(Above: click to enlarge. From a nice collection here of 19th and 20th Century Labor prints for US labor history buffs).
Today being Tuesday, it's time for the pond's regular history lesson, wherein we can come, through proper application of historical principles and a historical understanding of historical trends, to an understanding of why it is historically appropriate to vote for Tony Abbott.
Under political pressure, Tony Abbott has said the Coalition, if elected, would not amend Labor's Fair Work Act. This means Labor and the Coalition are destined to be unfair to the less educated and less well off who are seeking full-time employment.
The well educated and well off will invariably obtain jobs. Which explains why, in parts of inner Sydney and inner Melbourne, there is what used to be called over-employment. But it is different in some outer-suburban and regional areas, where increasingly the rich and tertiary educated get jobs while the poor and less educated line up for Centrelink payments.
We will of course make approving references to the Hawke Keating governments, because they weren't Labor governments, but instead governed according to historical Liberal party principles. We must sadly note however that the Gillard Rudd governments govern like the Whitlam government, and therefore must be considered Labor party governments. We will of course pass over the voting in of the Curtin Labor government to conduct the second world war, since Bob Menzies is the Liberal dreaming, and any soiling of his memory is vile ...
Phew, we're now properly prepared, and so ready to read Gerard Henderson, gadzooks and odd socks, and here he is with MPs ignore job needs of the less educated.
Heavens to betsy, what a team player he is. Just as Tony Abbott gets himself into hot water, here's the history teacher explaining how he yearns for a return to Work Choices:
Don't you just love the phrasing, and the gnashing of teeth? Being fair to the less educated and the less well off involves the right to screw them blind ...
You see, our prattling Polonius's idea of being fair to those seeking full-time employment isn't to educate them, as he explains by revealing how politicians drop the bundle to the media despite themselves:
This month, the parliamentary secretary for employment and MP for Blaxland, Jason Clare, downloaded on the presenter Leigh Sales. He said that at a jobs expo in Bankstown, for which about 5000 people turned up, he asked employers: "Why is unemployment as high as it is?" Their reply was "literary and numeracy". From this, Clare concluded that "what we do at an early age at school" will ''make all the difference". Sales moved to the next question.
Naturally our prattling Polonius is keen to explain how all this talk of letters and numbers, and history itself, is in Henry Ford's word, bunk, or perhaps bunkum.
You see, there's only one well educated person who can run the Sydney Institute, no others need apply for the job, thank you, which explains why things are tip top for the spiffs and spives in the city:
Sounds terrible? What's to be done? You there, who suggested better education, go at once to the back of the room, and put on the specially prepared dunce's cap.
You see, there are many dumb working class people in the world, who simply can't, shouldn't, be improved above their menial station. We like to think of them as beasts of burden, who can be put to good use improving society, and amusing and occupying themselves by being assigned tasks involving contented drudgery.
A couple of hours here or there working for a pittance, perhaps serving hamburgers so that the world can grow fatter, or being given temp jobs in taverns where carnivorous employers, sometimes of a feral Christian kind, can use and abuse them. I hear Gloria Jeans is always on the look out for staff ...
That's as it should be, since the last thing we need is for the lumpen proletariat giving themselves airs and graces when they're just cattle to be herded according to the needs and whims of entrepreneurs. And of course the major thing standing in the way of decent abuse of the underclass is the wretched Fair Work Australia, which cheekily decided to raise minimum wages, to the tune of $26 bucks, or the price of a sandwich in the posher parts of the eastern suburbs. Shocking, and without the slightest thought for the struggling overlords:
Fair Work Australia has acknowledged its decisions on award modernisation will lead to cost increases for some employers. This rise will hit hardest in the retail and hospitality area, which is doing it tough in the economic downturn. These decisions will provide another disincentive for small businesses to take on less educated and older workers - as has the government's decision to re-instate unfair dismissal laws for small business.
Hah, you thought we were only talking about the high level of youth unemployment, but of course silly old buggers who are unemployed should also line up with their own portable KY jelly so they can be right royally screwed, all to keep the economic levers being tugged in the right way, especially for those in the retail and hospitality area.
I know, I know, golly, here's someone who's bitter, and who in the past has been done over by the odd retail and hospitality business or three while attempting to get an education, hired on the principle of take it or leave it or bugger off, and resolving never ever to be in a position again where the evil minded bastards could do me over.
Sorry, I drifted off song and off message there for a moment.
What we need is the return of Work Choices, and the capacity of the older and the more cunning to screw anyone they can, legitimately and with a free hand, in their desire to turn a profitable crust from the lumpen herd, without do gooders and insufferable busy bodies commenting from the sidelines:
This month, Fair Work Australia decreed that employers must pay schoolchildren for three hours' work even if they wanted them to work for half the time. The vice-president, Graeme Watson, recognised that this would restrict the employment opportunities of some young Australians but expressed scant interest in the needs of small businesses.
Yes, I have a dream. Where the lumpen proletariat can be employed on making machines for Steve Jobs at a dollar an hour, and children as young as ten can be gainfully employed so the Australian economy can become the powerhouse of Asia, and the right of employers to treat the employed as cattle, or sheep at a pinch, is legally recognised ....
The sooner that we recognise that China's employment practices are the ones to emulate, the sooner this country will be full of hard workers and socialist bliss, and be a paragon of full employment and dynamic growth ...
Hang on, hang on, China? I seem to keep getting that wrong ...
Oh well, off to the re-education camp for me, to pick up rubbish and remove graffiti, at a dollar an hour, for an hour or two, or however long I'm needed, which might only be for five minutes, but I'm standing by, waiting patiently, ready to be abused, and thinking how lucky I am and how caring Master Gerard is, standing up for my right to be treated any which way, and all because he cares so much for me ...
Must practise tugging forelock, and saying phrase with curtsy "ever so grateful sir" and "ever so humble sir".
Bring back Work Choices, and bring it back now! And may I have a little more gruel sir, if you be pleased and ever so kind ...
And that concludes our history lesson today. If you failed to understand it, off to the salt mines with you .... since clearly you're incapable of education or basic lettering and numbering ...
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