You earn Minimum Wage. You have no sick pay or holiday time. You are told that you only begin accruing holiday in the first March that comes after you have been employed a full six months. There is no heating in your constantly open place of business, and you are not permitted to sit down during your shift. Each time something goes wrong the boss puts a big sign up for all to see, announcing not who has made the mistake, but which shift; ensuring everyone who is unfortunate enough to work those hours is nicely paranoid or embarrassed. You use electrical products that are broken and will randomly give you shocks and hygiene standards are abysmal. A box has fallen through the dodgy upstairs floor, thankfully not striking anyone’s head in the process. There is often a stench of rotten eggs and backed up drains that makes you gag. Essential cleaning tools are broken and not replaced, however you are berated if the building is not clean enough.

Despite all of this you shrug your shoulders and get on with the job, until one torrentially rainy night. Even after mopping the floor twice, you can not keep it clean because of the constant muddy footprints tracking in and out; the next day you are soundly told off, no concession made to the previous 30 nights when you left the place as clean as it could possibly be given the above circumstances. Any attempt to complain or indeed any show of anger or frustration is met with an invitation to leave, if not an outright sacking. (I could go on with more examples but in the name of discretion I am stopping there.)

You remain working in this haven of modernism because it is the only income available to you in your small village that can provide ‘dough’ for bread. You are extremely limited on any sort of work outside the home for various personal reasons involving health, childcare, and transportation. Benefits are not an option; you live in the No-Man’s Land of the lower middle classes, back firmly up against a wall and no claim to pity. Against this backdrop of daily work, perfectly intelligent people are forced to bite their tongues because that pitiful minimum wage income is all that stands between their families and a weekly food budget of just £15.

Lest anyone misunderstand me I am the first to concede that compared to the working conditions of many others both in this country and abroad, this case study is more of a subtle chipping away than an all out destruction of a human being. But does that make it right? Does it induce anything but bitterness and resentment? Does it mean it should be ignored?

Before anyone tries to jump onto the back of these words with tirades against immigrants and benefits scroungers being the root of all evils let me say right now that the villains in this story are as English as Dickens. It is a simple case of the Haves and the HaveNots. It’s a lottery; the winners are chosen by the media pop sensation of the moment rather than any sense of justice. It is indeed indicative of corruption in our society but not that of single mothers or other poor sods who just want a roof over their children’s heads. The benefits system has a long way to go in order to reach fairness, and there are certainly those who abuse it, but they are merely the symptoms of a more insidious problem. The middle and lower classes squabble amongst themselves about who’s getting more and the upper classes deride any efforts of their peers for their own gain. Barely heard over the din are those of us who are trying to shout “Time Out!” and sit around the round table to make some real improvements.

Individuals in the Tory and Labour parties snipe at Brown’s heels, using each imperfection as a stepping stone for their own agendas; giving only negative contributions rather than positive ones. This is a case of the Prime Minister himself being inconsequential; it’s a pattern that is played out with every leader, a tried and true method of undermining strengths and duping the masses so that the next man in the queue can take his place. Is it any coincidence that a paper run by the ultra wealthy Murdoch has so pathetically gone for the jugular over a bit of Gordon Brown’s handwriting? Is it any wonder that the owner of this same “newspaper” jumps through copious amounts of red tape to avoid paying full taxes? Every reader who buys the Sun under the misguided impression that the Sun speaks for them is just lining the pockets of another rich man with his own agenda; a man who isn’t above ridiculous personal attack or exploiting the horrific emotions of a mother who has just lost her son.

I want to end this on a positive note, a closing thought that will lodge in my mind as a tidy conclusion, and leave anyone who reads it with the sense that something has been gained rather than lost in the reading. I don’t think I can though. Overcoming selfish businessmen and corrupt politicians can’t be accomplished with trite statements.