Choose Work...
Well, it's not often you'll hear this, except from your parents or your probation officer, but I'm going to say it anyway - GO TO WORK!
No, relax, not today. Or tomorrow. Not soon, and not for the rest of your life. Just for one day, when every other fucker is slacking.
When? I forget the date to be honest, but my granny would know. Next
year is your Queen's 50th anniversary of slouching in her throne, eating bread and honey. She's not my queen because:
a) I'm Irish
b) I've racked my brains and still can't remember voting for her.
Anyway, in honour of her years of toil in the freeby mines, Mr Blair and his chums in the (get this) LABOUR Party, with of course, support from all the other craven cowards who turn into Establishment scum the moment their well padded backsides hit the seats of power, have decided that you can all have an extra day off in May.
Fuck International Workers Day (May the first), we all get another one so that we can . . what? Throw street parties? Stand rigidly to attention while somebody comes round to check that we know all fifteen xenophobic verses of that bloody awful dirge you call your national anthem? 'Confound their knavish tricks'? What the fuck?
Actually, I have a secret fear. I'm 25, and thought that everybody I knew was possessed of at least a timeshare on the family braincell, yet at least one person I know intends to vote Tory, and loads love the Royal Family! For Christ's sake. How can a country that calls itself a modern democracy be represented internationally by a bunch of internationally inbred jetset wasters who'd be at the back of the jobseekers queue were it not for an accident of birth?
It's a horrible replay of the emotional fascism surrounding the Diana death. Suddenly republicans were crying about the world's greatest force for republicanism, instead of quietly regretting the loss of a mother to a couple of kids and the loss of jobs in the fashion and media whore worlds. I'm with Julie Burchill on this one; a woman from one of the oldest and greediest aristocratic families in the country marries the heir to throne is one the moderate wing of the Roundheads.
Anyway, back to the main point. If I want a day of work, and that's not often, I'll take it for good reasons. My toenail hurts. Bad hair day. Not because an unelected imposition with whom the government wants to ingratiate itself in order to reassure the middle classes that it isn't going to do anything like, liberal or egalitarian, wants me to.
GO TO WORK ON JUBILEE DAY. IF THE DOOR'S LOCKED BANG AND BANG AND BANG. The Human Rights Act guarantees you the right to work. Use it or lose it.
Aidan Byrne.
Sunny Wolverhampton.
