Ed’s Epidemic

We used to call it temping, or agency or seasonal/occasional work, or putting in the odd shift at the local restaurant/café/pub. For many who have no desire or need to be in a permanent job but find the extra income useful at times, the idea of having one or more employers for whom you could put in a few hours a few days, now and then, is a good fit for their lifestyle. Stay-at-home mums, pensioners, students, or even those who spend half the year pursuing their dreams – surfers, backpackers, ski instructors, explorers and many such non-conformists – sometimes just don’t want to be tied down to a career. In many agrarian societies it is the main mode of employment.

But now, in typical you-really-couldn’t-make-it-up fashion, Labour, the supposed party of the workers is attacking work. If the Tories were brainstorming a way to ridicule the instincts of modern Labour politicians, this would have been rejected as too silly for words. Ban zero-hours contracts, when many Labour councils use them? Or do they just call them ‘single-hour’ contracts, or casual work?  And of course they would never allow the facts to get in the way of a campaign fib, would they?

For a start, the CIPD concluded the majority on such ‘contracts’ were happy with them. In addition, Labour have been saying they would ban them for a full twenty years now without having done a thing during thirteen long years in office. And for a delicious flourish to finish, here’s Chuka Umunna singing their praises quite recently. Come on guys, get a grip; if you want to be taken seriously as an opposition you have to better than just saying ‘no’ all the time.

They are like Network Rail: Policy delayed due to the wrong kind of work on the tracks? Or is it the words they struggle with; when does ‘employ’ become ‘exploit’? Does it depend on your allegiance? I have to say I’m impressed with the loyalty of Labour voters. “We are the party of business!” Ed declares and a hundred big business bosses write an open letter to say “Like hell you are!” So he changes tack and denounces the Tories’ EU referendum pledge as “Downright dangerous for Britain” and are immediately assailed by a million voices demanding a voice in the decision.

Doncaster Council, do what?

It’s pitiful to watch and yet their poll ratings hardly shift a point. Ed says there is an epidemic of zero-hours contracts and ignores the denials and shrugs from those who know and carries right on trying to micro-engineer how others should order their lives. And his idiot followers fly the flag in the face of reason. There’s an epidemic all right – an epidemic of stupidity.

Cowardly New World?

So, I just got home. No biggie, I hopped in a taxi, got on a plane, took a bus to the car park and drove my own wheels back to my little gaff, my sanctuary, the place where I keep all my stuff; the accumulated detritus of a life lived, if not well, at least  lived frenetically. It’s really time I slowed down a little. Maybe it’s time we all slowed down?

While I was waiting for the airport parking transfer bus I began to think – it’s a thing I do without bidding. I’d like to believe it’s something we all do, but I’m not convinced. The bus eventually showed up and the bored driver grunted a practised and insincere greeting as he grudgingly allowed us to board and remain bored while we regained the sanctity of our cars. The experience - like shopping - may have been made better without involving human beings at all.

From the earliest days mankind has been busy devising ways of saving labour. Airports in the future will not need drivers to take us from planes to automobiles; the planes are mostly capable of flying themselves, driverless trains already operate in some parts of the world and there is much excited chatter at the moment about driverless cars. What will the world’s stock of imperfect taxi drivers do once that technology is perfected?

We already have robot warehouses and where once a harvest took a whole village it’s now within the remit of one man and his combine harvester. Vending machines, cashpoints, online banking, Amazon, pay and display… the whole internet revolution. Everywhere you look, man is replaced by machine. This should be a good thing, were human evolution actually up to the job. For every creation of human ingenuity that increase individual productivity, the actual productivity of an enormous sector of the world population goes down, in some cases to zero.

Feed the world? Easy. Give it something worthwhile to do though, now there’s the rub. As more and more machines do the donkey work, humans should be freed to be creative, to enjoy their leisure, to be all that they can be. But what of the vast majority of freed humans, the ones who are only really capable of being donkeys? Here’s your problem, world leaders, it’s not employment that is needed; the real question is what DO we do with unproductive humanity? (And how do you stop the buggers breeding?)

While the bread and circuses approach was good enough for the Romans two thousand years ago, human ingenuity has yet to come up with an effective way of containing not just a city, but a world population surplus to requirements. Recently, the solution was to give them money, let them be consumers and pretend that they actually contribute to prosperity but as more and more useful humans leave work and retire that particular illusion is going to be harder and harder to pull off.

What do we do when the tax receipts fall but the Epsilons continue to reproduce? When the genuinely productive step off the hamster wheel? Will the work of machines alone provide enough wealth for an eventual – and not so far off - majority who are only getting better at being idle? We’ve already automated consumption and entitlement. How long before we finally twig that it’s the automation that’s moving forward and the humans who are the obstacles to progress? What leader is going to be brave enough to admit that?