(These are not original concepts, the headline and the first sentence are inspired by the Talking Heads and The Pop Group respectively.)

If we’re brutally honest, how many of us can say we don’t prostitute ourselves in some way to survive and/or are responsible for misery and the untimely deaths of many people who are in the unfortunate position of being many servants of consumers?

Once upon a time, those suffering untimely deaths as servants were the people who built towns and cities or laboured in fields. With globalisation it became those on the other side of the world, or Europe, who made the phones we bought, or produced or picked the food we ate. The working-class people who lived here became distributors or servants in that they supplied the goods manufactured elsewhere in the world, or the food that was either imported or generally picked by exploited people from Eastern Europe through that supposedly benevolent entity, the EU.

Globalisation has proved perhaps the number one killer in that it has now delivered a randomly killing virus across the globe, and perhaps many of those who spread it were the affluent jet-set, the globalised elite, more so than the workers. We have now reached a situation where we have an emergency three-tier system. This is divided into:

1. The designated vulnerable and also those left unemployed and skint so have little consumption power, who must rely on the two other tiers to survive – but can also be killed by them.

2. The key workers (including my partner) – those obliged to put themselves in harm’s way so they can continue to serve the other two tiers.

3. The “I’m alright jacks” – those that idly consume, feel like they’re on holiday, or are able to work from home (this does include me, though I am probably in the first category too). These tend to be the sector containing hypocritical politicians, who don’t practice what they preach (social distancing, only essential journeys), those who have been living the “good life” so have enough provisions to survive and thrive, and those who feel the urge to stockpile as much as they can from supermarkets because running out of bog roll would be the worst thing in the world to them… The worst thing, except, as some have discovered, to get the virus and suffer the symptoms badly. Also in the latter sector are those opposing lockdown measures as draconian, not really considering that they are for everyone’s mutual benefit (except some profiteers or economically generally) and that we don’t have a police force or army big enough to really enforce them.

The actions of the third group of people are most likely to cause death. Perhaps it would be too strong to call it manslaughter, perhaps the reality is so brutal and discomforting that this blog itself is a psycho killer? I don’t know, I just can’t hold back how I feel – most of those who are close to me are in the first two groups, and I cannot stress enough how much I resent the cavalier attitudes of some within the third group.