It’s a curious thing. The government is desperate to get people back to work no matter the risk involved. So desperate are they that they even want to get young people back to school, no matter the risk to them. Why? The economy. Some, like Barry Sheerman MP, are even saying that great damage is being caused to young people, particularly to children in low income families: @BarrySheerman “I am very unhappy about the teaching unions reluctance to cooperate on the reopening of schools great damage is being caused particularly to children from lower income families by this extended closure & there are safe ways to reopen!”
It is unclear in what way young people are supposedly being damaged in their homes, for want of a shred of evidence, or how being at school somehow protects children from this mysterious harm. There was no notice, apart from a scant few hours, no resources and no attempt to keep workers safe either getting to or at work. Not an ounce of effort was extended to protect workers and Monday morning, 11 May 2020, the London Underground, to name but one small area of concern, was packed with unprotected workers.
Absolutely no other groups were under this same pressure, it was exclusive to English workers. Scotland, Wales and Ireland are having none of it. Why the furore? Well, lefties like me have been saying for a very long time, workers are the economy, the great mass driving force of production, progress and growth, for which we are derided as loony, Trotskites, Leninists, Marxists and all the other names we get called with such hate filled scorn, for one very good reason. Workers are the beating heart of the economy, without whom the economy is screwed! Oh they despise us, abuse us, pay us poverty pay and treat us like dirt and hate our very genes, in case we pollute their privileged gene pool. But they can’t live without us. Sure, they don’t care if a few thousand or even a few million die, we are, as they say, the 99%, so a little culling doesn’t much affect our overall ability to keep the economy and the country functioning.
They despise us because they need us. Who makes the shirt on the back of the billionaire, so called ‘self-made man’? Not he. Or makes his shoes, produces his food, lays the roads and the car he relies on, or the planes. Who makes every single thing he needs to survive, the cleaning, the desk, the house, the every fucking thing you can think of? Why, great merciful heavens, we do. And is he grateful, as he pays our poverty pay and stashes the rest of the value we’ve produced in a tax haven? He didn’t get to be a billionaire on his own, no matter what he thinks, he stole it from working people, from you and me and our children and their children to be. It’s the grandest theft of all time.
Right now, as Covid-19 shapes all our worlds, and those in power are desperate to get back to the business of thieving as usual, is it time to think again? Is this our time? I don’t know, I am but one. There are 33.4 million working people in Britain who must either decide or just accept and wear the yoke once more.
Keith Ordinary Guy
14 May 2020.
