Lazy work-shy layabout wastrel

I wasn't going to bite, but sadly i just couldn't help myself.

More than 77% of voters (extrapolated from a 2,203 sampled group) think long-term benefit claimants should do community work in return for their benefits.  69% of voters (again from the same 2,203 sample) think claimants should lose their benefits; yet completely fail to mention buy-to-let landlords making a reasonable earner off the sponging sub-classes.  51% (again of the 2,203 sample, so 1,102 of them) indicated that no-one should get any help unless they had paid into the system through national insurance and tax.  There is no mention made of how long those hoping to get help should have paid into the system, or even if there's a lower contribution or time limit to the contributions wastrels have to reach, before been deemed worthy of the splintered crutch.

After some moments pondering on the remarkableness of spinning whilst flying, another thought hit me.

Why leave it at that!

For example, I'm remarkably careful at home - now that i'm more teetotaller than alco-binger.  I don't smoke indoors nor do i set fire to pans whilst fast asleep in the bath; so surely now i won't need to pay anything towards a fire-service?  I rarely go out at night, and avoid rowdy places - somewhat difficult in one of the most populated boroughs in london.  So probably shouldn't pay anything towards the police or ambulance services either.  As i have no wish for children of my own, i don't see why anything of mine should be paid towards schools or the education of those who have numerous offspring, or towards those over 18 who should, by then, be able to support themselves in the betterment of their intellect so ensuring they're able to pay into the tax kitty, and so build up a golden-pot for their inevitable frequent bouts of unemployment.

I don't swim in the sea nor do i boat, climb mountains nor walk fells; so lop some off the air-sea rescue services.  I don't want trident so cut a few pounds (say one sixty-seven millionth) off that.  As for the royal family, if it saves a bob or two, we should use cardboard cut-outs.  Do away with parliament (the buildings), and let them set-up a marquee in westminster square - now that the demonstrators for peace have been evicted for making the place untidy.  It would certainly cut down on the excessive spendthrift nature of today’s governments.  As i'm always in 100% top-tip condition, i shouldn't have to contribute to the health service either!

There must be some other areas ripe for swingeing cuts?

Something else...

Oh yes, why are we paying so much extra on food when the profits are creamed off in bonuses?  Why not give small-holder farmers a decent slice of the gold-dust and at the same time reduce the cost of food, so the increasing poor can still afford nutritious fare.  We are, after all, supposedly living in enlightend civilised times.

Despite the increase in commodity prices, food companies are still raking in billions of annual profits.  So let's do away with supermarkets - apart from the co-ops.  All communities should be forced to grow their own food, erect fences around each postcode, to keep out -  or in - any trouble and simply use air-drops for occasional essential supplies and those times a swat team are required.  Naturally such aid would only be given to those who have paid their full tax whack, everyone else can simply stand by and watch behind electrified barbed-wire laser mounted fences.

Hm, what about the sewage system?  Dig up all the pipes.  Surely those in cities are subsidising those in rural areas who also have the same access to just as good a water and sewage system?

So that's the first swing of the fiscal-responsibility bat.  I presume the return swing should be aimed at those corporations claiming they're not making enough money so need to cost-cut (decimate the workforce) whilst paying less tax towards the country's coffers than one of their cleaners (allegedly), or less tax than someone on the minimum wage, whilst awarding themselves 7 or 8 figure sums.  Yes i know they're worth it, after all it takes a certain mentality and group-think to dream up money-making scheme after money-making scheme, gouging the maximum possible cash from the herd - sorry, "customer", without causing a rude awakening in the horde.

But before i continue straying wildly, why are 5.5 mn adults not working?  From reading headlines an assumption could be falsely reached that they are all "lazy work-shy layabout wastrels!"  Hardly factual, but hawks tend to tread warily around actual facts when defending the indefensible, somewhat reminiscent a vincent price character being forced to suck on something cross-shaped and garlicky!

So why aren't they working, and why do papers like the daily trail happily castigate the unworking trolls in the barbecuing glare of their readers early morning trembling espresso's  - like baiting growling lions by throwing rotten meat at them?  Plain and simply, money.

Not that many years ago, a brighter future seemed but a blinking dream away - twinned as it was with the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation.  A time when computers (all 5 of them) would herald so much free time, that people wouldn't know what to do.  That we'd all be working 1 day a week, not only to improve ourselves; but to galvanise society as a whole.  An event so grand in our evolution, it would shove humanity eagerly towards the next stage of development.

Quite.

Billions still starve, 1 in 7 of the worlds population live on less than $1 a day.  All the while the globes resources are continually plundered to provide those of us who can afford it with 20+ choices of everything, whilst a growing (small) band 'just can't manage' without their 10+ figure bank balances.  Millions die of preventable diseases.  Millions die from preventable industrial accidents, and let's not talk about the wars fuelled by weapons manufactured in less than a dozen countries, used in wars 99% of the worlds population don't want, couldn't be bothered with, but are expertly manoeuvred into some sort of side by the clarion calls of nationalism.

I believe i'm straying.  Back to the uk and the lazy bones.

Does their face fit?  Do they have the skills? Maybe not, or maybe there just aren't 5.5 million jobs in the country?  After all why pay someone a higher minimum wage, when you can outsource your now flexible and float-able off-shoots to greener luscious pastures with less wages to pay and less requirements when it comes to sacking time?

I noticed a change the other day, when making a call to one of the annoying companies i use.  Initially i couldn't quite put my finger on it.  Simply thinking that this is new, a well travelled and cambridge educated (drop-out) was now biding his time by phone-answering and waiting for the next torrent of abuse by an annoyed customer.  Until somewhere during the course of the conversation his south african lilt finally pierced my perception, and language recognition finally kicked in.  South africa is still a functioning country - despite many who said it would tumble into a bonfire of flames; and whilst it might be party to less stringent labour rules, there's a strong possibility it has cheaper labour costs than mumbai.

At the same time that particular penny melted, so did the recognition my monthly subscriptions hadn't reduced to reflect this change (as cost and cheapness is king once a business grows past the 'mom & pop' stage), that it started me wondering where all those fiscal savings, which are now been made, were been shovelled?

I hearby stick my digit in the air and admit to a slight error in my earlier reading of the poll sampling numbers.  It wasn't, as i indicated earlier in this ramble, a sample size of 2,203 but actually 2,022; the percentages however remain the same.  An area the piece failed to include, which would have been interesting, is where on the disappearing(!) strata of the classless society ruler did the respondents hail from?

A comment from the usa i read in the trial summed it up succinctly:

"There is very little decent paid work left in the UK now. "Globalization' has put pay to the UK being any way productive. China, India have been given it all. The skills needed have now gone and are lost. Aspirations and ambition are things of the past, like hard work, how can 'hard work' be a means to anything when most of that earned money is taken in taxes to pay for the army employed by the state and local 'authorities' and the remaining wages keep people in poverty? Idiots who shout out "I'd work for nothing because I'm proud" are missing the point. You work to live. There is nothing clever about being a slave. 21st century UK is a disgrace. Over 30 years the dole culture has been allowed to grow because the politicos know the real harsh truth that UK is finished economically. I hear 'training' mentioned. Training for what exactly? Or do they mean those open New Deal prison schemes to 'punish' the unemployed and line the pockets of the private rogues operating them. Appalling."

Gambino, USA, 21/5/2011 03:54

"If there's not a revolution soon, we'll all just end up in the drink."

The number of job hunters to jobs here in the uk is purportedly put at 37:1.  What's the betting that if such a move was ever implemented, that orange-suited compliance would be the preferred solution of the day; by those whose idea of a hard time is the bother of finding a crease in their favourite shirt.

I can categorically (ahem, cough) state, my head was in an acid bath for the period as i was trying to clean my tongue,  and so played no part in such a silly poll.  It's not my fault i have to lay around around all day with my feet up sipping gin through a straw!  That's just no fun at all, let me tell you.

Drinking binge

Not long after the 24 hour drinking laws came into effect into the UK and long before the ban on drinking on public transport started, i stopped working nights. 

Working nights at the start of a weekend (beginning on a thursday) wasn’t fun, unless you were in a similar state to the drunks just kicked out of the nearest pub and making their way to a club.  Booze, well the smell of booze – whether from a can or regurgitated, packed the bloody-window-wont-open roasting cans as they filled up heaving from stop to stop.

That was the start. 

At the end of my working week, it would be 8am in the morning, and i’d been at it for 10 hours.   On the trip back there was nothing nicer and sweeter than taking out a can and watching those disgusted looks sweeping you up down, or a refined wrinkling of the nose from those still groggy from an early awakening.   Then the cogs would turn.

it’s 8am and he’s drinking!

Must be a wino!  Before our dear amy was even out of nappies. 

Tramp.

Dole scum.  Or just scum.

When it was nothing more harmful than relaxing after a hard nights work and enjoying a nice refreshing drink, so by time I reached home all that was left was a quick shower before slow unwinding and bed.

Dickens would be so proud of our brave new world - a rambling missive

Forcing people back to work, if they are unable to find work or are incapacitated, sounds like a return to Charles Dicken's country.  You could see the great man himself flicking through the pages of today's papers with depressed resignation at the direction the current government, opposition party and general populace are seemingly headed. 

With the ban on smoking, kill joys are now working on drinking, no doubt after that we'll all have to wear the correct type of clothing otherwise we'll be sent to the gallows.

Soon to, no doubt, as too many people will be perceived to be enjoying themselves, the holiday periods will be rolled back and working hours increased under the guise of research showing that if people didn't have so much free time they wouldn't:

1. get drunk so often,
2. have enough time to be obese eating all that balanced food

Whilst those who had too much free time on their hands would be made to work a 50 hour week for the benefit of the community, ensuring they are no longer:

1. idly unemployed and going around robbing people,
2. have time to smoke and so become less of a drain on the health service - eventually,
3. need to live in deprived areas and having offspring turn into feral beasts - through boredom and nothing else better to do.

Yes, it's mainly those who are poor, whom the political chatterers and right of Stalin editors seem to have it in for.  If you're rich and wealthy then you can ensure your offspring are suitably taken care of by the chauffeur and bodyguards, even if they would rather be rogering the missus.

It's could, perhaps, be also true that there are shirkers out there who find the problem of moving to pick up a remote control, to much effort.  But the vast majority do want to work. Meaningful work.  Work, that at the end of the day makes them feel like they have made a difference. Work that is more than the means to a basic existence. 

Unlike, investment bankers, whose idea of making a difference is knowing they've pushed a few million more people further into poverty or destroyed the meager savings of another bunch of pensioners.  For this group, the government should barrel down with increased legislation.  Raise taxes so many of them actually pay proper taxes.  But will they? No. As the government is in fear they will up sticks and leave for easier climes.  Not realising that in reality, easier climes could only be had at the beach house.

A spineless government that believes this group will simply up sticks and leave, creating chaos and plunging the country into ruin. Perhaps.  but with the bloodsuckers gone, ramping up inflation (especially housing), then the vast majority will be able to manage on the average meager wage, and anyhow they will have to learn how to, once China and India truly begin their inexorable climb to burgeoning middle-class hood and their respective Bourses surpass the london stock exchange.  Then the redistribution of traders will begin as the lse fades into the distant horizon, overtaken by the far east and a new european financial exchange, the last dreams of empire finally fading into the mists.

Been at work is bad for your health, especially in this day age; unless you work for google or apple and perhaps - at a push - ibm. 

In london on any working day just - if you can bear it - travel on london underground and look at your fellow travellers.  Rarely will you see anyone smiling or laughing. If they are, it's a firm bet they are tourists, or passing through, or have only lived in the capital for 6 months and not yet had the happiness and love for life beaten out of them.  But just look at the people going to work. It's a chore, the majority don't enjoy it, but they keep doing it.  For they know if they don't, that they could be that grubby beggar pestering everyone for 10 pence or is it now £50, to help buy a cup of tea.  Heaven forbid they end up like that, so away they beaver and work. 

To be fair there are people who have lived in the capital for 10 or more years and are still happy. But then they have homes overseas, holiday 20 times a year, worked hard and don't have to endure more than they need to.

But for those stuck within the boundaries of the M25 and its lofty green fields, the constant grind has the subtleness of your own personal pneumatic drill.