Sturdy Beggars

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The notion that we live in a meritocracy is self-evidently false. Greed, mendacity and good contacts are the true currency of success in twenty-first century Britain; just as might, birthright and strategic marriage were in Medieval times. An inability to perform at any level is no barrier to those whose lives are blessed by privilege and the ingrained belief that theirs is the right to that privilege.

Ian Birrell in the i the other day wrote with some - justifiable - venom about '...the Rise of the Tory Chumocracy...' - in particular the putative elevation of Dido Harding from her frankly woeful role as the 'Track & Trace Tzar' to CEO of the NHS. Out of the ashes of Tory government policy failures surrounding a pandemic appears to be rising the Phoenix of Baroness Harding.

These people show neither perspective nor shame over their abject and extremely well [publicly] remunerated failures, instead simply moving goalposts, massaging statistics and changing the rules of engagement on the fly to suit their not inconsiderable needs and ends.

In the fourteenth century, emerging out of the chaos of the Black Death, there was a dire shortage of labour which produced some apparently healthy competition for those needing work. In a 'free market economy', supply and demand dictate that those with the commodity - labour - most in demand, can dictate their price. But what did those in charge [ie King Edward III, and by extension the rest of the elite] do? They issued the Ordinance of Labourers on the 18th of June 1349 [revised 1350] - basically a law stating that everyone physically able to work would do [by statute] and that wages would be pegged at pre-plague levels. Sorted. For a select few anyhow.

Somehow, things seem to be drifting back to the 'Good Old Days': are we really becoming a nation of serfs to these self-elevated idiots? I bloody hope not - I would like to die in the knowledge that the changes that we initiated post WWII can be defib-ed back to life and these twats consigned to the dumpster for all time. 

 

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner24 June 2021 at 08:57

    Strange that you didn't mention my hero Wat Tyler (I told you I was dylsexic: I just put four Ts in his name!) the corollary (to me) was the reportage of the hero that grabbed a Narwhal tusk to disarm the bastard that was slaughtering folk on London Bridge in 2019. It was mentioned that he got the tusk from the Fishmongers Guild Hall which "housed the dagger believed to have been used by Lord Mayor Walworth to kill Wat Tyler in 1381"!! I find un-critical (of FACTS) reportage like this just adds to the miasma that consumers of the current multiplicity of "Ministry of Truth's" Newspeak. Wat Tyler's martyrdom was a seminal moment in this countries "development" into the political and social structure that enriched the rich and exploited the poor of every continent on the planet with the exception of the Antarctic! THIS structure has fostered and built our planet destroying consumerist society and the slaying of Wat Tyler cemented/consecrated the bollocks of "upward mobility" and accretion of wealth that is STILL THE metric by which a human being is measured!! Not expecting owt' but I'm jelous of you guys who still remember and talk to eachother, with the demise of my sister MY oldest friend is from when I was 15 and his wife has "cast a spell" over our comms! ATB Joe

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