It was hectic Friday evening at Real Man Pizza Company. I served up a couple of Linguine Manx dishes which I was really proud of and I left happy, but utterly shattered, after putting in 90 hours in five days. I just managed to catch the 11.30 from Paddington. Of course 30 of those 90 hours I was working for the taxman. That sort of work ethic and work rate just to pay the bills is something the political elite who run all three parties just do not understand and cannot comprehend.
I enjoy my work so do not take this as a grumble. And I am delighted that RMPC is doing well enough that we will hire another member of staff next week. That is another person to generate tax income for our elite to waste. I mean spend.
I know that some folks, notably those employed by a company that failed to make Real Man profitable, laugh at me for running and working in a restaurant but Real Man will, by April, have taken on a net four new employees and two contractors in the first four months of 2013. I regard creating jobs and so generating wealth for the UK and tax revenue for the Government as an honourable thing to do. To be lambasted by wage slaves for having the nerve to risk my capital to do that says more about them and also about the decline of Britain in terms of our attitude to entrepreneurs than it does about me.
Back to the train. I prepared to fall asleep but within five minutes I was roused by the sound of the woman in front of me vomiting copiously in her seat. So drunk was she that she could not make the toilet. She just vomited on herself, the seat in front and the floor and sat there grinning. What are you going to do about it said her grin? I moved again as did other, clearly tired, passengers and tried to sleep.
I awoke suddenly at Bath as a crowd of 40 students joined the train after a night out. That they want to have fun is great but, with no consideration for others, the last fifteen minutes of my journey was to the backdrop of singing, shouting, swearing and just noise. The student opposite slouched so that his legs dug into mine but, after ten pints of Fosters, he did not give a damn.
That I am subsidising the students does not bother me. As a student I was subsidized by others. What goes around comes around. But the utter lack of consideration and manners shown by all sorts of folks today leaves me feeling like Bankrupt Britain is not a land that I want to live in. The 11.30 from Paddington was Hogarth’s Gin Alley.
Of course First Class, where our leaders travel at our expense, was quiet and pleasant. And the idea they they would be on the 11.30 is ludicrous. For the 140 days a year they do “work” the hours are civilised. They have no exposure to hard work or to the stench of vomit and the rudeness of so many of our fellow citizens. They do not create jobs or wealth, they just suck money away from those who do. As an elite as they become ever more cushioned from reality, I become ever more alienated from them.
At 2 PM I finally made it to bed. Today and tomorrow will be light days. Perhaps just five hours work. And on Monday at the crack of dawn the whole circus starts again. That the Westminster elite think that by “presenting policies better” they will “connect with voters” like me is laughable. They are on another planet and Marie Antoinette had more chance of “connecting” with the Parisian mob of 1789 than those in the Westminster bubble have of understanding how real life is for those they are meant to serve.