The Hidden Cost Of Labour-Saving Devices

We are not fooled. When we think of labour-saving devices, we think not only of the benefits alone but also of the cost of the benefits. We think of the extra hours we have to work to pay for the labour-saving device. We know the hidden cost of labour-saving devices.

We think of the cost of upkeep, because most devices require some upkeep. And we think of the cost of replacing the device, because all devices have a limited life.

And we think of the stress and the pain and the tedium associated with getting the money to pay for the device. And we think of the precious time we have lost in getting to the point of being able to hand over the money to pay for the device.

And then we do it anyway.

But this calculation, this weighing in the balance,is not equal across the board. A rich man can buy a labour-saving device and not give a thought to the cost of it or of the upkeep. For him, labour-saving devices are what they seem. The only real cost to him is the sleepless nights wondering whether the poor are going to come knocking at his door to make him pay for being rich.

Resistance Is Futile

Some of the trains that run from London Kings Cross to Cambridge divide at Cambridge. Part of the train goes on to Kings Lynn and the rest stops at Cambridge and does the run back to London. Perhaps it picks up other carriages coming from somewhere else, I don’t know but it seems likely.

When you get on the train and before it sets off, there’s a public announcement announcing how the train divides. It explains that the train is composed of eight carriages and that passengers wanting to travel beyond Cambridge should ensure that they are in the front four carriages.

The rear four carriages are of course nearest the barrier, so we choose to sit in one of those carriages if for no other reason than that we don’t have to walk so far to find a seat.

So there we are and the voice comes over with the announcement. And then there is a pause and then a voice tells you what carriage you are in. So we hear ‘Six of Eight’ or ‘Seven of Eight’ – and every time I hear it I think of Star Trek, ‘Three of Nine’, the Borg, and You will be assimilated: Resistance is futile.

The question is, are the people who recorded the announcement Star Trek fans and did they script the announcement that way on purpose to puzzle passengers?

Victoria To The Rescue

I was imagining a scene. It’s the grandees of the Conservative party, mostly men and older. They are watching television in the privacy of their club or a private room at the House Of Commons.

They are beaming. I can hear exclamations of pleasure at what is happening on the screen.

It is an episode of Victoria – about Queen Victoria. She is telling her beastly German in-laws not to try to treat her like a cow, fit only to produce children. She tells them off and they step back, abashed. Oh, she is magnificent even in her youth. And now she is on board the deck of HMS Trafalgar and she is telling the crowds how the defeat in Afghanistan is bad, but the Britain has the strongest army and navy in the world and will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Ah, so like Brexit. Germany is that horrid EU, and Trafalgar is to be our victory in the new trade alliances that our new (as yet unfound) partners are hungry for.

The production of the TV programme is first rate – with a big budget.

A thought crossed my mind – that when the producers proposed Victoria, that someone in a corridor of power thought it would be just the ticket to prop up the failing morale of the populace.

North and South

There’s a readable article in Slavery in the North. Here’s the first couple of sentences:

African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant’s Coffee House of New York.

And there is an article in The Conversation about the removal of the statue at the centre of the Charlottesville controversy.

The meeting of white supremacists in Charlottesville was originally held under the pretext of demonstrating against plans to remove the statue. The Charlottesville city council voted in February for it to be removed from the recently renamed Emancipation Park (formerly Lee Park). The decision came as part of a movement to challenge the ubiquity of Confederate symbols in the South.

On 15th August, Politico published a transcript of President Trump’s address on infrastructure given at a news conference at Trump Tower, and the interview with reporters that followed it. Among other things, the reporters asked about Charlottesville.

I read the transcript and I noted how Trump was at pains to be even handed, to criticise everyone who behaved badly, irrespective of labels. And then I think back to one of his rallies when he talked to the crowd following a disturbance and lamented how in days gone by the offender would have been taken around the back and shown a little discipline. I think he made a fist when he was talking, but my memory may be playing tricks with me.

So I understand his point, that we can’t airbrush people out of history (well you could in Stalinist Russia, but that’s another story), and we can’t remove the heroes of yesterday without sanitising our view of ourselves.

Well, yes, maybe. But society is a fluid thing. It moves on, and this event of renaming the park and taking down the statue is exactly that – moving on.

Trump makes the point that the protesters from the Right had a permit to be there and the anti-protest protesters from the Left did not. And he dislikes ‘fake’ bleeding-heart liberals, and he has made no secret of that.

But somewhere in the narrative of being even handed and getting beyond the rhetoric to the truth of the matter, he fails to condemn a group that wants to use (and uses) violence to subvert freedom and inclusiveness. And he is OK with that. He will tell you he did condemn them the day before – and he did. But when he goes back to being ‘even handed’ as though it is a badge of honour to see all sides in all situations, my feeling is that he is being supremely disingenuous and knows exactly to which choir he is preaching.