I am completely behind public sector workers going on strike. It proves an invaluable point. It is inevitable that we still as a society seem to license the stark correlation between the most needed vocations receiving the lowest pay; I’d say salary, but with zero-hour contracts and security for these jobs, this is rarely the true picture. It is absolutely disgraceful and short-sighted that we have come to recognise an acceptance for having an in-built hierarchy of jobs in terms of how much you get paid. As somebody who always needs to be kept occupied and has a strong affiliation with a work-ethic that builds a healthy relationship between yourself and the world. Though, this is where I draw the line: work is work. No more, no less. Everybody engaged in any paid labour – don’t even get me started on the all too often class driven concept of volunteering here – should earn a fair whack. Here, I just want to explore what this concept means and highlight how the idea of having a hierarchy of the value of different professions being a mockery.
I am a proud Londoner who is likely to use our city’s public transport several times per day. Suffice to say that I fully condone all TFL workers going on strike and should encourage this stance as public sector workers all need to be paid loads more money along with respect, come to mention it. Coventry MP Zarah Sultana hit the nail on the head on saying that “this week a billionaire-owned right-wing newspaper smeared striking London Underground workers as “Putin apologists”. The rich and the powerful use absurd smears like this to attack trade unionists. Solidarity to RMT Union Workers on Strike!” [03.03.2022].
As a strong leftie, I really hope that our cause can learn to unite properly and become a force to be reckoned with in the contemporary UK. Let’s again re-establish ourselves as a positive and progressive force for the benefit of everyone. Currently, I feel that the Labour Party was largely ransacked by a breed of wannabe subversives that are overwhelming at least as middle-class (though I often felt that you weren’t allowed too much independence of thought to be in with these elitists) as I am, who part of the privileged conformists to society are. With their high-brow educations, often largely inherited family fortunes and being so mainstream… Not that I am wanting to imply that there is anything at all wrong with this; at least not that a healthy dose of self-recognition couldn’t cure. What the left didn’t seem to grasp is that you have to act with as opposed to for the vulnerable and this was a difficult stance to take from their moralistic high-horses.
Unashamedly, I am still a communist idealist at heart. Everybody should be equal, though I recognise that the main priority has to be in affording the neediest a helping-hand. Not, to preach at others on how to live their lives. You’ll often see lots of outcries from their high-towers on social media berating other people. One of the most salient factors carrying me through my incredibly varied work with the homeless, is that it is not our place to judge others. Of course we all do and indeed must to some extent as a way of forging our own set of values, but really what we really need is to guarantee greater financial equality.
A less divided society is the crux of what we need. One in which everybody can have something to work towards. Otherwise, the intensification of societal warfare is only a given otherwise. As opposed to a bunch of idiots booing London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan at the NME awards, can we not recognise the bigger picture? Of course, it’s a pain for me having to get 2 buses to work – they may be more tolerable on a pleasant day with no time frame, but on a commute they just seem to stop-start forever and unlike the tube, motion sickness does not allow me to read – but we need to see the bigger picture. So I fully support the strikers. Not to the extent that we end up with a replay of 1978’s winter of discontent that 18 years of shameless Tory rule followed, but to make a firm point. Levelling-up society has to be the only way to guarantee a viable future for us all.
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