Graham Brady MP, chair of the influential 1922 Committee in the Tory party, wants rid of “arbitrary rules and limitations on freedom as soon as possible.” Having had a pop at his own government, he then took a swipe at British people who were “a little bit too willing to stay at home.” No chance of misinterpreting what he said there. “You’re a bunch of lazy bastards who are quite happy to take the money instead of working.” The absolute brass neck of it.
Most people have been furloughed because their employer told them they were going to be furloughed. The furlough scheme was brought in, lest we forget, not by some bunch of Trotskyist cranks but by his own government. And anyway, what’s the government’s message again? ‘Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives’. If anyone has been “a little bit too willing to stay at home” it’s because your lot fucking told us to stay at home.
What were we – and I include myself because I have been furloughed too – supposed to do? Insist we were kept on the payroll and bankrupt our employers? Get made redundant? I’m happy – happy is not the right word, but it will have to do for now – to follow government instructions pretty well to the letter. I don’t like the insinuation that somehow I am taking a liberty or taking the piss.
It could be the kind of people I mix with but I don’t know anyone who was “a little bit too willing to stay at home.” For instance, I know a lot of people who work for local companies and organisations and feel the precise opposite. Those who work at Rolls Royce and Airbus are looking at the collapse in orders for aircraft and aircraft engines not as an opportunity to spend the summer at home but as a clear and present threat to their jobs and lifestyles. People who have been furloughed are frightened for the future. And there’s another thing: who wants to die?
There are people who are relieved they don’t have to go to work at the moment because they are scared of getting ill with Covid-19. Some will have seen family members and friends get very sick with the virus, many will have experienced loss or know others who have experienced loss.
Anyway, what does Brady mean when he wants to get rid of “arbitrary rules and limitations on freedom as soon as possible?” Surely everyone in the land wants to get back to normal as soon as possible, so what makes his plea so different? No government has done more than his in reducing the rights of workers. There is no way in which you can say we have a free press when almost all of it is owned by rich individuals and multinational companies. Freedom for many people barely exists beyond the right to be poor, the right to never progress in life, the right to organise, the right to speak up. More than ever, we live in an elective dictatorship where our voice counts for one day every five years.
Brady, who is actually a knight of the realm (for doing what, exactly?), is another grammar school, university educated posh boy and according to wikipedia, so it must be true, ‘was appointed a consultant in public relations with Shandwick PLC in 1989. He joined the Centre for Policy Studies in 1990. He was appointed Director of public affairs at the Waterfront Partnership in 1992, where he remained until elected to Westminster in 1997.‘ There’s a man who got his work experience at the sharp end, eh? You’d never accuse him of being “a little bit too willing to stay at home”, would you? That consultancy stuff is back-breaking, you know.
In truth, ‘Sir’ Graham believes we are all bone idle bastards who are quite happy to take the money, just because our government has told us to stay (at) home and be furloughed. When he talks about freedom, he means the freedom to send the lazy plebs back to work. He doesn’t mean our freedoms at all.
And let’s not even mention the freedom to die. Stop taking the money, go back to work, get sick and maybe even die. It’s the economy, stupid. But there are few people as stupid as Graham Brady, save those who voted for him.
