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Opinion

An Honest Day’s Work

18 Aug 2024 4 minute read
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage Photo Ben Birchall/PA Wire

Ben Wildsmith

A friend of mine, who works for an English local authority in the parks department, was hauled up before a disciplinary meeting this week accused of making a political post on his personal Facebook page during an election campaign.

I can only imagine the whitening of his knuckles, gnarled as they are by decades of remorseless labour, when an HR operative, who wouldn’t know a cultivator from a pogo stick, explained that political silence was stipulated by his terms of employment.

For we human resources, the PAYE chumps so hopelessly stuck in a 20th century mindset that we still believe in working for a living, that’s the way it is.

If we are lucky enough to have a proper contract of employment, it is opaquely laden with potential reasons for our dismissal.

Employers are empowered to stalk our utterances and monitor our behaviour in and out of the workplace. If they want rid of us, they will find a way.

Spivery

Not so for the beneficiaries of Ripoff UK, which long ago codified rewards for spivery at the expense of working people.

As surveillance culture has intruded into the home life of anyone with a job, deregulation and the normalisation of Johnsonian amorality have made the UK ever more fertile for a parasitical class of unproductive liars.

This week, we learned that Nigel Farage, Arthur Daley’s coat on Oswald Mosley’s back, is trousering £97 000 a month for his show on GB News, plus another four grand for his newspaper column.

This would be a profoundly depressing statistic if all it denoted was the public appetite for his millimetre-short-of-the-line divisiveness. The truth, however, is far worse than that.

Neither his show nor his column has enough drawing power to justify that level of remuneration. He is the beneficiary of old-school patronage, whereby the wealthy tip the scales of national discussion in their favour by purchasing visibility for those who will do their bidding.

Feudal practices

It is, ironically, antithetical to the ‘free market’ principles that Farage poses to hold sacred. The historical roots of his place in British life lie not in Friedman and Hayek but in the feudal practices of the Medieval aristocracy. Compare the grand families of Europe with American corporations and you’ll find the precedents for Farage in the arts and the church.

Alarming as Farage’s media ubiquity is, it has become far more dangerous with his election to parliament. I doubt even he would expend much effort persuading us that the driving ambition behind his candidature was to become the public voice of Clacton-on-Sea.

His constituents know that and those who voted for him were content to be of use. The implications of Farage’s elevation to representative politics lie not in his potential to influence policy, Labour’s majority is too wide for that. Rather, he is in a position to make the news he discusses on his show.

Every outrageous speech he gives in the House will become fodder for his GB News appearances. In turn, remarks by him and guests on the show will create enough unrest as to require parliamentary discussion.

Outrage

In subverting the roles of journalist and legislator he can create a perfect loop of outrage that will generate ever more money for him, and political heft for those who pay for it.

The courts have continued this week to send a powerful message about rioting and online incitement. Keir Starmer, by facilitating this, has succeeded in showing a muscular attitude towards the boundaries of acceptable debate in the UK.

Locking up the dregs of society, however, is low hanging fruit. If we can be prosecuted, or lose our jobs over social media posts, then a way can be found to purge British public life of Farage’s dangerous pantomime.

If the HR team at the House of Commons is struggling to find a rule upon which to string him up, perhaps they should ask the Westminster parks department for advice.

It may well be that what passes for democracy in the UK is already doomed, but if the government has ambitions of reviving it then it needs to pass legislation regarding outside media roles for MPs, and it needs to do so quickly.


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35 Comments
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J Jones
J Jones
3 months ago

Should the excessive Farage income contribute to repairing the extensive damage from the Farage Riots?

Margaret Helen Parish
Margaret Helen Parish
3 months ago
Reply to  J Jones

Welsh education on show once again!!!

S Duggan
S Duggan
3 months ago

If you have the connections you can avoid the laws on stirring hate, violence and ultimately riot. Joe bloggs gets locked up for a sentence while the likes of Farage can use his slot on TV everyday, to stoke the flames, without barely a word spoken against him by the establishment. Trump does it constantly too and if he gets back into power will get all charges currently lined up against him dropped. It’s the world we now live in. However, Farage’s day of reckoning will come and hopefully Harris will win in November and Trump will spend Christmas behind… Read more »

John Ellis
John Ellis
3 months ago

‘… when an HR operative, who wouldn’t know a cultivator from a pogo stick, explained that political silence was stipulated by his terms of employment.’ That strikes me as an eccentric requirement. My last job prior to retirement was as an employee of a local authority in the north-west of England. There was no requirement in my contract of employment prohibiting me from being politically active or from taking a public political stance, and all my colleagues, managers included, were fully aware of my political involvements outside of working hours. No one ever raised any issue about that with me,… Read more »

Ben Wildsmith
Ben Wildsmith
3 months ago
Reply to  John Ellis

The rule applied during election campaigns.

John Ellis
John Ellis
3 months ago
Reply to  Ben Wildsmith

Ah, I see how that might be counted as a factor.

But in my politically active partisan days I was never more active than in the lead-up to elections, and my team leader knew that. But there was never any intimation that I ought not to be; indeed, she used to ask me how it was all going!

Ap Kenneth
Ap Kenneth
3 months ago
Reply to  John Ellis

This link is from 2019 but summarises the restrictions on civil servants, note towards the bottom is a section political activities of civil servants and three groups – For this purpose, the Civil Service is divided into three groups:

  • the “politically free” – industrial and non-office grades;
  • the “politically restricted” – members of the Senior Civil Service, civil servants in Grades 6 and 7 (or equivalent) and members of the Fast Stream Development Programme;
  • civil servants outside the “politically free” and “politically restricted” groups

So restrictions can vary and may vary in different public organisations.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/election-guidance-for-civil-servants/general-election-guidance-2019-guidance-for-civil-servants

John Ellis
John Ellis
3 months ago
Reply to  Ap Kenneth

That’s both interesting and useful; I previously only had a vague idea that some people in some capacities in the civil service were restricted in terms of political activity, but hadn’t got much grasp of the specifics of it. So thank you for that – and for the link!

My own employment was in local government rather than in the civil service, so maybe different rules apply there. And yet the guy cited in this article was apparently a local government employee. Si it still seems a tad odd!

Mab Meirion
Mab Meirion
3 months ago

The Normalisation of Johnsonian Amorality or as I call it ‘The Fat Shanks Effect’…

Adrian
Adrian
3 months ago
Reply to  Mab Meirion

…or ‘Gethingian’ amorality?

Last edited 3 months ago by Adrian
Bryn
Bryn
3 months ago

Excellent!!!
” Nigel Farage, Arthur Daley’s coat on Oswald Mosley’s back.. ”
Those words should be committed to memory!

Frank
Frank
3 months ago

Organisations that can afford to pay outrageous salaries should be taxed heavily to finance worthy causes. Paying grotesque salaries such as what Farage, Linekar and many others are receiving is outrageous.

Mark
Mark
3 months ago
Reply to  Frank

Companies are taxed heavily. VAT @ 20%, national insurance @ 13.8%, business rates, corporation tax @ 25%.
I agree with your second point though, that certain famous faces get paid an absurd amount of money.

Jeff
Jeff
3 months ago

Have to wonder how a station can manage to stay on air with such losses. Must be greater than £42 million now, even Murdoch couldn’t take the hit on Talk TV and scuttled off to on line. Who is funding them. (I know, there are threads to follow and they lead to curious places….)

And farage is not a journalist. A capable journo would have fact checked the situation and kept quiet, instead he shovelled fuel on the situation.

Cablestreet
Cablestreet
3 months ago
Reply to  Jeff

Only a journalist in the Tommy Robinson sense.

Y Cymro
Y Cymro
3 months ago

Only Westminster would allow the likes of Nigel Farage during parliamentary time to fly to America to campaign for Donald Trump , a convicted felon & sex offender, as his racist followers riot throughout England attacking police, threaten the lives of asylum seekers , damaging & destroying communities as this fatcat fake makes millions. The likes of Nigel Farage, Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson and those lowbrow cretins on GB News & Talk TV who used hate speech are culpable. All should be regarded terrorists whose racist rhetoric and demonisation of Muslims whipped up those brainless football thug type into a… Read more »

Adrian
Adrian
3 months ago
Reply to  Y Cymro

Anyone who believes that a man can become a woman is either an idiot, or delusional. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I presume that you voted for such a person: in which case I don’t think you’re in any position to question the intelligence, logic, or motives of anyone else.

Last edited 3 months ago by Adrian
CapM
CapM
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

It’s likely that everyone has believed that someone they’ve seen or even been in close proximity to was a woman when they were actually born male and vice versa (but probably to a lesser extent).

Does that make us all, including you an idiot or delusional on those occasions or was it that we accepted those people as we found them and so weren’t bothered about their genetics or reproductive systems.

Adrian
Adrian
3 months ago
Reply to  CapM

During the local carnival, when you see a pirate ship progressing down the main road…I hate to break this to you…it’s actually a lorry made to look like a pirate ship.

Last edited 3 months ago by Adrian
CapM
CapM
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian
Adrian
Adrian
3 months ago
Reply to  CapM

I don’t need to save face mate: a man cannot become a woman, and anyone who thinks he can is either an idiot or delusional. Neither you, nor any other replier, has engaged with the simple objective fact that I put forward.

FrankC
FrankC
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

I wish you would bore off mate. If ever there was a one-trick pony it’s you with your inane far-right culture wars nonsense.

j91968
j91968
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Oh get over it, you tedious little twerp

Adrian
Adrian
3 months ago
Reply to  j91968

Read a lot of Nietzsche do you?

Last edited 3 months ago by Adrian
j91968
j91968
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Says an awful lot about if you think reading Nietszche denotes some sort of unparalleled intellectual vigour, you tiresome nincompoop. Most people manage to outgrow that sort of adolescent philosophical and political posturing by the time they leave the Sixth Form.

Last edited 3 months ago by j91968
Cablestreet
Cablestreet
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Shouldn’t you be on the Walesonline comments section?

Fanny Hill
Fanny Hill
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian

Ooh, you are awful but I like you!
Pity nobody else does, from the look of it.

Last edited 3 months ago by Fanny Hill
Jack
Jack
3 months ago

‘find a rule upon which to string him up,’

Ignoring the argument – I detest the idea used in the above quote and it should not be given space here.

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