Making Work Pay

A mere three years after Britain's Head Boy decreed that tackling human trafficking might be a rah-rah sort of thing to do, the Bullingdon Club and its chums are unable to make up their minds whether the Modern Slavery Bill should be for or against. In 2012, as part of its effort to rid the nation of unauthorised wogs, the coalition ordered that every migrant worker should be indentured to a single employer, which means that the wogs in question are prevented from fiendishly renewing their visas. This means that employers can withhold pay and food, demand extremely long hours, and in general behave towards foreign workers in much the same way as the British Neoliberal Party would like all employers to behave towards British workers.

To call it slavery would, of course, be to risk terminological inexactitude; but it has cast a bit of a damper on the Modern Slavery Bill, whose proponents are seeking an amendment that would imply, of all things, "that domestic overseas workers are not a sub-class of people here merely to facilitate the lifestyle of their employer". A spokesbeing for the mad old cat lady in the Home Office responded with predictable forthrightness, stating that the existing system gives hard-working wogs "access to protections under employment laws" which, in the liberating absence of legal aid or information, they can pursue during their copious free time.