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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Thursday, June 14, 2018


Just Finished Reading: Non-Stop Inertia by Ivor Southwood (FP: 2011)

We live in interesting and difficult times. We live in an age of austerity where our children are likely, for the first time in generations, to be worse off than us. We live in an age of serial career change, constant ‘upskilling’ and mobility. We are expected to happily take on student debt, unpaid internships and unpaid overtime, ever longer commutes, flexible working, zero hours contracts, lack of roots (as a positive) and the ability to treat everything you do as a commodity to be bought and sold on the jobs market. It is the time of the precariat – people who live from one (or usually more) short term job to another bridged by short term private education or ‘retraining’, reluctant unemployment benefit, high interest loans or sleeping on friends floors (or a coach if you’re lucky). It is a time when the precarious worker fears illness or pregnancy and can only dream of an actual holiday. It is the time of non-stop motion to stay exactly where you are – one or two steps away from a life of abject poverty. This is the world the author writes about with feeling and knowledge because he and his partner live there where a missed phone call of a job offer can be the difference between paying the rent and being homeless or even having something to eat tonight.

In a mere 88 pages the author gives the rest of us – the lucky ones – a glimpse into a world few of us can easily imagine, where a 6 week job placement feels permanent and an existential fear is far more so. As someone who has been lucky enough to have been working for 30 consecutive years such a precarious lifestyle feels surreal and, to be honest, nightmarish. As the precariat moves from the margins into the mainstream (by design) it should come as little surprise that the level of stress, suicide, crime and much else besides normally bubbling under the lower economic strata of society has bubbled over into the newspaper headlines. When asked why such things happen the answer ‘it’s the economy stupid’ is always a pretty good first stab at a reason. The ‘system’ for want of a better word seems to have zeroed in on a perfect solution to a restive underclass – keep them hungry, keep them busy, keep them afraid and keep them exhausted as they run from part-time job to part-time job to (just) cover the bills. Such people never revolt because they cannot see more than a few hours into the future, have no time (or energy) to protest or think about protest and are only focused on the next inadequate paycheque. They are the ideal worker, desperate, separate and compliant. They are the Precariat.     

2 comments:

Mudpuddle said...

all part of the right wing plan...

CyberKitten said...

Indeed it is!