
Sez Miatta Fahnbulleh:
The social contract defined the postwar period: if you worked hard, if you did the right thing, you would get on – but more importantly, your kids would do better than you. The fact is, that is now crumbling.
Which is true, and a large part of why it’s true is because our government keeps bringing in hordes of uninvited guests such as Miatta Fahnbulleh.
Can’t expect the kids to inherit the country if it’s taken over by foreign squatters.
And why are we depriving Liberia of the brilliance of Miatta Fahnbulleh? They need all the Miatta Fahnbulleh they can get.
“Don’t ask me how we solve that problem.”
It’s not our job.
Call me a cynic, but is she seeking to imply that she grew up in poverty without quite explicitly saying so? Worthy of Ben Franklin, if so. Or Slick Willie.
Sounds like she could be related to this guy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Boimah_Fahnbulleh
which would put her on the wealthy side of that inequality divide in Liberia.
Equality of opportunity we like, we don’t like enforced equality of outcomes e.g. quotas, but I suspect she prefers promoting the second over the first, as it means moar money.
@Bongo And if she is, what has she said about this man, who was a member of the government of Liberia led by the murderous Samuel Doe?
So she left Liberia when she was 7. Grew up in that den of poverty, Tunbridge Wells. Went to Beechwood Sacred Heart School, obviously an inner city comp. Degree in PPE at Oxford then a masters and PhD. Post doctoral work at the LSE before working as a consultant for a year at something called International Projects Group, PKF then she joined the UK political machine.
She is obviously the go-to person for real personal knowledge of deprivation and inequality
PKF is presumably the accountancy and consultancy firm Pannell Kerr Forster. I wonder if the international projects group does any more than take money from foreign governments in exchange for slide packs?
So now it’s OK to be wealthy because your parents were. Excellent.
Brits who go off to live in Spain get shat on for eating full English brekkie and not mixing with the locals, but at least they don’t try to overturn Spanish society and shit themselves whining about inequality.
If I go to Arunachal Pradesh I’m witnessing poverty, but not experiencing it or living it.
Ditto for Mrs Fahnbulleh’s experience of West Africa imv.
“Brits who go off to live in Spain … don’t try to overturn Spanish society ”
Doing my best but the lazy incompetent cvnts are proving remarkably resilient.
It is, of course, yet another day of holiday in Spain, with most businesses shut.
Is this another case of needing immigrants to take those jobs that are beneath the British worker?
@SE
Wasn’t that covered in the recent thread on prostitution?
Degree in PPE at Oxford
Of course. What else? The training course for people who think they can and should run the country but have absolutely no qualifications to do so.
Dongguan John – “I see the families that live near my wife’s family in the Philippines. So poor that they can’t feed their kids; literally giving them coffee to try to stop them feeling so hungry.”
I don’t want to be rude, but there can’t be many countries in the world where a cup of coffee is cheaper than a bowl of rice.
What a great place the Philippines must be.