So goes the blurb for Nicky Campbell’s phone-in today on BBC Radio Five Live. It’s almost as if the corporation has been taking advice from the far right populist, the nicotine-stained man frog himself, Nigel Farage in what it should be saying. We all know what Campbell and his producers are up to, here: it’s the radio equivalent of newspaper clickbait, generating a debate, and doubtless anger, amongst the hard of thinking. Farage is operating an incredibly successful con trick on the Great British People, posing as a man of the people when, in truth, he is their biggest biggest enemy, committed as he is to dismantling the NHS and removing workers’ rights.
Inherent in the ‘Are you a Friday shirker?’ header is the suggestion that somehow all workers are swinging the lead, skiving when they should be striving, bunking off when there is work to be done. And it is clearly something that many people, especially the elderly who are more likely to hold extreme views, agree with.
I wrote about this other day in my blog ‘Keep going and work until you drop‘ responding to a piece in The Guardian by one Phillip Inman where he wrote ‘Early retirement is a wealthy indulgence that needs to be discouraged‘. Perhaps, it’s just my imagination, but I see an agenda here and it goes like this. People are inherently lazy bastards, they should work longer hours and well into old age. How can you interpret this in any other way? I would go so far as to call it a campaign to reintroduce serfdom.
I was fortunate in my last full-time job with the civil service in that I worked flexible hours. Monday to Thursday, I worked enormously long days, bringing my work up to date and by mid morning Friday, my work for the week largely done, and more, and I could do the things I really wanted to do with my life, like listening to music, playing golf and basically anything but work. I was, in no way, a Friday shirker but I could, and still cannot, see anything wrong with a working week crammed into four and a bit days. Because I see this life as very much a one-off and for every day you spend working is another day you are not doing what you really want to do with your life (unless you live for work, in which case, you poor, oh so sad person).
It’s also this class-based world in which we live, whereby the rich can do as much and as little as they like and then tell the rest of us to work harder and longer. Often for no reason other than being born into money, people gain power and control the lives of everyone else. I’m not some old school communist who wants everyone to be exactly equal because I believe in a meritocracy, where we all have the chance to get on because of our skill and ability, not because of who we know. Nicky Campbell’s phone-in title, intended or not, suggests the lower orders do as they’re told and shut up.
My view is that people should have the right to work compressed hours, that they should be allowed to work part-time and that we as a society should move to a situation whereby a four-day week is the norm, not as part of some ‘shirker’ type agenda.
I am aware of the likely economic costs of this but if these so-called leaders of industry as as smart as we are told they are, then they can seek out the ways and means of making this happens for everyone. I was angry enough when David Cameron’s hard right government stole a year from my pension by raising the pension age, but I am probably not as angry as those who have had seven years stolen from them.
In any event, technology and like it or not AI will forever change the way in which we work so why not embrace it and use it in the interests of actual people who should be encouraged to live their lives to the full and not be at the mercy of the rich and powerful telling them what to do.
Nicky Campbell’s phone-in calls people shirkers, I call them people wanting to enjoy the one life they have while they can. We need more time of our own, not less, and just remember it won’t be the rich and powerful who are being told to work until they drop. It will be you and me.
