Two Cheers for Two Tears

We keep pretending that society is equal. It isn’t. It never has been. And if it truly were, most of the institutions we rely on — the NHS, social care, accessibility law — would make no sense at all.The truth is simpler and far more uncomfortable: a humane society is necessarily a tiered one.We already accept this in practice. Bus passes, free eye‑care treatment, TV licences, mobility support, ramps, lifts, subtitles, sign language — all of these are forms of unequal treatment. They exist because people are not identical in capacity, circumstance, or vulnerability. We recognise this instinctively, even if we refuse to say it aloud.I was reminded of this today after a spat with someone who thought shouting at a disabled person was acceptable. The law disagrees. It disagrees because it recognises protected characteristics — a legal admission that some groups face disproportionate harm and therefore require disproportionate protection. That is not “special treatment.” It is the state acknowledging reality.The problem with the rhetoric of equality is that it collapses the moment you look at how people actually live. We all make distinctions. We all have hierarchies. We invite our families to Christmas; we do not invite strangers from the pub. We prioritise, we triage, we judge. Society works because we discriminate — not in the moral sense, but in the literal one: we distinguish between cases.This is why the Novak scandal was so disturbing. It was a grotesque parody of justice, and yes, anyone who manipulates religion to game the system should be condemned. But here is where I part ways with Starmer: tiered policing exists because society itself is tiered. It is not a glitch in the system; it is part of the system.If we truly wanted “one tier,” then let’s be honest about what that would mean. Remove the ramps from buses. Rip out the lifts. Tell disabled people and the elderly to climb the stairs. Abolish sign language. Scrap subtitles. Eliminate every accommodation that acknowledges human difference. That is equality in its purest, most brutal form.And it is not a society I want to live in.I don’t want special treatment. I want honesty. And honesty requires admitting that fairness is not sameness. Justice is not achieved by pretending we are all the same, but by recognising — and responding to — the ways we are not.A society that refuses to acknowledge difference is not equal.