Thursday, July 20, 2006

Factory Farming the Poor

So, according to some alleged new scientific research - published in the Daily Express, that well-known scientific journal - people in lower social classes age faster and die younger than those above them socially. Well, fuck my hat, I never knew that! The main question this leaves me asking is just how the report defined 'class'? As we keep getting told that we live in a 'classless' society these days, surely such distinctions are meaningless. Assuming they defined class in occupational terms, then the conclusions really are unsurprising - traditionally 'working class' occupations tended to be manual labour, which inevitably exposes the worker to far higher levels of physical risk than white collar work. Quite apart from the risk of accidental death in the workplace, exposure to hazardous materials and environments over the course of the average working life are bound to reduce your life expectancy.

Of course, if you look at 'class' in terms of income, then the situation is slightly different. Those at the bottom of the social heap tend to be unskilled, have erratic patterns of (mainly) casual, very low paid, work, supplemented by welfare benefits (traditional manual labour is often relatively well-paid). They generally live in social housing in the oldest and least well-maintained estates, they probably smoke, drink and use drugs more than than their social 'betters' - primarily to dull the monotony of their lives. Their low income, combined with their poor access to education, healthcare and other social provisions, often results in poor nutrition and ill health. Not surprisingly, this all contributes to reduced life expectancy and people often looking sixty when they're only mid-thirties.

With all the privileges that higher incomes can buy in today's Britain, it really should come as no surprise that the 'higher' social classes live longer and more healthily than the 'lower orders'. Mind you, I think that it is even simpler, and frankly more sinister, than that. It is clear to me that the middle and upper classes are literally sucking the life from the working classes. Its a form of psychic vampirism. As, in the developed world, unskilled labour becomes less and less important (so we're told by economists), clearly the only purpose for the working class to serve is as 'cattle' (conveniently corralled on farms, sorry, estates) for those 'above' them socially. That's where Wells got it wrong in The Time Machine - it won't be the troglodyte workers eating the effete rich; instead it will be the white collar workers, so-called professionals, property developers, industrialists and land owners sucking the poor dry. It all makes sense, and is a perfect metaphor for capitalism!

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