Trigger warning for those with musophobia. To those unfamiliar with Robert Browning’s poem retelling of the Pied Piper legend it concerns the town of Hamelin in Germany which, in the middle ages, was a town overrun with rats.
One day a stranger appears before the Town Council and offers to rid the town of rats for one thousand guilders. This he proceeds to do by playing upon his pipe and leading all the rats into the river Weser to be drowned.
When he demands his agreed payment the Mayor and the council go back on the bargain, the rats no longer plaguing the town, and they thinking of how much wine they could refill their cellars for, offer him fifty guilders instead.
y failing to keep the bargain they cause the Pied Piper to take a terrible revenge upon the town
A recent story in the MailOnline describes the rat problems now faced by the citizens of Birmingham. Those interviewed ascribe the problem to the financial problems which the city finds itself in which have resulted in industrial action by bin men along with an increase in fly tipping and problems caused by work on the HS2 high speed railway.
The article notes the ‘outrage’ caused by the council now charging twenty four pounds per visit to get council pet control operatives to attend and deal with problems. This was once a free service.
Birmingham Council is Labour controlled and the subtext of the article is to infer that Labour is incompetent at running an enterprise like Birmingham Council. Which it may be. Birmingham has a ‘nine figure hole in its finances.’
The article lists the swingeing cuts to various welfare and other programmes that will take place and notes that higher charges will also occur in some.
A recent piece in The Sun focused upon a suburb of Birmingham, Perry Barr, which it describes as the unemployment centre of the UK. The article then goes on to speak of crime and drug abuse there.
A Job Centre employee is quoted, anonymously, as saying, ‘Most people don’t want to work because they are being paid too much - up to £3,000 per month.’ Are Sun readers going to unthinkingly accept figures like this and then mutter in outrage about the scrounging jobless?
Surprisingly the article offers balance in quoting individuals who speak of the difficulties in getting employment in that area. There are six areas of Birmingham listed in the top ten UK unemployment hotspots.
However, it can’t resist another dig, so quotes someone who says, ‘A lot of jobless people have more money than people in work. It is laziness, they won't do certain jobs and think ‘Why should I work when I get more in the benefits system?’.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/33575799/unemployed-joblessness-capital-uk-birmingham
The blight which so negatively affects organisations operating in the present system and which makes individuals lives so miserable is capitalism. Until the majority understand this and are prepared to work toward the only sane alternative then misery of one kind or anothBer will continue to abound.
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