[A-List] Badly British Burchill Bites Bastard Blair's Bum

[Rob Schaap <rschaap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony the barbarian
Julie Burchill
Saturday June 15, 2002
The Guardian


They keep telling us we work the longest hours in
Europe - how did that happen? One minute we're
the sick/lazy man of Europe and the Germans and
Scands are walking all over us and even the
French think we're slackers - and then the next
we're these career-crazed automatons who can't
switch off. Why wasn't somebody designated the
sensible one to make us stop in the middle?

Of course, the probable answer is that they're
both lies. I don't believe that in the 1970s we
were the most unproductive people in Europe; it's
just that the Germans, Italians and French were
still embarrassed about dinky little us having to
save them from their, um, "Dark Side". Every
time they sneered at us, it kissed away a bit of the
fact that they'd actually believed that voodoo
lunatics such as Hitler, Mussolini and Pétain
were pretty cool. But time heals all wounds, and
they've got over their embarrassment to the
extent that they're thinking about going there one
more time. Fascism's like childbirth in that
respect; you say "Never again", but after a few
years you forget how much it hurts. And lo and
behold, Le Pen's holding 18% of the vote.

So anyway, now they're happy about themselves
again, the big Euro boys don't need to put us down
in order to feel good. Or rather, they've decided to
put us down from another direction. And so our
alleged terminal idleness has mysteriously
mutated into an inability to stop and smell the
roses while the rest of Europe dawdles
life-affirmingly over a cappuccino at a pavement
cafe, watching the world go by - even if, in the
case of the French, they can't resist slyly sticking
out their chicly clad foot and tripping up anyone
the wrong side of beige.


Now, I'm prepared to believe that the working
class of this country - by which I mean the people
whose work benefits others more than
themselves, be they call-centre sentries,
teachers, nurses, firefighters or binmen - is
grafting harder than it ever has, because that was
obviously going to happen once the trades unions
were decimated. Profit is the only logic of
capitalism, and brute force the only opponent it
ever respected; to take it to task over this is as
foolish as blaming a dog for barking. But the idea
that the parasite class, which has all the fun,
money and power - politicians, lawyers,
advertising agency wallahs, public utility
directors, etc - has been similarly knocking
itself out for scant reward over the past few years
is ridiculous. I don't think there's ever been a
time when thankless, essential jobs have been so
relatively underpaid compared with self-seeking,
non-essential ones. And I know what you're
thinking, and yes I am overpaid and lazy compared
with a nurse (or even a judge, come to think of
it!), but journalists do at least act as a thorn in
the side of those who seek to exercise power over
others. People might moan about David Beckham
making £500,000 a minute or whatever, but the
fact remains that no one is forcing the clowns who
shell out 60 quid for yet another new doll-size
Man U shirt to do so. No one's putting their hand
in your wage packet and saying, "Here, Posh needs
a new helipad - give us that fiver!" But a huge
amount of our tax goes on the salaries of people
whose absence we wouldn't notice if they downed
tools tomorrow; on administrators, on
committee-sitters, pen-pushers, spin-doctors
and paper-rustlers.

It's surreal, like with actors. You know - George
Clooney earns more in a year for pretending to be
a doctor than a real doctor gets in a lifetime. But
then, we're not paying Clooney's wages out of our
taxes; we are paying the man who sits behind a
desk and runs the railways into the ground rather
than the man who walks the railways and helps
them work properly, and we are paying the man
from the ad agency who dreams up yet another
crap campaign to tell us how good our public
services are, rather than giving that money
directly to the criminally underpaid nurses and
firefighters who struggle ceaselessly to keep them
as they are. We are now, under New Labour, in a
situation where the teller of the tale is rewarded
far more handsomely than the doer of the good
deed, where the blarney, the spin, the simulacra
are treated with far more esteem than the real
life. This is as good a definition as I've heard of a
society gone mad.


Under this government we have seen a massive
over-employment of the mediocre middle class
and their useless kiddies, in jobs that the human
race has managed perfectly well without until a
few years ago. While the public services have
seen repeated attempts to "rationalise",
"downsize" and "modernise" them, why hasn't the
equivalent robust attitude been taken to the legion
of white-collar "workers" employed by the
government, with our money? Where are the ad
men clutching their P45s, the market
researchers going home crying to their wives
because they can't afford that third holiday per
year any more? With the gap between rich and
poor greater than it has ever been in recorded
history, and social mobility less than it was 20
years ago, when are we going to admit that Blair
is a bigger barbarian than Thatcher, Major and
Conan rolled together ? At last the Labour party is
led by a class warrior! Sadly, it's the destruction
of the working class he is obsessed with. And he
won't stop until every red cent is out of your
pocket, and into theirs.