Mick,
This is one for me ;)

Must add a section of the 2nd paragraph though:

"People who don’t observe that morality are seen as degenerates, or “morally weaker” - which they are, judged by the morality of the system. But they are also - to repeat a phrase of Tony Blair’s - the “change-makers”.

Now bear in mind Matthew 5:20

"For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven" KJV

In this spirit, Jesus condemns the Pharisees, the respectable religious people of his day, for they perform the empty rituals of worship but do not live authentic lives of service to the kingdom of God. Jesus says he has come to bring the kingdom of God to Earth. But the respectable religious and civil leaders of his day do not care for the poor, the downtrodden and the oppressed. They prefer to be seen as respectable, as upholders of the established social, economic and religious order.

Evil presents itself as "respectability," as the established way of doing things, as the accepted social morality of a society. Evil hides, they say, in everydayness, in business as usual, in what is given honors and the highest praise.

Evil poses as its opposite.

Now you don't have to look at this from a religious viewpoint either. Many humanists down through the ages have arrived at this same conclusion.

I would therefore agree with the thesis of John Lloyd; but take it further and say that the "outsiders" the so-called "degenerates" are not "morally weaker" at all, but in every sense morally stronger.

It seems that most "degenerates" have only ever been able to influence from the side-lines, being writers, prophets, musicians.
This is because the "immoral herd" of hypocrits run the system.
The peace-makers of this world: Jesus, Gandhi always get killed.
I've a feeling norn iron is full of these so-called degenerates, which the snobs like to mock and humiliate because they haven't got jobs, are not "respectable"; but actually come from a deeper and better morality than they are being led by.
So up the "moral degenerates" I say. And of course I'm not talking about thugs and arseholes.

you have to be twice as good to be half as accepted

John Lloyd, late of the New Statesman, now at the Financial Times magazins?

The same John Lloyd who recanted his membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the British and Irish Communist Organisation?

The same John Lloyd that argued catholics in NI should be discriminated against because they were "disloyal"?

Him?

J...