I see you all over the headlines, gorging on them, a great shaggy idiot blundering from one catastrophic story to another as you spy a national crisis and do all you can to sink to the challenge. We didn’t expect much from you, admittedly, yet you’ve utterly outdone yourself. It takes an impressive effort for a single man in a gravy-stained polo shirt to become the avatar for corporate selfishness at a time like this. Maybe you’d like a round of applause too? Just last week you considered Wetherspoons an essential service and you’re certainly not beyond that level of narcissism.
In a way, we should probably be thanking you. If there’s to be a reckoning at the end of all this we’ll probably need some cartoon villains for the propaganda cartoons. You’re far from the only one, Tim Martin, but you’ve certainly done all you can to make yourself the most visible. Maybe in the final episode you, Philip Green, Richard Branson and Mike Ashley can lock arms and form some kind of boorish megatwat, stomping around a Britannia Hotel and crushing the peons beneath your heels. Then at the end, once the proles finally come round to the realisation that in times of real crisis it’s not the glorious free market that rushes to save us, you can be defeated by a tidal wave of public opinion that crashes down on you with all the inevitably of a sticky patch on a pub carpet.
Because you should make no mistake, Tim Martin – we’re keeping score. While you and your ilk scrabble to lock down your fortunes, shafting the small British suppliers you lauded when it served you better and holding out on wages owed until the PR pressure becomes too much, we’re quietly making a list. We’ll remember those who did all they can under impossible circumstances and you and Ashley sure as hell won’t be among them.
There is hope to be found in this national crisis and there are decent companies everywhere doing what they can to protect their employees and put people before profits. On a wider level we’re finally starting to appreciate the contribution of our key workers and frontline staff. With any luck their efforts will not be immediately dismissed with more pay freezes and cuts at the end of this ordeal. Who could have guessed that when the chips were down we’d end up owing more to the bin men and hospital porters than we would to you, Tim Martin?
Actually scratch that – we all could. It’s no surprise at all that some of those with the least, both in terms of the wages they’re paid and the appreciation they usually get, are now the ones rising to the occasion. The vast majority of us recognise their efforts and will stand to applaud them but we shouldn’t forget the hypocrisy of some of our neighbours as we do. There are those who seem to think the NHS functions like Tinkerbell. After years of refusing to show any belief in it at the ballot box the need for it suddenly applies to them and all they need to do now is frantically clap it back to life.
The NHS always deserved better in the first place. At the end of all this, we better have the common sense and decency to show it and everyone who works in it that we understand that now. The worst is still yet to come and those working at the front line of the fight against coronavirus are about to face hell. They need our support now more than ever.
There will be an end to all this misery at some nebulous point in our uncertain future. When it’s time for every single one of them to rest and slake their thirst, we’ll take them for a drink and thank them for everything they did.
And you can sure as furloughed-fuck believe it won’t be in a Wetherspoons, Tim Martin.
I see you, Tim Martin. I fucking see you.
