Yesterday, for no particular reason, I recalled the
predictions from the 1970s that by now we’d have either run out of oil, or
entered a mini ice age or both. When I tweeted these observations I was reminded
that ‘scientists’ had also predicted that we would have to share jobs, as there
wouldn’t be enough employment to go round and thus would usher in the
much-vaunted Age of Leisure. Our biggest problem, they opined, would be filling
our days with meaningful fun. As it turns out we work longer hours and as
standards of decorum have fallen we have, instead, entered the age of leisure
WEAR... so I guess they were half right.
But actually, thinking about it, we spend so much time on
our arses, staring at telescreens that by the physical standards of the 1970s
we ARE in an age of leisure... just not the type we envisaged. Instead of
quaffing chilled Chablis on the banks of the Thames at Henley, or yachting off
the Côte d'Azur, etc, we are cramming the hoi-polloi into cattle-class, cut-price,
all-in, factory-fun-filled, booze-sodden resort packages. But are we happy?
Nowadays ‘we’ consider foreign holidays a virtual human right but somehow it
doesn’t satisfy that hole in the soul.
We’ve come a long way since Harold Macmillan said we’d never
had it so good. Back in 1957 we’d only recently come off food rationing and
such as we could get our hands on was highly seasonal. Now, however, we expect
all the world’s food at all seasons, in perfect condition to be always
available and most of the time it is. So why is everybody complaining? Well, I
did a little research – let’s call it living through six decades – and it turns
out that we are, as Rod Liddle put it, selfish, whining monkeys, with our
greedy fists forever stuck in the voluntary trap of the fig jar.
And it isn’t just food and foreign holibobs we’re greedy
about; we seem to have produced a generation which expects rights ever more biased
towards ever more nuanced peculiarities. Give a lefty an inch and he’ll throw a
metric fit ... don’t you know inches are a throwback to British Imperialism? So
now, if the so-called progressives say that all colours of the spectrum of
worth are equal in all ways and they deserve extra help (money, laws,
preferential employment rights, deference, etc) to be that way, it is
considered hateful and brutish to argue.
So Sadiq Khan calling for increased vigilance against
hate crime is just another example of this phenomenon. Not happy with a normal amount
of objection to displacement of indigenous culture and replacement with a
clearly inferior one, we must now produce ever more manufactured evidence to
fit the demands. And the demand for hate crime is enormous, so every effort to improve
those figures must be employed.
Fortunately, the devil makes work for idle hands to do
and there are none so idle as those engaged in the boom industries of today – endless
aimless protest, demanding rights, taking offence -where having too much time
on your hands is an actual advantage. Who says we haven’t reached the age of leisure?
As for actual productivity, making a living and funding all this big fun - bring
on the robots, I say.
