Does Rabid Davis really think that coming over like a Lord Kitchener character – ‘Queen, country and family above everything and anyone else’ – will work? Mavis adds: “They lack understanding of what makes parents love their children, or neighbours take pride in their community, or soldiers make sacrifices for their country.” The Davis implication is that all that tosh about a common humanity is just political correctness gone mad. Extra-familial groups are not basic human units of survival but unfortunate necessities that have an inherently negative impact on the aspirations of the individual.

As for choice, what’s so great about having the ‘choice’ to not be able to afford six different varieties of healthcare, or the choice to send your kids to single faith schools. ‘Equal opportunities’ can be seen as reactionary, because 1. it’s totally individualist, and 2. it concentrates on relative opportunities in the present unequal system, rather than actually challenging the system to make it fairer for all (eg, working instead towards equality of outcome).

New Labour are just as dogmatic about this, of course. Choice is just one of Tony’s clarion calls supporting the big nebulous modernisation which we must sign up to, via SkyPlus, and only an idiot would not want to modernise etc... The individual is innately bound up with capitalism, and the importance of image and spectacle in generating desire for goods. Each person is capital, a conglomeration of brands, projecting to others how we should, and shouldn’t look. From individual it is only a small step to ‘individualist’/unique and both small government conservatives and marketing agencies realise the importance of that semantic link – prioritising the supremacy/sovereignty of the single human unit as an inalienable right. Think different, sure.

Not so, “individuals” exist in a society of collective responsibility but too easily people think any such socialist state will lead to an abrogation of the self – they’re taking our minds, etc. (that would be impossible now more than ever). Altruism is a dirty word.

As the aftermath of the hurricane revealed so clearly about the decades of systemic neglect, Bush politics have also led us to this place – where it is supposed that the state should have no agency at all on the little people, in the mistaken belief that if government supports this consumer democracy then everything we need is there to succeed. Just don’t fuck up. We don’t fund scrapheaps. Conservative and increasingly Labour politics is increasingly about not thinking about society at all – those imperfect markets are all we need.

As Davis, inadvertently, perfectly illustrates, it’s always worth noting that the most effective guards of this cell-sells condition are ourselves. Cheers, Haltem Price Danger Mouse David Dave Davinia Davis.