Words on a new Clause IV : LETTERS
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Your support makes all the difference.BRIAN Wilson is correct that any new Clause IV must be kept short and sweet ("A clause for our time", 29 January), therefore I recommend two shortenings of his version: 1) Replace the politically correct phrase "his or her" with the grammatically correct word "their". I am sure that most of the objections to PC are not to the idea of inclusive language, but to the deliberate postmodernist ugliness of the tongue-twistersthey concoct.
2) "Equitable distribution of wealth" is much too prolix. Let us say instead the "Equal distribution of wealth". "Equitable" merely means "Fair" and while Sir Cedric Brown of British Gas is absolutely certain that three quarters of a million is fair, 5 million unemployed workers are equally sure that it is unfair - the question is who decides the fair rate, Sir Cedric or the voters?
In the Seventies, when there was much talk of equality, Tory MPs would scoff, saying that if the wealth was fairly divided then in only a few short years it would be back in the same hands. And this is also the testimony of the Scriptures: in Leviticus 25, the Acceptable Year of the Lord was a festival when all debts were cancelled, all slaves were freed and the land was fairly shared. But the point is that every 50 years they had to do it all over again.
Dafydd ap Thomas Cardiff
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