sProtozoa in the primeval soup.
 
What is work?  Work is mental and/or physical activity.  Both are good for people.  It’s good to work that between the ears.  Truss should try it some time.  It feels good to achieve something.  It feels good to be self-reliant.  But all that is all work, not just paid employment.  It is climbing a mountain or learning to ski, camping in the wilderness, teaching yourself Mandarin, studying particle physics, doing something for someone else, caring for someone no longer able to care for himself or caring for a baby or a young child. 
 
There is something the docs call a differential diagnosis.  Means a patient presents with a range of symptoms which may represent X, Y or Z, only further investigation being able to determine which. 
 
In this case we are talking about one ‘symptom’ intensely confusing to our leaders.  Whaddya mean, you don’t want to get to the top and make scads of money, or for that matter be a leading physicist.  Apparent absence of ambition may mean two opposing things.  One is low aspiration to be fought the other is contentment, which should be appreciated and is despised.  But I don’t want to climb the greasy pole.  I have better things to do. I’d rather spend time with my kids, study Eng Lit, paint my shed, paint watercolours, build a shed, cook dinner for my friends, help the elderly couple who live next door, go for country walks with my dogs, etc.  The job I have pays enough for the needs of my family and a bit extra.  If someone will pay me more for fulfilling the same obligations and just a bit extra, that’s great, but I do not want a better job and more obligations.   
 
Do not tell me these creatures who treat cleaners and security guards like shit really care about aspiration.  If they did they’d have been having cosy if somewhat drunken chats with them, about their families, how they live, what they’d really like to do, and much would probably have been forgiven them, because they behaved like arseholes but their hearts are clearly in the right place. 
 
If the report from the support staff at No. 10 were, “They’re all just lovely guys.  Bit ditsy, feet not on the ground, but good decent blokes.” 
 
‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate/God made them high and lowly, God ordered their estate.’ 
 
Until the mid-nineteenth century, the British state accepted that children as young as five years old were an acceptable part of the industrial workforce. 
Children in Mines | National Museum Wales 
 
Choke on it, vermin, choke on it. That’s your wonderful deregulation, capital unchained.  The British working-class has a long memory and has been very patient.  May whatever gods there may be help the Tories if it loses patience.  Then as now of course there were many smug vicious burghers supporting evil. 
 
I shall keep on about the mere 14 million who voted Conservative because morons are perpetuating a curious meme that Johnson’s election means we’re all obsequious and fawning bourgeois lackeys of the corrupt ruling-class, deferential, think he’s wonderful.  If we were like that in a far more deferential age, five-year-olds would still be in the mines.  Everything they want to destroy is the result of our not being like that.
 
In a properly structured democracy 30% of the voters should not mean getting anywhere near power. 
 
Capital is power.  In a democracy the exercise of power is to be transparent and accountable.  By all means spend a million in Ann Summers but you have no right to conceal what your money is doing if it affects me. 
 
Thus also of course Lenin: 
The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown 
VI Lenin, Socialism and Religion 
 
It does not have to be overthrown, merely contained, like all power.  Like all power, it must not be permitted to fuck people’s lives over.  It’s called democracy, a system devised for containing power. 
 
I have no objection to people being rich. You have all the planes and boats and trains and clothes ad jewels and property your pathetic grasping little monkey paws can clutch but you do not ruin the lives of others.   I have a marked objection to their injuring other people. 
 
They nailed their colours to the mast.  Profits are not to be interfered with even if they result from the sale of items that are essentials, a matter of life and death. 
If you wish to be able to afford those essentials, you must do more work; there is no question of their cost being forcibly reduced.  Energy does not have to cost what it costs.  Those record profits are to be maintained.   
 
Representatives of the people, my arse, representatives of those who don’t care if they harm people.  The whole edifice of regulation they despise exists to protect people, when that piece of filth Rees-Mogg has finished jeering at the nanny state, protect people from that from which they cannot protect themselves, from the steak pie that is rat and the chicken pie that is pigeon, from lists of supposed ingredients that are a pleasing work of fiction, from bottles of milk that went off a week ago, from property not fit for human habitation, from wiring that electrocutes, from mineral water that came out of the tap, chairs that collapse, anything that has a purpose it only fulfils long enough to get inside your door. 
 
Nor does it represent anyone needing medical or dental care on the NHS. 
 
Not that people are meek and trusting.  This thread is in response to a Tesco ad. 
 
(2) Tesco on Twitter: "Tesco Meat & Veg mince is packed with 30% veg, so it's good for you and better for planet, as it has a lower carbon footprint than our 100% beef mince. #EveryLittleHelps https://t.co/OBsrJGv5Q8" / Twitter 
   
The more the injunction to work more is examined, the more vile it is. This is work more to stay alive, not work more to have nicer things than the things you’ve got, or work more to stay in the same place when you have no responsibility for or control of the cost of things. 
 
People have nothing else to do.  Of course they must work.   
 
If people work too long, they become tired.  They make mistakes.  They make errors of judgement.  They may become a danger to both themselves and others, whether they are lorry-drivers or doctors and nurses, electricians, plumbers, any trade in which a bad mistake is at best disastrous and at worst lethal 
 
In a corner of my kitchen, the boiler is on the wall and underneath it many pipes and wires.  On the worktop are a toaster, an extension lead, an unopened box of grapes, a hand blender.  Underneath the work-top is the fridge. That’s enough to be going on with.   
 
Every single item requires the labour of countless people with or without the aid of machines.  Every component, every component of a component, the plastic sheaths round the wires, has to be made, fitted, transported. 
 
People have to do things to bring the physical man-made world into existence.  To the Rees-Moggs of the world, that is what people exist for, to provide them with all he requires, empty the rubbish, fill pot-holes in the road, enable their smooth untrammelled existence.   
 
Train-drivers, refuse-collectors are rarely noticed unless they go on strike.  I sometimes wonder if subconsciously that is why they go on strike.  Oy, look at us.  You need us. 
 
Unless you have carved yourself a flint spearhead, are dressed in skins and live on rabbit and nettle, in a tent you have constructed of wood and skins, you cannot exist without the labour of others and for those of us still able to enjoy a variety of foods and drinks, a choice of clothes to wear, curtain material, furniture, buses to work, cars to drive, general normality, that is thousands and thousands of others.   
 
The public sector caters to the benefit of everyone.  The private sector caters to the wants of individuals.  When the half-wits have finished whining. 
 
Suppose the street-lamp opposite my flat failed, whom do they think are going to pay a private company for its repair, the motorists passing at the rate of one a minute, the kids from the VIth form college, the people on the way to the shops? Who requires the pavements and roads? Everyone who uses them.  Who needs rubbish collected? Everyone. 
 
So far as I can see a private model only works in fixed communities, and fixed communities of home-owners at that.  You can say the residents of Acacia Avenue are responsible for its maintenance but a street near me full of studio flats?  Why should the owners be liable for what they don’t use? 
Alternatively they could be responsible for Best Kept Street, but would the tenants of the studios care that much, and older people maybe more concerned about   lighting and tripping wouldn’t want their second floor studios.  Who is responsible for the streets leading to the local football ground, regularly tramped by supporters of the visiting teams, the Football League? 
 
So they think people are machines to service their needs, not of course ordinary people’s needs, who needs the public sector.  

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again. 
 
The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown
VI Lenin, Socialism and Religion
 
Do you think people should be protected from that over which they have no control due to global markets?
 
Do you think it is the business of government to ensure that people have sufficient income to be able to afford the essentials of housing, food and heat.
If you do not, why do you think you are fit to govern the country, representing all the people?
 
So say it: it is not the business of government to protect people from poverty unemployment and oppression.
 
Singapore, by the way, does have the merit of being  pretty much squeaky clean, the 5th least corrupt country in the world.  The UK is 11th.  India is 40th.
Corruption Index - Countries - List (tradingeconomics.com)
 
Corruption is a term used to describe dishonest or fraudulent behavior by someone in power. When applied on a national scale, "corruption" refers to government leaders who abuse their power, take bribes, or commit fraud or other disreputable acts to increase their own wealth and/or power instead of helping the people they are meant to serve.
Least Corrupt Countries 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)
No, I didn’t think you’d understand the phrase ‘helping the people they are supposed to serve’.  Servants of the people, dirt-boys, servants of the people. 
Nothing is the bloody business of government to this goons.  Nothing is the responsibility of government, the duty of government.  Clowns like Truss and Johnson just want to ponce around the world drivelling and pretending to be serious people.  They do not want to take responsibility for the state of this country, pass the buck, it’s our problem.  And we’re supposed to be the lazy ones.
 
When I was 15 and studying The Lord of the Flies for O Level, our English master taught us the meaning of glamour, a deception, a spell making something seem other than it is. Thus money providing the foul and filthy  with a veneer of elegance and beauty concealing a squirming stinking excrescence. 
 
People should not be left to suffer and die from treatable disease or injury.  There are many definitions of obscene.  One is refuse to pay people enough to live decently on and further demand that they save their non-existent money to pay for their healthcare – borrow, take out insurance, make money for your filthy banker friends.  Of course they may well be dead before they’ve saved enough.  Diseases do not improve when left untreated.  Just go to the homes of cancer patients and tell them they’ll just have to die if they can’t afford to pay for their treatment. 
 
Yes, people should be helped to help themselves.  Yes, there are many occasions when they can’t.
 
There is a magnificent building in Huntley Street, WC1, light, airy, full of the latest equipment.  It is called the Macmillan Cancer Centre and is part of University College Hospitals.  Daycare as I recall is on the 3rd Floor.  I am tempted to suggest these offal pop into Daycare and tell the people having chemo and other treatments that they have no right to such care, if they would otherwise die or have a grossly impaired quality of life, well, shrug, that’s just tough, isn’t it. They don’t matter to the ‘representatives of the people’.  However, that would upset the patients.  Similarly it is not a good idea for Raab to pop into a surgical ward and tell its inhabitants their ops were a sad waste of public money.  People do not matter to these creatures.  They are not libertarians.  They are not democrats.  They are fascists who believe they decree and expect no come-back from those affected by their decrees, who are second-class citizens.
 
They do not regard themselves as accountable.  When a claimant dies of starving or by his or her own hand because the DWP has stopped his or benefits, the person responsible for the decision is not called to public account, named, exposed, fired.
 
No, they’re not stupid: they’re evil.  And what do they spout, a load of shit from the autocue.  Though they could be subnormal.  I have a theory that these creatures are deliberately recruited from the criminal underclass to keep them in employment.  Why should sick people have to cope with these subnormal animals?   Government policy is to destroy the old and/or ill.  Anyone who is not working is regarded as a parasite.
 
Man kept alive by dialysis machine because of 8% kidney function told ‘you’re not ill enough’ for PIP
A man being kept alive by a dialysis machine was told “you’re not ill enough” after applying for a benefit to help with the cost of living.
Adam Briggs, 39, applied for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) when his kidneys were functioning at eight per cent. He had to reduce his working hours as a sports therapist from full-time to a maximum of four hours a day but the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) told him he didn’t meet the requirements.
Adam underwent a kidney transplant three weeks ago and is now panicking about how he is going to afford to live. He told i he hasn’t reapplied for PIP since his request denied in February as he feels so demoralised and needs to focus on recovering from his surgery.
Fiona Loud, policy director for Kidney Care UK, which provides advice, support and financial assistance to patients, told i one of the biggest issues to impact the lives of kidney patients other than treatment and transport is the constant battle to attain benefits.
“Patients have told us that assessor’ reports contained significant inaccuracies,” Loud said. “From our own research surrounding 21 cases, only two people were initially awarded standard rate daily care at the initial assessment. After appeal this increased to 13 people being awarded at the standard rate, with a further six awarded the enhanced rate.”
Adam, who underwent a heart transplant as a child, applied for PIP after a nurse suggested it in October last year. At the time of applying, he was undergoing dialysis four times a day.
The 39-year-old, who lives in Cockermouth and was a keen fell runner in the Lake District until his deteriorating kidney function left him with no energy, told i he is bewildered at being classed well enough to work when he was relying on a machine to keep him alive.
“I don’t know how they make these decisions and who makes them,” he said. “If you only have eight per cent kidney function and are relying on a machine to keep you alive, I don’t understand how that qualifies as being fine. They reckon if you come off dialysis, you have about two weeks before you die.”
Adam was born with congenital heart defects and underwent a heart transplant at the age of nine when his heart was functioning at just three per cent. The transplant made a huge difference to his life.
“Before the transplant, I wasn’t even able to go upstairs without being carried,” he recalled. “But five days after the heart transplant, they had me on an exercise bike for an hour. The change to my life was incredible and it just built up from there.”
Adam was determined to live his life to the full after his heart transplant. He became a keen fell runner in the Lake District and at one point ran up to 40 miles a week. But anti-rejection heart medication toll on his kidneys and at the beginning of 2020, their function deteriorated to eight per cent.
He began peritoneal dialysis, which is given through a tube in the stomach, at home four times a day. He applied for PIP and says he did his best to carry on working.
“I was constantly having to go back and forth – travelling to a client, then going back home for dialysis and then going back out again,” he said. “I just did the best I could and when I didn’t feel up to it, I had to cancel. Luckily, my clients and the rugby club were very understanding and supportive.”
After a series of tests it was revealed Adam’s sister Lucy, 36, was a match and could act as a kidney donor for her brother. But as the family prepared to go down that route, Adam received news a match from a deceased donor had been found.
Adam underwent the transplant at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle in the first week of May and is now back home recovering, which is expected to take three to six months. He is mostly on bed rest and is not allowed to walk further than a mile for the first six weeks or carry anything heavier than two kilos.
Adam, who moved back in with his mother during the coronavirus pandemic to save money, says although he is grateful for having his life saved with a second transplant, he is worried about not being able to work, particularly with food and energy prices soaring. His friend of 10 years, Jez Starkey, has set up a fundraiser to help him cover the cost of living.
“Being self employed, I don’t really know what help I qualify for,” he said. “I can’t work at all at the moment as I am living on painkillers. I surviving what little savings I have after Covid.
“What should be a happy time trying to recover from a transplant which has saved my life is turning into an anxious time financially.”
“We’d like to send Adam our best wishes for a rapid improvement in his health,” Loud told i. “Dialysis treatment is relentless and challenging and people will frequently be exhausted, full of aches and freezing cold.
“A benefit like PIP is based on an individual’s experience with their condition and we would like to offer Adam our support to appeal against the initial rejection of benefits as it is hard to understand why it was turned down in the first place.
“Our patient support and advocacy team regularly hears from people who are turned down for benefits. The impact of dialysis, multiple hospital visits, and the use of drugs are some issues kidney patients face that are often ignored by assessors.
“They may need help with the most basic of human needs, such as eating, washing, dressing and simply moving around, yet will not be accepted for PIP.
“Patients have told us that assessor’ reports contained significant inaccuracies. From our own research surrounding 21 cases, only two people were initially awarded standard rate daily care at the initial assessment. After appeal this increased to 13 people being awarded at the standard rate, with a further six awarded the enhanced rate.
“Our benefits system needs rapid improvement, with assessors properly trained to understand kidney disease and support people in getting the benefits they are eligible for, and without placing an additional burden of financial distress upon them.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments are carried out by healthcare professionals trained to consider the impact of someone’s health condition or disability and they focus on an individual’s functional needs arising from their long-term health condition or disability, not the health condition or disability itself.
“Our priority is that the millions of people we support every year get the benefits to which they are entitled and to ensure they receive a supportive and compassionate service.”
The department added that if someone’s conditions have changed, worsened or if they have new health conditions, they can make a new claim.
They also stated that all health professionals receive comprehensive training in disability analysis which includes the evaluation of how medical conditions affect claimants in day-to-day activities and that assessment providers have consistently exceeded claimant satisfaction targets based on independent research and in the vast majority of cases the right decision is made first time.
Such stories have long been commonplace.  It is abundantly clear that Her Majesty’s Government never had a problem with them.
Dad 'eats stale bread' so his children can have proper food | UK | News | Express.co.uk
 
Such stories have become commonplace.  It became abundantly clear Her Majesty’s Government had no problem with them.  Others, however, did.
 
This comes from 2015.
Do you want people bullied off benefits? Because that’s what’s happening | John Harris | The Guardian
 
Severely disabled Scot who can’t speak or read ordered to PROVE he is unfit to work - Daily Record
 
They have never made the slightest attempt to hide what vermin they are.  Coffey’s reign continues untouched.
 
A model has been created where anyone who does not {{WORK}}, for whatever reason, like maybe you’re paraplegic or over 90, what kind of an excuse is that, is a drain on the economy.  To this we surely add anyone who uses the NHS, though since that is nearly everyone and since there has been a pandemic, they’ve gone quiet on that one.  Thus the DWP thugs bully elderly disabled women.
This model has been sold to a rabble of trolls in business and to smug, vicious toads in the shires.
It’s the shooting script.  Anything anyone is contributing in any other way is dismissed.  You are not working.  You are not paying taxes.  You are surplus to requirements.   I should imagine the motto is Arbeit macht frei.   Listen hard the next time some squirming stinking excrescence drools about {{{HARD-WORKING FAMILIES}}}
 
….with fewer employment laws and suggesting the United Kingdom should learn lessons from the business and economic practices of other countries, including Canada, Australia and the tiger economies of the Far East like China and Singapore.[1][2] Four of the five co-authors became part of the cabinet of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 201 
Britannia Unchained - Wikipedia 
 
Child Miners: The Dark Secret of Jharkhand’s Mining Industry | NewsClick 
Legislation is meaningless if not enforced.  Like maybe all the Civil Servants whose job it was to enforce employment law have been fired. 
 
Can we talk about Singapore and India, those wonderful model economies from which we have so much to learn, please, can we, oh, you know, Singapore where there is no minimum wage. 
 
Where does Singapore rank on the Global Poverty Index? 
Out of 136 countries considered, Singapore currently ranks the 26th most income disparate. This makes them the second most income unequal country in Asia. According to the Singapore government, over 105,000 families live in poverty. 
Poverty in Singapore - The Borgen Project 
borgenproject.org/poverty-singapore/ 
It looks like no minimum wage 
 
Singapore is seldom thought of as a poor country since the nation ranks fourth in the richest countries in the world; however, the reality is that many Singaporeans live in poverty. For far too many people, poverty in Singapore is a fact of life. 
The Top 10 Poverty in Singapore Facts: 
1. Singaporeans have to live on $5 a day 
Four-hundred thousand Singaporeans live on $5 a day. Singaporeans Against Poverty, the campaign whose concern is “for those in Singapore caught in the cycle of poverty despite our economic success,” began the $5 challenge, where people can pledge money and try to live on a $5 per day budget. 
2. Some Singaporeans have no income 
A survey from the Housing Development Board showed that one-third of Singaporeans living in one or two room flats have no source of income. Additionally, an Ipsos APAC and Toluna study found that 62 percent of Singaporeans state that their dissatisfaction is a result of their personal financial situation. 
3. There is no official poverty line in Singapore 
According to Worldbank, there are several reasons to measure poverty: “to keep the poor on the agenda; if poverty were not measured, it would be easy to forget the poor.” Additionally, poverty lines “target interventions that aim to reduce or alleviate poverty,” and finally, measurements help to evaluate projects, policies and institutions that aim to help the poor. 
In a Straits Times article, it was stated that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong doesn’t believe establishing poverty lines will be helpful as there are great disparities between poor groups in Singapore; each group requires “different sort and scale of help… This cannot be accomplished by a rigid poverty line, he said, which might be polarising and leave some outside the definition of poor.” 
4. Singapore’s wealth gap is one of the widest 
As noted in the CIA World Factbook, Singapore was ranked 36th out of 150 countries for income inequality in 2016 based on the Gini coefficient, a ratio of highest to lowest incomes. This means that the high-income households are extremely wealthy, while the low-income households are extremely poor. In fact, a Credit Suisse report showed that more than a quarter of the country’s wealth is held by the top 1 percent of the population. 
5. The Gini coefficient has begun to decrease 
According to the Singapore Management University (SMU) handbook, the government has begun to acknowledge the wealth disparity. Although Singapore is still ranked high for income inequality, the Gini coefficient has decreased in the past two years. 
6. Wages fall for low-income households 
In the SMU handbook, it was stated that the bottom 20 percent of workers saw a decrease in wages between 1998 and 2010. 
7. Singapore is the most expensive city to live in 
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Singapore was the most expensive city to live in in 2017 for the 4th year running. This makes it increasingly difficult for the impoverished population to afford basic necessities. 
8. Increase in cost of goods and services 
Likewise, the past three years saw a 13.1 percent increase in goods and services, according to Singaporeans Against Poverty. 
9. More Singaporeans are being covered under ComCare 
ComCare was established by the Singaporean government in 2005 to provide assistance to needy families who are either unable to work or are currently searching for employment. 
As reported in the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), the number of Singaporeans being covered under ComCare grew from 13,479 in 2012 to 18,996 in 2015, but the government claims this is not due to higher poverty levels; rather, it says it’s due to changes to the program. 
The Ministry of Social and Family Development has extended coverage so that more families can apply for ComCare. 
10. Singaporean government is taking steps towards alleviating poverty 
 
Or perhaps you prefer India, another economy praised 
The Suresh Tendulkar Committee set up to look into the people living under the poverty line in India submitted its report in November 2009.[90] It provided a new method of calculating the poverty line based on per capita consumption expenditure per month or day. For rural areas, it was Rs 816 per month or Rs 27 per day. For urban areas, it was Rs 1000 per month or Rs 33 per day. Using this methodology, the population below the poverty line in 2009–2010 was 354 million (29.6% of the population) and that in 2011–2012 was 269 million (21.9% of the population).[91] 
Poverty in India - Wikipedia 
 
People really shouldn’t make demands of our betters, should we.  We should not insist we have a right to a decent standard of living. 
 
Yes, the Empire caused poverty and oppression.  Yes, it stripped assets.  And.  It is also a scapegoat.  The predations of Empire do not prevent multimillionaires from paying a living wage.  The problem with saying how awful the Empire was is not that it wasn’t in some cases awful, it’s the dishonesty of the speakers and writers ignoring that their independent  countries are equally awful or worse, now governed by prize cunts.  But hey, they’re our prize cunts.  It does make a difference.    I am sure during the fights for independence there were many angry and upright people saying you will not treat us like this.  Perhaps they formed the first governments.  But they have been eclipsed.   
 
In a different context I have invented Chief Rabbit.  Chief Rabbit has gold coins for eyes and long dirty yellow teeth, together with a strange anatomy: carrots come into it.  There is an excellent cartoon of Chief Rabbit on the phone to Death: “I can get you 200 now and another 200 next week.” 
 
Any resemblance to Priti Patel or Dominic Raab is purely coincidental. 
 
Senior Tory loses it on air when confronted with his own plans to sell the NHS - The Canary 
That is merely funny in a sick sort of way. 
 
They want to tear down everything the Labour movement built up.
 
In a week of sickening revelations, the thought of Downing Street partygoers laughing at cleaners and security guards who tried to warn them they were breaking lockdown rules leaves a particularly nasty taste in the mouth. 
A security guard was left “shaking his head” after being laughed at for warning about rule breaking, BBC’s Panorama reported this week. And today’s Sue Gray report shows this was no isolated incident. 
Gray highlighted “multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment” of security guards, and of cleaners, who were left to regularly clean up bottles and rubbish littered everywhere, red wine splashed all over the walls, and, presumably, vomit (Gray heard that one person had thrown up following a Downing Street gathering). 
It is sickening. But it is also unsurprising. Those at the heart of government didn’t just laugh at cleaners, security guards, and other low paid workers. They sent them out to work at the peak of the pandemic – with no protection, often no sick pay, and no choice. And some died. 
Parliament’s own outsourced cleaners were refused furlough and had to travel on public transport to clean a parliament that wasn’t even sitting, despite the condemnation of their union and opposition MPs that they were being put in “unnecessary danger”. 
Their bosses quoted Michael Gove’s claim that millions of the lowest paid workers were somehow all “key workers” – and therefore could be forced to continue to travel to work. 
Minimum wage call centre workers doing non-essential jobs were also made to commute in and work in potentially unsafe offices at that time, their bosses again given free rein to designate their work as “essential” and “key”. 
And if low paid workers got sick? The government did next to nothing to address the fact that over two million of the worst off had no right to sick pay at all, and millions more could only expect an unliveably low sum. 
Emanuel Gomes was an outsourced Ministry of Justice cleaner. He died after working for five days with suspected COVID symptoms in a near-empty office, because he believed he could not afford to lose income. 
Those working on public transport were left exposed, too. Belly Mujinga died after she had pleaded with her bosses not to make her work on the front line due to health vulnerabilities. 
Security guards were three times more likely to die of COVID than the average male worker, the ONS found, with other low paid workers, particularly bus and taxi drivers, also at far greater risk than their middle class peers, and their communities also far harder hit. 
No wonder the Downing Street security guard was left “shaking his head” and visibly upset by the carrying on at Number 10. 
Boris Johnson claimed today he’d been unaware of the disrespect shown to cleaners and security guards, telling the Commons that such behaviour towards staff was “absolutely disgraceful” and “intolerable”. The prime minister promised to ensure offenders “apologise or are otherwise disciplined”. Later in the afternoon, he said he’d “personally apologised to those dedicated members of staff”. 
But Johnson oversaw a government culture – indeed, an ideology – where it wasn’t just acceptable to be rude to low paid staff. It was acceptable to send them out to die. And we should never forget that. 
 
Essentially – oh essentially, were they fit to govern, they’d be engaged in animated conversation with those at the bottom of the heap, learning about their lives. 
 
Also, there are parties and parties and it is likely that the consumption of a small decorous glass of sherry would be more readily forgiven than a bunch of drunkards throwing up all over the place. 
 
What these creatures have amply demonstrated is they do not think people have a right to life 
 
As Sassoon wrote of a very different (and identical) bunch of pig-shit: 
‘If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath 
I’d live with Scarlet Majors at the Base 
And speed glum heroes up the line to death 
You’d see me, with my puffy, petulant face,  
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotels. 
 
And of course Kipling: 
I could not dig; I dared not rob; 
Therefore I lied to please the mob. 
Now all my lies are proved untrue 
And I must face the men I slew. 
What tale shall serve me here, among 
Mine angry and defrauded young? 
 
We should  not make problems for our betters.  Servants of the people, vermin.    
Another expression for all this is of course passing the buck.   
 
The Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is an office within British politics held by a member of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. The duty of the office holder is to scrutinise the actions of the government's Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and develop alternative policies. The office holder, currently Jonathan Ashworth. 
Gosh, I  didn’t know that.  Did you know that?  He should be a household name at this point.   
 
And one more time for the hell of it, though I might as well be talking to blocks of wood.
Ostrich Land: the future is 20 years away.
  
Maybe won’t affect me much at all, let alone such place as I continue to play in the labour market, but technology moves fast.  For the moment the lovely guys and girls from Ocado will continue to check my eggs and ask me how many bags I’m returning, the lovely guys or girls from Amazon will worry if the package they’re handing me is too heavy for me.
 
Ocado has shown off a prototype driverless van designed to deliver goods at short distances.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40421100
Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, is testing unmanned drones to deliver goods to customers, chief executive Jeff Bezos has said.
The drones, called Octocopters, could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order, he said.
However, he added that it could take up to five years for the service to start.
The US Federal Aviation Administration is yet to approve the use of unmanned drones for civilian purposes.
"I know this looks like science fiction, but it's not," Mr Bezos told CBS television's 60 Minutes programme.
"We can do half-hour delivery... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25180906
The UK, I read, employs a mere 8% of the population in manufacturing.   But that’s all right, because there are always jobs in the service industries. 
 
Medical records have bar-codes and paperless is the world of the fantasist.  If ever there was a job a robot could do it’s gathering medical folders for clinics, sending simple emails to whomever the system deems to have the notes.  ‘You have these notes?’  ‘No.’  For that matter of course scanning sets of medical records could be done by a robot.  Open the folder, start at page one. 
 
Tianran Wang seems a sensible guy
Tianran Wang, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and an expert on industrial automation, spoke about China’s manufacturing industry at the Beijing event. He said that it lagged behind those of other nations and would need a major technological overhaul. He also emphasized that part of the challenge will be figuring out which tasks can be automated most effectively, and how machines and humans can share the workload. “Not all labor-intensive industry can be automated,” Tianran said. “We need hybrid automation.”
 
“But the traditional economic path from increasing productivity of agriculture to light manufacturing and then to full-scale industrialisation may not be possible for all developing countries,” Mr. Kim said in response to a question at the Brookings Institute during a discussion on extreme poverty on Tuesday.
“In large parts of Africa, it is likely that technology could fundamentally disrupt this pattern. Research based on World Bank data has predicted that the proportion of jobs threatened in India by automation is 69 per cent, in China it is 77 per cent and in Ethiopia, the percentage of jobs threatened by automation is 85 per cent,” he said.
“Now, if this is true, and if these countries are going to lose these many jobs, we then have to understand what paths to economic growth will be available for these countries and then adapt our approach to infrastructure accordingly,” Mr. Kim said.
 http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/Automation-threatens-69-jobs-in-India-World-Bank/article15427005.ece
 
And what is it in the UK?
Almost half of all jobs could be automated by computers within two decades and "no government is prepared" for the tsunami of social change that will follow, according to the Economist.
The magazine's 2014 analysis of the impact of technology paints a pretty bleak picture of the future.
It says that while innovation (aka "the elixir of progress") has always resulted in job losses, usually economies have eventually been able to develop new roles for those workers to compensate, such as in the industrial revolution of the 19th century, or the food production revolution of the 20th century.
But the pace of change this time around appears to be unprecedented, its leader column claims. And the result is a huge amount of uncertainty for both developed and under-developed economies about where the next 'lost generation' is going to find work.
It quotes a 2013 Oxford Martin School study that estimates 47% of all jobs could be automated in the next 20 years:
"Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation – i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills," that study says.
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The Economist also points out that current unemployment levels are startlingly high, but that "this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started".
Specifically the Economist points to new tech like driverless cars, improved household gadgets, faster and more efficient online communications and 'big data' analysis to areas that humans are quickly being superceded. And while new start-ups are raising billions, they employ few people - Instagram, sold to Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion, employed just 30 people at the time.
Those conclusions are echoed elsewhere. Another study ('Are You Ready For #GenMobile?'), to be released in full on 21 January by Aruba Networks, points out just how fast traditional working models are changing.
It says that 72% of British people now believe they work more efficiently at home, and that 63% need a WiFi network to complete their tasks - not bad for a technology that was barely standardised 10 years ago.
Meanwhile in 'The Second Machine Age', out this week, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue workers are under unprecedented pressure by the automation of skilled and unskilled jobs.
In a recent Salon interview Brynjolfsson said: "technology has always been destroying jobs, and it’s always been creating jobs, and it’s been roughly a wash for the last 200 years. But starting in the 1990s the employment to population ration really started plummeting and it’s now fallen off a cliff and not getting back up. We think that it should be the focus of policymakers right now to figure out how to address that."
The BBC also produced a report earlier this month which claimed, in stark tones, that "the robots are coming to steal our jobs".
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/17/rise-of-the-machines-economist_n_4616931.html
 
Haldane said the Bank had used methodology pioneered in the US to model the impact of smarter machines on the UK labour market and its more than 30 million employees.
It classified jobs into three categories – those with a high (greater than 66%), medium (33-66%) and low (less than 33%) probability of automation, and made an adjustment for the proportion of employment those jobs represented.
“For the UK, roughly a third of jobs by employment fall into each category, with those occupations most at risk including administrative, clerical and production tasks.
“Taking the probabilities of automation, and multiplying them by the numbers employed, gives a broad brush estimate of the number of jobs potentially automatable. For the UK, that would suggest up to 15m jobs could be at risk of automation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/12/robots-threaten-low-paid-jobs-says-bank-of-england-chief-economist
At some point the doors of nations are going to slam shut, and it won’t be because of race or religion, and it won’t be the ‘First World’ versus the ‘Third World’ because although people may be falling over themselves to get the hell out there probably won’t be anywhere  to go if you’re not techy, not  possessed of some other specific skill or talent.  Don’t know about North Korea.  Maybe North Korea will solve the problem for us, abolish the future.
 
The world could divide very simply into Luddite or automated.  In some circs at least it will be incremental, and a matter of choice.  The golden opportunity lies before me of asking Alexa to ask Ocado to add carrots to my order, but I find I don’t want to do that.  If we stop short of the point where machines interact with personalities, then no robot can do things specific to me, or any individual.  Undoubtedly a robot would have been invaluable in all the hauling and heaving of the nightmare of clearing the house, but without access to my memories of 5, 15, 35 it could not have chosen what to keep and what to throw.  Yes, that book is falling apart but it revolutionized my thinking when I was 17.  Since at the moment I do very little in terms of interacting with the outside world, indeed at the moment since I don’t see many people anyway it seems prudent to see none while the flu epidemic lasts, it is a little hard to see how robotics will impact on my life, but certainly my long-term transport needs would seem to be assured, mooching around in a little pod.  Like probably a lot of people, if for a different reason, it’s a long time since I’ve trailed round shops looking for the perfect skirt or sweater.  Indeed I am the retail-trade’s worst nightmare incarnate, since I barely go to shops at all, maybe pop round to the Co-op if I run out of something.  What is the point of staggering around Marks or Ryman’s when I can order on-line. 
 
It may by the by be said that, at the expense of many hours on the Internet and off it measuring and thinking, I have had no failed on-line purchases, nothing which I have unpacked only to think shit, that’s not at all what I wanted/needed/expected.
 
Even in this externally unexciting life, there are possibilities.  I can’t really quite reach the top shelves in my kitchen cupboards, get things to the front and push them a bit.  I can’t quite reach the hooks on backs of doors to hang my coat or jacket.  So what else are the backs of chairs for.  A robotic arm would have its uses around the place.
 
So much for the Labour Party spearheading the great forward march of the toiling masses to socialism.  Certainly it will be necessary, but only if it’s not living in the C19th.
 
It doesn’t take much of a glance at the papers to conclude that both the people who run the country and those who comment on them are not living in the real world. 
 
Living in a loony bin on all levels.  Did you know you can buy a 3D printer on Amazon for less than the cost of a state-of-the-art laptop?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flashforge-upgraded-exclusive-technologyoutlet-Distributor/dp/B00LC6NVXO/ref=sr_1_17?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1505830261&sr=1-17&keywords=3d+printers

https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-design/coloring-complex-3d-printed-objects
Isn’t that just so cool?
https://youtu.be/FSu19nz7NlE
Comments are pretty good too.
What happens to all of it, insignia of wealth, status, diamond tiara, manor house, castle, palace, if people can just print the parts?  I should imagine part of all this is a frantic attempt to maintain status and pecking order, hierarchy, must one not have respect?  That Marxists are in full accord is just jam.  What happens to ‘reverse insignia’, cheap thin clothes with shoddy stitching?  After all, chemically, it’s all the same stuff.
What happens to everything when if you want a new sofa you pop to the community printer in the town centre?
That government by the futile for the futile shall not perish from this earth.
Ah, their chief weapon….
Construction work has begun on the the largest 3D-printed apartment building in europe. located in bavaria, germany, the building will accommodate five apartments across three floors with approximately 380 square metres (4,000 square feet) of living space built using a 3D construction printer called ‘BOD2’. as the printer is the fastest on the market, the team behind the ambitious s the first 3D-printed apartment building in germany is under construction (designboom.com)cheme say that they only expect the printing process to take six weeks.

Join the fucking real world, lungfish. Bloody protozoa faffing around in the primeval soup.