Ally Fogg: We seem to have forgotten the merits of kindness

Please can we have a politician like Katja Kipping? In an interview with the Welt newspaper, the leader of Germany’s largest opposition party said that: “For me, the holidays of my childhood are among the most beautiful memories,” and that she was personally saddened that up to “3 million children this summer cannot experience what a holiday means”.

The solution, she believes, is to hand out holiday vouchers worth €500 (£400) to every household on benefits.

Is this as daft as it first appears? Possibly not. Unemployment is recognised as one of the greatest risk factors for stress, and that has serious implications for both mental and physical health. If a holiday reduces those risks, it might be a good investment. It is not far-fetched to imagine that children who have a couple of weeks of happy holidays might return to school as more contented and committed students, with implications for both educational performance and the risks of antisocial or criminal behaviour. If vouchers were to be used on homeland holidays (and for the money involved, we could assume that is the case) they could help sustain and support the domestic tourist industry. Bearing such considerations in mind, the initiative might be far less costly in the long term than the headline raw sums would suggest.

That said, if I had a billion quid or so to improve the wellbeing of benefits claimants, I’ll confess that holiday vouchers might not be at the very top of my list of priorities.

This, however, is not what is so cheering about Kipping’s interview. I honestly struggle to recall the last time a British politician spoke with anything approaching compassion and genuine concern for benefits claimants. For decades, parties on both sides of the Westminster divide have competed to devise ever more cruel and draconian ways to make benefits claimants ever less comfortable. Of course, they claim they are being cruel to be kind, with all the credibility of the school bully who sneers “you will thank me for this lesson one day” as he grinds your face into the dirt. Our tabloids and broadcasters replicate this with ever more lurid and atypical portraits of scroungers and cheats.

As a culture, we seem to have forgotten the merits of kindness as an end in itself. Would sending benefits claimants on an annual holiday make them healthier, happier people? I honestly don’t know. Would it make their children more likely to succeed in life? I couldn’t guarantee it. Would just entertaining the possibility of it make the country as a whole a healthier, better, kinder nation?

Too damned right it would.

Mark Wallace: Labelling luxuries as rights discredits genuine rights

This is just the latest reminder of how out of touch Europe’s hard left has become. Out of touch with economic reality, promising to splurge yet more money even as Germany teeters on the brink of recession, and out of touch with the millions of people whom she expects to fund these holidays but who can’t afford one themselves.

It’s a vivid demonstration of why Kipping’s party Die Linke is a fringe movement – and why their equivalents in the UK are even more electorally obscure. Unlike left-wing politicians, most voters only have their own money to spend – they are naturally and rightly suspicious of people promising wonders from a magic money tree.

This type of politics also rests on a fundamental unfairness. Those fortunate enough to be in work don’t mind providing a safety net for those in genuine need of help. The ideology of Die Linke and others, though, goes far beyond that. Those in work are treated as cash cows, regardless of their struggles to save for the future and provide for them and their own. The welfare state is not limited to an affordable basic level of security, but instead is extended to provide a standard of living that workers often cannot afford for themselves – even though they have to fund it.

Leaving aside the fiscal irresponsibility and social immorality of loading taxpayers with more and more demands, the left should realise that labelling luxuries as rights does not automatically make them so – indeed, it dangerously discredits genuine rights in the popular imagination.

Free speech is a right (although censorious legislation and an absurd libel system mean it is often denied to us). Freedom of association is a right. Food, clothing and a roof over your head are rights. Luxuries, like holidays, satellite TV or broadband are not rights – and expecting others to fund them for you is a liberty.

If you want to label holidays as a right, then it would be naive to expect everyone to say: “Oh, well, in that case, here’s my wallet.” The predictable reaction will be to question basic rights as a whole – an outcome none of us would want. Naivety, at least, is the generous interpretation – the other source of such reckless, harmful pledges could only be electoral selfishness, and I’m sure Die Linke would never be guilty of that.