The Weakness of The Working Class

[A Red]

They were jam butty mines

[Rico1304]

15 minutes ago, deiseach said:

Sure managed to clear all the coal mines that kept people in gainful employment in Liverpool over the years.

Which ones were they? 

[Rico1304]

My grandad worked in a mine from 14. Walked to the mine, then to the face, about 10 miles before he started. Then got paid a pittance for back breaking work. Was in two collapses.  It wasn’t fun. 

[deiseach]

Edit: no. Not lowering myself.

[Strontium]

1 hour ago, chevettehs said:

That's a hell of a leap Rico.

 

Saying that delivering McDonalds on a zero hours contract with no security is shit doesn't equate to saying being down the pits was great. 

 

McDonald's doesn't give zero hours contracts unless an employee wants one. Anyone who wants a fixed hours contract can have one.

[Pureblood]

You know you're fucked when McDonald's are the moral guardians of the workforce. 

[moof]

Just what this thread needs. Some Liberal Values 

[Dougie Do'ins]

5 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

McDonald's doesn't give zero hours contracts unless an employee wants one. Anyone who wants a fixed hours contract can have one.

I don't think the people delivering the McDs are employed by them are they ?

[Strontium]

37 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Yes, sorry. Must think the same as everyone else.  The guy who allegedly writes for a living longs for the days of real jobs.  But not for him of course, he’s too clever.  But all you others, you need real man jobs.  Fuck me.  

 

It's our equivalent of the noble savage, this left-wing fetishisation of the "real" jobs that men (and it was only men) used to do. The idea that sitting on your arse for 35 hours a week drinking coffee is some sort of regression compared to dying from black lung at 45. Can you imagine them holding computer programming heritage fairs like they do for coal mining? I find it fucking baffling. Unless you're celebrating the death of dangerous heavy industry, there's no need for a fucking festival.

[TheHowieLama]

McDonalds - in their foolishness - thought a drive thru would be enough for fat lazy bastards.

Didn't even have to get out of your car to shovel shit down your pipe.

 

They of course underestimated how the truly slothlike think. So no, unfortunately, they do not participate in the grey market of Big Macs on wheels.

[Strontium]

9 minutes ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

I don't think the people delivering the McDs are employed by them are they ?

 

Now that you mention it, I guess not, but I don't think piecemeal work is strictly speaking zero hours contracts either. I plead ignorance on delivery driver contracts.

[Captain Turdseye]

Thread was allowed to stay on topic for almost a page and a half. Not a bad effort. 

[TheHowieLama]

Big Mac = Weakness of the Working Class

[AngryOfTuebrook]

5 hours ago, Chip Butty said:

It all started with the right to buy,

 

 

That was the cunt's masterstroke.  It achieved a few things: probably the first one the Tories were aiming for was to give a boost to the property speculation market, by creating scarcity and artificially driving up prices; it also helped to undermine feelings of belonging to a society, by encouraging individual homeowners to believe that they'd achieved that status through talent and hard work - and to promote their aspirations to acquire more and more shit - and that they shared no bond of solidarity with other atomised individual homeowners (let alone the poor saps who can't afford their own home); finally, it also gave the working classes something to lose - if a Council tenant fell behind on the rent after walking out on an exploitative employer, they wouldn't be made homeless, whereas the fear for a mortgage-paying homeowner is that the loss of employment (however shit that employment is) can lead to the loss of your home.

 

I don't think any other other Tory policy has done so much to diminish working-class solidarity and confidence.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

4 hours ago, Shooter in the Motor said:

I would like to see no-one turn up to vote at the next General Election and watch how they form a government from their supposed democracy.

Boris Johnson approves this message.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Who’d a thunk divide and conquer would work on simpletons scraping a life out for themselves.

 

You give somebody with no real control over their existence somebody to blame then they’ll choose the weakest and easiest person. You don’t need to look up If you have someone to look down on. 

 

[Mudface]

19 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

It's our equivalent of the noble savage, this left-wing fetishisation of the "real" jobs that men (and it was only men) used to do. The idea that sitting on your arse for 35 hours a week drinking coffee is some sort of regression compared to dying from black lung at 45. Can you imagine them holding computer programming heritage fairs like they do for coal mining? I find it fucking baffling. Unless you're celebrating the death of dangerous heavy industry, there's no need for a fucking festival.

 

Thank fuck all the coal miners were retrained as computer programmers. Their splendid 'disrupting' apps have contributed enormously to both their children's futures and ours.

[Dougie Do'ins]

9 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Rico1304 said:

Yes, it was much better when they were dying underground in the pits.  Fucking hell. 

Nobody is saying anything of the sort.

 

1 hour ago, Rico1304 said:

Fetishising the old days is mad.  Working men used to die at work in the very jobs that are missed ‘. Death at work is down 85% in 45 yrs. 

Nobody is fetishising the old days.  Acknowledging that new forms of exploitation exist isn't the same as harking back to the old ones.

 

1 hour ago, Rico1304 said:

Yes, sorry. Must think the same as everyone else.  The guy who allegedly writes for a living longs for the days of real jobs.  But not for him of course, he’s too clever.  But all you others, you need real man jobs.  Fuck me.  

Is "the guy" Secsh?  Nothing he has said is harking back to the past or talking about "real man jobs".  You made that shit up.

 

40 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

My grandad worked in a mine from 14. Walked to the mine, then to the face, about 10 miles before he started. Then got paid a pittance for back breaking work. Was in two collapses.  It wasn’t fun. 

Generally, when people criticise the exploitation of the present, they also take a dim view of the worse exploitation of the past.  Nobody is pretending that your grandad's generation had it made.

 

26 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

It's our equivalent of the noble savage, this left-wing fetishisation of the "real" jobs that men (and it was only men) used to do. The idea that sitting on your arse for 35 hours a week drinking coffee is some sort of regression compared to dying from black lung at 45. Can you imagine them holding computer programming heritage fairs like they do for coal mining? I find it fucking baffling. Unless you're celebrating the death of dangerous heavy industry, there's no need for a fucking festival.

I don't know anybody on the left who fetishises shit jobs.  There is a nostalgia for community and trade union solidarity - the kind of thing that went a long way to making all jobs less shitty.  Unless you understand that, you will remain baffled.

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Boris Johnson approves this message.

I get the feeling this isn't seen as a good thing.

[Strontium]

21 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

I don't know anybody on the left who fetishises shit jobs.  There is a nostalgia for community and trade union solidarity - the kind of thing that went a long way to making all jobs less shitty.  Unless you understand that, you will remain baffled.

 

I suppose I find it difficult to understand that kind of nostalgia, how people can get misty-eyed about a time when people had fuck all and worked themselves into an early grave to get it. And the idea that I should feel attached to people from the same "class" was always bizarre to me (and not just me if the central plank of this topic is anything to go by). I feel solidarity with people who share my values of liberty, equality, internationalism, environmentalism, vegetarianism etc - and in my experience, people who care about those things tend not to come from my assigned social stratum.

[VladimirIlyich]

3 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

I suppose I find it difficult to understand that kind of nostalgia, how people can get misty-eyed about a time when people had fuck all and worked themselves into an early grave to get it. And the idea that I should feel attached to people from the same "class" was always bizarre to me (and not just me if the central plank of this topic is anything to go by). I feel solidarity with people who share my values of liberty, equality, internationalism, environmentalism, vegetarianism etc - and in my experience, people who care about those things tend not to come from my assigned social stratum.

Aren't you lucky that your social status allows you to walk with kings and paupers alike. I'd love to see the liberty in a zero hours contract.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

10 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

 

I suppose I find it difficult to understand that kind of nostalgia, how people can get misty-eyed about a time when people had fuck all and worked themselves into an early grave to get it. And the idea that I should feel attached to people from the same "class" was always bizarre to me (and not just me if the central plank of this topic is anything to go by). I feel solidarity with people who share my values of liberty, equality, internationalism, environmentalism, vegetarianism etc - and in my experience, people who care about those things tend not to come from my assigned social stratum.

You're missing the point.  Nobody is getting misty-eyed about shit jobs from the past: stuff like the Durham Miners' Gala isn't a celebration of black lung, it's all about keeping alive the traditions of solidarity that, over time, made people's jobs and lives less dangerous and shit. 

 

Recent years - well, the last 4 decades, really - have seen that progress rolled back.  The destruction of heavy industries was matched with attacks on the unions; with the result that as the world of work changed dramatically (and became more fragmented) unions were unable to change with it.  The result is a rise in insecure work and "in-work poverty" (a phrase which, by rights, shouldn't need to exist).  As has been mentioned, re housing, the Thatcherite re-shaping of society (to the extent of denying its existence) led to people being discouraged from feeling any kinship with others in the same boat.  New Labour went further in stamping out any threat of a return of working-class solidarity by pretending that "we're all middle class now" (effectively erasing poor people from any discourse). 

 

Maybe it's this erasing of the poor and denial of class differences for so long that now makes discussion of class seem anachronistic: that the last time anyone other than shouty SWP bores talked about the working class was when we were all in black & white and wore flat caps (not as a fashion statement).  The 2015 Labour leadership election started to change this, because people were encouraged to look around them and see the cleaners, the Deliveroo riders, the heavily-indebted students, the checkout workers, the hospital porters, the unpaid interns, the waitresses deprived of their tips, etc. as a vast body of disparate people in diverse occupations facing a similar set of injustices arising from the same causes.  In the absence of any modern language to define these people "working class" will do. 

 

I don't expect them all to share my values - there are other groupings of people that will do that - but I do recognise that we're in the same boat and that a victory in an employment dispute for McDonalds workers or NHS subcontractors or whoever else will give inspiration and encouragement to others in unrelated employment. That's the "class solidarity" that I believe we need. 

[Strontium]

Still not sure I'll ever fully understand these concepts, but I do appreciate the fulsome response.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

9 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:

Still not sure I'll ever fully understand these concepts, but I do appreciate the fulsome response.

Thanks.

 

I should go to bed, though.

 

 

 

[Edit] I've just remembered this is TLW.  Cunt.