WTF??
A personal viewpoint by Les Higgins, 17th August 2022
It is CDSM policy to try to be politically impartial. That can be difficult but we know full well that "change", in any direction, does not happen overnight or easily. Those seeking "change" must be patient - and intelligent.
That said, yesterday (Aug 16th 2022), I sent a private "rant" to my business partner. It was fundamentally unpolitical in its intent but was followed the next day by something that made me feel compelled to "put it out there".
I'm in my early seventies and am not inclined to delve into "social media", so I thought I would subvert our company's web-site for the purpose.
NOTE: This is a PERSONAL view and does not (necessarily) reflect the COMPANY's position.
The rant went like this (with expletives deleted):
The Tory 'leadership' campaign has been grinding away at me with it's facile, shallow nature. Clearly none of the b*gg*rs involved have a clue about what's really going on in the country.
But there's one thing that annoys the bejabers out of me more than everything else - and Labour is not exempt from this - the notion of the High Skill, High Wage economy!
We need only go back to pre-WWI to understand this doctrine and to see what it really means. It's an ideology that is based in the classic social structure of the 'manor house' and the 'manufactories'. Yes, there were high rewards for those with the skill (nous and connections) for 'business and trade', but the whole edifice was supported by a far larger majority of 'servants'. Without those 'servants', the whole edifice collapses.
What does this teach us about the modern world? It says that those who benefit from high skills and high wages still need to be supported by a larger majority of those who do not get to benefit in the same way. These are the 'servants' who's labours are judged to require 'inferior skill' and therefore deserving of 'minimum payment' in return. These are the people who clean our office floors, scrub out our toilets and urinals, empty our waste bins, and so on.
Then there's the whole nest of under-valued 'in between' people who, for instance, drive our trains, collect and handle our rubbish/recycling, deliver our parcels, and so on.
The whole High Skill, High Wage economy is a complete throw-back. It would obviously appeal to Prospectors, especially those who espouse 'Two Classes'. It would have some appeal to those Settlers ready to dip their toe in the dangerous transition into Prospector. But it is a 'dream', a 'fantasy world', and nothing more.
How can we change this? It seems to me that there is a message here for 'the Left' that could resurrect the appeal that it once had for the 'working masses'. Forget arguing over 'benefits for the poor and needy' - let's screw down on the 'benefits for the rich'.
I'm certainly not saying that 'being rich is evil', but there was a time when it carried broader social responsibilities - when those who made life on the 'estate' possible were regarded by the owners as having some real value.
If we are going to 'regress', we should regress to something like a values system that appreciated that a person's life could not be measured by a couple of parameters - productivity, social status, gender and so on.
And then ... there's Climate change ... Before too long, even in historical terms, never mind geological, these islands will be reduced to a bunch of small islands off the coast of France (Belgium and The Netherlands - along with Norfolk, Suffolk, London, etc. - will virtually cease to exist). The largest of these islands will probably be called Wales and Scotland, with a strip called the Pennines.
The whole point of this rant was then reinforced today (17th August 2022), when The Guardian exposed a recording of Liz Truss saying that British workers need more "graft"!
This is the deepest insult I have ever heard paid to British workers. Even Margaret Thatcher never stooped quite this low, although Norman Tebbit came pretty close when he told British workers to "Get on yer bikes!" when they were complaining about job losses as Britain ran its manufacturing industries into the ground. And dear old Prince Philip was not so far off when he commented that British workers should "Get their finger out!"
Yes, I can remember days in the the motor industry of the 1970s when I saw people deliberately messing with the production line, because they knew it would be eight hours before 'maintenance' could get round to solving the problem (usually just a tweek of one limit switch or another). But I also live in a town (Swindon) which, until recently, had a Honda plant that, as far as I can ascertain, had a very high productivity rate - yet it still got closed down.
As Truss says in her recording, there's a thing in Britain about the search for "simple answers" - and her call for more "graft" is a perfect example.
British workers will - and do - work as hard as anyone in the world. No, they don't want to do the back-breaking work of turnip picking that the Romanian workers used to do - but that's because they've been led to believe, by successive Governments of all colours, that they should contribute to the economy in "higher productivity" ways - and will be suitably rewarded. Boll**ks! And the fact that there are fewer Romanians to do the work is largely down to Brexit.
Truss (and Sunak) are just giving us a revamp of the "trickle down" economic model. Has anyone noticed that this model has suffered from a drought for the past fifty years? Surely some bright spark must realise that it's time for a "hose-pipe ban". It doesn't take a very bright spark to realise where the "leak" is and how it can be plugged.
Take my word for it - it does not require demeaning or muzzling British workers or citizens!
Liz Truss has simply reaffirmed my contention that "those at the top" have lost sight of how much they depend on "those at the bottom" to keep them, their lifestyles and images afloat.
This is not an attack on Liz Truss per se - God forbid that it was perceived as a support for Sunak!. It is however an indictment of the whole "ruling class", who seem to neither recognise nor (largely) care about the day-to-day situations faced by individuals for whom they are (nominally and constitutionally) responsible.
I'll end on this thought. Based on simple demographics, the majority of the Tory electorate given the "democratic right" to vote for our next PM will almost certainly be swayed by the fact they'd know more about what to do with a Truss than with a Sunak. (Crude, I know, but one gets one's amusement where one can when disaster looms on all sides).
