It’s all very confusing.
In the bad old days, before had the vote and unemployment benefit, wicked aristocrats in The Big House would look down on the poor and decide, in times of great hardship, when bread was expensive and the turnip crop failed, to employ them for a pittance picking stones out of the fields or redirecting rivers to improve the view. It made their Big Houses look nicer and prevented riots and starvation. Soldiers who lost limbs on the field of battle against the wicked French could hobble up to the back door and get a few spare bones.
Now, our democratically elected representatives have decided the spoiled and undeserving poor just don’t want to work so they have to be forced into stone picking against their will. The best way to do that is to make lots more people unemployed so there are plenty of jobs to go round. Or something like that. Those who lose limbs on the field of battle will have to piss off back to the estates they came from, along with all the pilots we don’t need as we can’t afford any planes, only aircraft carriers to put them on if we had them, which we haven’t. But at least that keeps the ship builders in work, until we finish the ships we don’t need, after which we can close the docks for good. And that’ll make more jobs for the lazy poor to be forced to apply for. I think that’s how it works.
Of course, we can’t just bring back the old paternalism. If we wanted to re-route a river we’d find all the water belonged to a French conglomerate and was being used to cool nuclear power stations that belong to British Energy which, despite the name, also belongs to the French who are, of course, unlike the workshy British, busy rioting with gusto because their randy little President seems to be acting like some sort of Thatcherite.
It’s all very confusing. My brain cells have formed a coalition but they still can’t figure it out, although at least now they can blame my previous thoughts for leaving them an expensive legacy.
Thank god we have the vote. We can use it to express our mild irritation with ourselves for never learning our lesson.
