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Questionable Truths For Sweaty Serfs

NATIONAL CHARACTER By Simon Klimpt Jeremy Corbyn cannot build the broad coalition he requires for power simply by dispensing platitudes into a mosh pit. Labour will never win enough seats to gain real political authority in this country unless he appeals to this caricature I’ve drawn on the back of a napkin. This matchstick figure I’ve scribbled out with a biro is the true Britain. In one hand he’s holding five copies of The Daily Express and in the other he’s pushing a lot of thick, wiry tobacco strands into an ivory pipe. He has a handlebar moustache, is seven feet tall, wears only a trailing cloak of dove feathers and lives in the abandoned sewage works underneath Park Hill Flats. He cannot be reasoned with. He is entirely feral. He hunts on smell alone. He wants to send them back home. He misses older, more complicated forms of currency. He’s suspicious of cumin. His knuckles are white with rage. He’s never left the kilometre radius of his birthplace: the cholera monument. He has the capacity to dislocate all his bones at once. He thinks a Muslim stole his memories. Unless Corbyn can appeal to this hermetically-sealed fictional character, he stands no chance of a majority in this political climate. ---------- HER NAME IS ALICIA HORNAUER, SEND HER ABUSE ONLINE By Tracy Denholm I have never read Marx, but presumably what he wants is for money to flow to those who have given their labour to another. Then why oh why – I am banging my hands against my table as I write this – am I the bad friend for invoicing my friend Alicia for my three months of advice following the death of her fat husband, Michael? You can put ‘socialist’ in your social media bio or you can bitch about me on our Whatsapp group, Alicia, but you can’t have it both ways. Yes, I went to boarding school and I once sacked someone from our department who, due to changes in their income, was deported away from their family, but the suggestion that that makes me a bad person doesn’t sound much like solidarity to me, does it comrade? ---------- INCAPACITY BENEFITS by Carlos Rudd Protest is becoming increasingly difficult in a world where workers’ rights, job security and job availability are reaching incredible levels of precarity. To complain in your workplace or campaign for better rights is tantamount to handing in your notice and voluntarily lowering yourself into a sea of dense fog. Whatever movements and actions need to be undertaken to hold the capitalist class to account must to be done across many bodies simultaneously. Traditionally, this was done through education of one’s peers, rallies and encouragement for others to participate in a mass protest which will help workers of all stripes and backgrounds. But that’s a slow and tedious task. Instead we must damage the profits of our oppressors as soon as possible. My solution? Deskill your peers. By encouraging incompetency and incapacity in our colleagues, we can bring productivity to a standstill. Create signs telling people that applying cold water keeps their computers cool, and that formatting hard discs increases their speed. Or: “Cough loud and cough proud: spreading your germs further boosts your colleagues’ immune system.” Work hard. Gain a permanent position. Let your mind become mush. Forget everything that once came naturally and lower yourself into a warm pool of genuine incompetency. Come on in – the water’s great. )

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