Thankless

If a lorry driver fails to show up for work a consignment doesn’t get delivered, shops fall short of stock, people are disappointed, inconvenienced and possibly, put in peril; what if the load was medical supplies? A small army of logistics personnel seeks to make sure this never happens, or to mitigate the damage if it can’t be averted. In contrast, should a professor of race grievances take a whole year of sabbatical, not one person on the planet will suffer. The sum total of human existence will not be affected in the slightest

Likewise, economic forecasters, who only exist to give astrology a veneer of credibility. Then there is the emerging field of gender studies – if every person in the country who genuinely suffers from gender dysphoria were to be publicly funded to research it, there would probably be fewer than there are now engaged in actively promoting it.  And what of those committees engaged in renaming streets, demounting statues and placing tributes to unknown people of colour whose actual significance pales in comparison with the fabricated legends written about them? All utterly pointless.

Please feel free to add worthless occupations of your own, because, across the western world – those parts of the world not struggling with the basics of survival - there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who are handsomely rewarded for 'work' which adds nothing useful to society. If we lost them all tomorrow, nobody would notice. Nobody, of course, except the benefits office.

Contrast the value of these non-jobs, every single one no doubt requiring a degree (degree requirements may be waived for applicant with the correct ethnic credentials) with the really vital jobs without which our society could not survive. Those thankless jobs the highly educated may look down upon but could not get by without. These are the jobs that society should value and reward.

Who stacks the shelves? Those faceless, busy beavers who pack and pick stock and keep supermarkets and ‘fulfilment centres’ operating. I can just see the dismay on the faces of the commentariat when they can’t find their favourite brand of organic pesto foot balm where they expect to find it. And, checking out, cashless and automated is fine until you need the human with the cardkey to validate your purchases.

And who makes the products those shelves are filled with? Machines are still a long way away from being able to do everything. Until that day – which will be beyond most of your lifetimes – those clothes, that food, those gadgets have required the input of human labour, paid far less than the children who writes articles for the Guardian about the nobility of toil and the struggle of the masses, yet have never picked up a tool in their lives.

Then there are all the trades. Those grubby little people in vans whose sole purpose in life is to keep your world up and running. They build your houses, they fix your central heating, they install, for you, gadgetry they could never afford for themselves. So what, your paper on free expression in the age of Trump can wait forever; nobody will miss it. But how long will you survive without your dishwasher?

And have you ever noticed that those who ‘suffer with mental health’ as the phrase now seems to put it, are rarely those who actually work for a living, in the conventional sense. Mental health issues are far more prevalent among those who have the luxury and the time for such indulgences. So it seems clear to me that there is a way of making the world a better place.

Think less, think better.

It is not by writing about it, by pontificating on the cerebral, by espousing ignoble causes, or by going on perpetual marches in support of one grievance or another, but by putting aside the chatter and getting on with it. Education, education, education, Tony Blair famously spouted, but look where it has led. The same advice is true now as it was a hundred years ago; if you want your kids to have a secure future, turn them on to honest work, and tell them to be good at it.

Real Men

Real men don't push pens across paper, or scribble with mice on screens. (Yes I've had the tools out today.)

“How hard can it be?” was the popular cry from DIY have-a-go heroes of yesteryear when, armed only with a few rusty old tools, most men could make a passable job of putting up a shelf, relieving a sticky front door or adding a [admittedly potentially lethal] socket in the kitchen . All to be quietly put right when their better halves discreetly called in a professional once hubby was out at work. But at least they had a go and believed they could do it. 

Nowadays more often than not, said hubby isn’t out at work anymore so there can be no excuse (although he’s unlikely to be an actual hubby). Yet despite having available an arsenal of cheap and effective power tools it is less and less likely that those little household jobs will be carried out, er… in house. 

According to ‘research’ we are less inclined these days to pick up the screwdriver and even resort to getting a man in to tackle flat-pack furniture. Oh the shame. Gone, it seems, are the days when men could change a wheel, top up the oil and fit a fan belt. We mourn for the shed full of sharp tools handed down from father to son – for a start you’d have to work out who the father was in many cases. 

Boy Scouts used to routinely carry sheath knives and could be expected to do their best to whittle a woggle at the drop of a beret, but the fear of youth knife crime has put paid to that. In fact the fear of violence has even spread to a bid to ban glass from some pubs. What is bloody wrong with us? 

Could it be that the breakdown of a normal, family-based society and absolute paranoia about safety and fairness and self-esteem at all costs is at the root of all this? With predominantly female teachers in their early years (for fear of the paedophile tag that attaches to males involved with young children) it seems boys are destined to grow into their majority with neither a feel for nor a love of proper, manly tools. 

Coupled with our enormous brains, tools set us far apart from other animals; it’s what makes us supreme. But some would have us throw much of that away. A lack of hands-on manual education leaves many young men inept and unable to comprehend how things work. And knowing how things work is the ultimate province of boys and men – ask James May. 

Boys – academically inclined or otherwise – should learn the feel of a plane on wood, the beauty of turning a tree into a chair. They should be getting down and dirty and learning how machines work – and skinning their knuckles in the process. They should be looking forward to the smell of the metalwork shop and earning a few scars instead of ‘designing’ shit on a computer; yet another classroom simulation when the real thing is what they crave. 

Yes, yes, equality, blah, blah – the chicks can have a go too - but I’m guessing there will still be few female mechanics, plumbers, builders and so on. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for anybody being able to do anything, but don’t take the piss, eh, girls?) 

But, thankfully, help is at hand. If the Greens get their way nobody will be able to afford proper tradesmen any more – they’ll be too busy trying to pay their super-taxed fuel bills – so, sooner or later the lads will have to have a go at fettling on their own. 

If we can get manual skills back into education we’ll have a route for the non-academic, who have been sold false qualifications for years. We’ll also be able to make inroads into educating our own skilled workers, instead of importing them from Eastern Europe. And let’s call a spade a spade. It’s plumbers and carpenters and roofers and decorators we need on the ground, not inflated titles like ‘engineer’ or ‘designer’ or ‘project manager’. 

Let’s make manual work, work. Let's put the Y back into DIY.