'The Idler' on the 'Big Society'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Doers, grafters and idlers

10 October 2010

There was no mention of idlers in David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference last week. He praised the toilers; his phrase was the “doers and grafters” of Britain. Idlers were made to feel a little guilty. This praise of toil is common to all governments. Under New Labour, it was the long-suffering “hard-working families” who were singled out for special praise. And in Nazi Germany, Himmler created a project known as “Operation Workshy”, designed to get the shirkers back into useful employment. The problem is, that paid employment rarely delivers the benefits that its promoters, who must be either naive or disingenuous, claim for it. Overwork destroys lives and wrecks families. Work kills: the TUC estimates that 20,000 people in the UK die each year as a direct result of their job. A quarter of a million are injured by their jobs, the TUC claims, and a further half million are made ill by them. The UN says that 2.2 million people worldwide are killed by work. That’s three times more than war. Yet we see no war on work being declared by governments. Instead, both right and left subscribe to a middle class fantasy of a jolly working class, whistling as they work, when the reality is stress, humiliation, worry and debt, as well as a depressing sense of being enslaved. But Idlers have time and good cheer: they have time to look after children, read books, write songs, go for walks, help out in the community. The hard workers do not have time; they are tired; they do not have the energy to cultivate their leisure, and in the evenings they simply collapse in front of the television with a can of Stella. It is up to us, the idlers, to stand up for truth, beauty, pleasure, art and life, words you will never hear coming from a politician’s mouth.

(Hear, hear!)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------