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Friday, October 28, 2022

Mike Hosking: We should admire success, not belittle it


One of our more unfortunate traits has been on display this week with the arrival of Rishi Sunak.

It turns out he's rich. And when it turns out someone is rich we need to make a thing of it.

We made a thing of it when Sir John Key got the top job as well. Chris Luxon got a bit of a left-wing going over because he was, God forbid, successful too, and with more than one house.

Sunak it has been proclaimed, about 100 times over, is richer than King Charles, as though that’s any sort of comparison to make.

The King is mainly rich because he was born into a family that had money. Sunak made his money by talent and graft.

To be fair to the King at least some of his wealth comes from the Duchy, which until he took it over had never run a profit ever, and it had been running for 1000 years. So Charles deserves credit for taking something that wasn’t working and actually turning it around. They made a documentary about it on his 70th birthday. It’s a fascinating insight into him and his view of British life, work ethic, and business practice. It's well worth looking up.

Anyway, Sunak grew up delivering prescriptions on his bike for his mum who ran the chemist. The fact he's gone on to make his own money should be a matter of some pride, I would have thought.

He did marry into money in the sense his wife is from an Indian tech fortune. But he is a self made man. Self made men or women are to be admired and in this particular case you would hope, bring with them a level of reassurance that they actually know what they are doing when it comes to finances.

But none of that has really been covered. He has been treated like an oddity and someone not like us. The problem with people like us is most of us couldn’t run a country, nor would we want to. So why are we so obsessed about the neighbour, the vicar, or the postman being the Prime Minister? They'd be a disaster.

Surely his credentials by way of fiscal success indicate he might have a clue. And while money isn't the be-all and end-all, is does sort of pay the bills. That's what we want, isn't it?

Money is an outworking of endeavour. Rishi Sunak's endeavour was clearly successful. Don’t we want successful people running the place or running anything?

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i'm not worried that sunak is rich. i'm worried that any stance he takes on india will seem unfair to either parties. if terrorists from india do a 9/11 in london and sunak has to order a drone strike on indian territory, how likely is he to take an unbiased decision?

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