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Rubbish in the river Clyde at the Broomielaw
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The subtext of
the jubilee is a
celebration of serfdom
Raymond Soltysek
Okay, I can’t help it. I have to comment on the jubilee, not because I object to it as such – although, being a Republican, I do – but because of the story that is hitting some of the headlines that clearly indicates the ‘let them eat cake’ attitude that is dominating discourse in Britain today.
The Guardian reported that 30 jobseekers – along with 50 others on apprentice wages – were bussed in to steward the Jubilee celebrations. Working in ridiculous conditions under London Bridge with no access to changing rooms and toilets, these people were apparently offered payment when they got on the bus. That promise was later withdrawn and became merely the possibility of employment by the firm Close Protection UK during the Olympics, coupled with the very real threat of losing benefits; the managing director, an ‘entrepreneur’ called Molly Prince, said ‘the stewards who performed unpaid work did so voluntarily because they wanted to continue to claim benefits’. Does that sound like volunteering to you?
Of course, these ‘work experience’, ‘intern-ship’ programmes have been a running sore for the government, especially since the fall of Cameron’s buddy Emma Harrison. Apparently, her firm A4e is merely the tip of the welfare-to-work market scandal floating off the government’s bows.
But the whole rotten core is much, much greater than that. We have seen over the last few months an increasingly virulent condescension of the poor by the entrepreneurial classes that demonstrates just how much distance lies between us and them, a gulf almost as wide as that between French peasants and Marie Antoinette herself.
Let’s start to unravel some of the hypocrisy. To begin with, the government has on its agenda the imposition of local pay agreements on public sector workers. The argument is that such workers only need a wage that is roughly comparable to private sector workers in the same area. ‘Why do they need more?’ the rhetoric goes. However, we see precisely contradictory rhetoric when we examine the arguments for the pay scales of those at the top of the pile. Chief executives, bankers, movers and shakers – well, they cannot be expected to be paid locally, since in order to attract ‘the best’, their pay scales must be comparable to the highest paid anywhere in the world. Thus, local pay for the poor, global pay for the rich.
Precisely the same with tax. Despite there being no evidence whatsoever for the effectiveness of trickle down economics, and despite there not being one credible economist who argues for the concept, the myth that tax cuts to the wealthy is good for society in general and for the poor in particular is trumpeted more loudly than ever; even in Congress, we have the unedifying sight and sound of elected representatives proclaiming that the poor do not pay their fair share of tax on the utterly spurious grounds that it is inequitable to pay 10% of pennies while others part with 20% of billions. Combine that with a visceral howl of protest at the level of benefits payments, and the argument becomes toxic to the poor. In his analysis of Osborne’s last budget, John Prescott was uncharacteristically absolutely correct when he commented that the argument seems to be that the poor should be incentivised to work harder by making them poorer while the rich are incentivised to work harder by making them richer.
And, lastly, we have the odious calls to further erode hard won unfair dismissal legislation, making it easier to sack ‘unproductive’ workers. The Channel 4 ‘Job Report’ back in March interviewed Simon Dolan, a man who somehow owns seven businesses and a motor racing team, and who suggested that giving him the ‘comfort’ to fire people would encourage him to hire in the first place: somehow, he failed to notice the irony of the fact that his accountancy firm had taken on 55 people in the last year but had sacked 40 others, which is hardly evidence of a system that forces him to provide a cushy job for life to a bunch of wastrels. Make it ‘easier and cheaper’ to employ people he says, suggesting that such a wholesale bonfire of workers’ rights would create a ‘few thousand jobs’.
When we have a system whereby benefits paid to the jobless become
subsidies to for-profit companies who are undertaking government appointed contracts, just what on earth are Cameron and his venture capitalist, motor racing pals complaining about?
Raymond Soltysek was born in Barrhead and is a graduate of Glasgow University. He is a teacher and lecturer
