Smile, you're working for the queen now. [View all]

[deminks]

http://www.americablog.com/2012/06/unemployed-bused-into-london-for-unpaid.html

Who would ever guess that it's a Tory government running the UK? Anyone with a sense of decency and respect for the hard times in the UK would want to scale back if not postpone a celebration for the monarchy, but we are talking about the British royal family after all.

It's absurd to imagine any taxpayer money funding a "party" for one of the richest families in the world. It's even more absurd to bus unemployment recipients to London, ask them to sleep under bridges and then work for such an event. Royalists are naturally claiming that the event generates millions for the economy, no doubt using the same twisted logic that sports teams use when they spend millions to move a team into a new location.

(end snip)

Link to Guardian article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed

A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.

(snip)

Both stewards said they were originally told they would be paid. But when they got to the coach on Saturday night, they said, they were told that the work would be unpaid and that if they did not accept it they would not be considered for well-paid work at the Olympics.

(end snip)

Prosperity for them, Austerity for us. Happy Jubilee.