Comments on: Austerity Jubilee: unemployed workers tricked into being Jubilee stewards, denied toilets, left to camp in the rain

By: Gunker

Gunker — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Cannot reply to your lower comment, but I think we are arguing the same side here.

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:07:00 +0000

I think you need to google Grauniad. Have you never read Private Eye?

By: Gunker

Gunker — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 19:42:00 +0000

I think you need to research the nicknames of the UK press, including one that Cory has been published in on numerous times

By: Sinead Dowding

Sinead Dowding — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:55:00 +0000

I’m suprised no one has pointed out the oxymoron “unemployed workers”.

By: JOHN VASILI

JOHN VASILI — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0000

Still no excuse or explication for the aggressive nature of the orange safety vest wearing stewards at Victoria tower Gardens there attitude and manor of addressing the public was very aggressive

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:00:00 +0000

The Grauniad is a Manchester free trade rag with a dubious history in terms of the causes it has supported. It even considered a merger with the Times at one point. You do not expect them to run with a real story to their own detriment, do you? Better to deflect the flak elsewhere.

By: cminus

cminus — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:06:00 +0000

That’s hardly a fair account of what happened.

Mercenaries get paid, after all.

By: elix

elix — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 08:53:00 +0000

Citations for all of this? I’d like to see where the Guardian flubbed.

By: ssam

ssam — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 08:43:00 +0000

There is a petition at http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/End_the_disgrace_of_slave_labour_at_the_Queens_jubilee/

By: EvilTerran

EvilTerran — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 07:48:00 +0000

What, you think this is somehow the monarchy’s fault? I find it almost impossible that they were involved anywhere in the decision-making process that led to this wickedness. The theme of the event is completely incidental to this story; this could’ve been any other government-organised bash.

Parliament may be preferable in principle, but ours causes far, far more trouble than our monarchy.

By: asuffield

asuffield — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 05:44:00 +0000

More details are now emerging: it was a screwup, the camp disaster was not supposed to happen. The coach bringing them to London arrived a few hours early, and nobody was available to take them to the correct site. They were stuck under the bridge for a couple hours, not left there overnight; in this the Guardian report is wrong.

The suggestion that they were told they were unpaid at the last minute is also not true. All of them were either paid the minimum wage for apprentices, or had chosen not to take it because they were taking (the higher rate of) Jobseeker’s allowance instead.

So, nothing to see here, article was wrong.

By: humanresource

humanresource — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 02:55:00 +0000

The French approach to monarchy looks more appealing every day.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:59:00 +0000

England’s dreaming

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:58:00 +0000

That’s it, keep pissing on the peasants; it’s not like that ever backfired in the past.

By: koko szanel

koko szanel — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:10:00 +0000

yes

By: gracchus

gracchus — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Exactly — a surveillance state that the Tories were happy to inherit and “improve.” You can bet that Close Protection UK plans to get a nice slice of that lucrative pie.

By: Gunker

Gunker — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:31:00 +0000

As others have pointed out above, this is becoming endemic, with even liberal papers like the Granuid taking on unpaid interns (which equates to upper-middle class London dweller offspring)

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:21:00 +0000

To the credit of the Tories, at least they’re more honest than Labour in their contempt for the peons.

Thatcher destroyed the social contract. Labour used the resulting mayhem as an excuse to create a surveillance state.

By: gracchus

gracchus — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:15:00 +0000

It looks more like a situation where the Tory government programme is working through a charitable cut-out (Tomorrow’s People) to feed cheap labour to a favoured corporation (Close Protection UK).

Since Tomorrow’s People apparently skipped their usual due diligence (per Wreckrob8) in the case of Close Protection UK, one really has to wonder how they ended up giving a pass to this dodgy guard-labour operation.

It wouldn’t be the first time that a charity’s government liason or party-affiliated board member “strongly suggested” that a certain corporation’s approval be fast-tracked.

I would also be unsurprised to discover that Close Protection’s executives are generous supporters of the Tories.

But absolutely agreed, with Labour it might have been another charitable cut-out and another shady corporation (perhaps without the ridiculously Dickensian visuals of the bridge encampment), but with the same workers getting screwed over.

By: Marc Mielke

Marc Mielke — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Yeah, why would they assume any different? The crooks got them to work for free once, why would anyone think they would ever do otherwise?

By: Marc Mielke

Marc Mielke — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:02:00 +0000

I would say Hanlon’s Razor doesn’t apply when the so-called incompetence results in gain for the incompetent party. Best to assume malfeasance in those cases.

By: phead

phead — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:48:00 +0000

Well its a private company doing it, but the government is definitely looking the other way. All unpaid work, be it this crap, or the fancy internship for the rich kids in the city should be completely banned.
digi_owl is right, the champagne socialists or the upper class tories, neither represent the people of this country any more.

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:36:00 +0000

Right, seems fitting for a royalty jubilee, if you ask me.

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:22:00 +0000

That’s the spirit. It’s not that these people were treated as cast-off, subhuman rubbish beneath contempt. It’s that no one has properly described them in terms that would help us recognize them as cast-off, subhuman rubbish beneath contempt. See some of the other comments on this post for apparently sincere examples.

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:09:00 +0000

At least our scene was committed, it wasn’t just a string of pussy jokes.

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:07:00 +0000

Olympics/Jubilee stewards: “Now he tells us!”
Dubai immigrant workers: “Ditto!”

By: Shinkuhadoken

Shinkuhadoken — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:17:00 +0000

What employer wouldn’t want to get in on this? Free labor with the only carrot a vague, uncommitted notion of being considered for a well-paying job sometime in the undisclosed future. You don’t have to offer food, shelter, or even a place to shit (though you may have to buy uniforms; you don’t want your slaves looking unprofessional).

By: Patrick McGorrill

Patrick McGorrill — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:16:00 +0000

I guess they had to make some people into slaves for the sake of setting them free?

By: Wreckrob8

Wreckrob8 — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:08:00 +0000

I didn’t know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.

By: bluest_one

bluest_one — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 17:03:00 +0000

It doesn’t have to be an either/or situation, though. There’s a thing called “permitted work” where people remain on benefits, but earnings over £20 are deducted from their social security payments. That way, they get paid to do the job, get the experience, get a small bonus and don’t get kicked off benefits and have to re-apply.

Not sure if you have to arrange this beforehand with the benefits agency.