All politics is personal and never more so than when you can’t put on your socks and shoes. When it comes to public sector job cuts, I am now an expert on the gap between the rhetoric of politics and the reality of the people being targeted. To be frank, I’m not interested in fat-cat train drivers, nor under-performing head teachers, nor local government executives who earn more than the Prime Minister, nor even the poor saps who wangled jobs as play co-ordinators or diversity officers. They’ve had a run for their money. All good things come to an end.
No, I’m talking about the small people; the invisible grafters in the most basic jobs. The council carers who dash around helping people like me get washed and dressed; the recyclers who sort the detritus that the arrogant rich can’t be bothered to take five minutes to do themselves; the gritter drivers and the street sweepers and the rat catchers and the school janitors and the station cleaners and the care assistants in young offenders’ institutions. The sons and daughters of Martha, in Kipling’s sense, the hidden municipal army who toil unrecognised and unappreciated in humdrum, dirty jobs for their entire working lives – oh, and in the process just happen to make the world go round.
Nobody ever shines a light on what they do, or gives them praise. When did you last hear a news story telling you how good a job they do – in the face, often, of rudeness and contempt? How often do we celebrate the fact that an old lady lasted five years without a bedsore thanks to the skill of her carers? Never – because such reports are not commissioned. Because the sons and daughters of Mary, insulated by privilege, don’t care. The only mild flicker of interest is when Panorama or Dispatches need a soft target; when the toilers are found wanting in their toil. And then the headlines scream of neglect and incompetence.
There is an inevitability here. It is that when massive cuts are inflicted on the public sector, you can be sure that those doing the cutting, the big earners, will ensure that the axe falls on the people on the front line – the lowly paid and the voiceless. Because, as we all know, the first rule of making economies is that the Indians get paid off or replaced by those who do the job less well, while the chiefs get to keep their fancy wigwams. So those who do the grottiest jobs must now also live under the corrosive dread of losing them.
The council employees who bounce into my bedroom every morning are unfailingly cheery, kindly and professional – and, to a woman, desperately worried about their jobs. In my experience of private versus public care since my accident, they are more efficient and much more reliable than the agency staff who are slowly replacing them. But does quality count for anything? Not at all.
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And does anyone realise how difficult this work can be? Panorama and Dispatches don’t do exposés of the treatment meted out to carers by some of their clients. But they should. I’m troublesome only, I hope, to the extent that I have a potholed drive and a dog with pathological halitosis. But what is never revealed is how the old and the sick and the immobile – and their families – can be inexcusably aggressive and unpleasant to those who go to help them. As anyone who has ever done the work will tell you, hard-pressed carers can enter houses to a barrage of moans and abuse. Friendly greetings such as: “You’re late – what’s your excuse today?”; “Don’t be so f***ing noisy”; or, best of all, “F*** off and come back later – my ma’s not ready for bed, she’s got a bottle of vodka to finish.” Old men, disabled by alcohol abuse, suck at carers’ necks when they bend to assist them in their personal care. And worse. Harangued and unrecognised, bent double showering others’ backsides, this is not the nicest way to spend one’s working life. But they do it with grace and good humour.
So nothing is black and white when it comes to the worth of people’s jobs; and my plea is only that those who bay for the dismantling of the public sector should engage their minds a little. You can cut all the posts you like, but the dirty work is never going to go away; and the tiresome thing about dirty work is that, all too often, it needs to be done to a higher standard, and with a greater degree of accountability, than clean work. Politicians tend to learn this the hard way.
I have a confession to make. Three times during the writing of this column I have sneaked away from my computer to the living room for a quick exercise session and a spot of Wimbledon. I have, you see, invested in an electric riser/recliner chair. It squats like an enormous, sickly-coloured toad in the living room and would give a style guru palpitations, but I love it. I transfer from my wheelchair into it, then elevate the chair until I am perched, ready to stand. Dave places my new waist-high Zimmer frame in front of me, I lean my head forward over my knees and – yee-ha! – I’m upright in my own house.
There I hover, unsupported but for the hand grips, my shoulders as far back and my hips as far forward as I can get them, watching some of the greatest athletes in the world dance around Centre Court. Once upon a time, as a teenager, I used to dream of doing that. Now I am grateful literally to stand and watch. After a couple of minutes I need to sit down again, but my ambition is to last out a Federer service game.
If I am feeling strong while I’m up there, I step ten times on the spot. Or I gently bend my knees and do some mini-squats. I have walked a little with this Zimmer, but I’m only confident when there is a physiotherapist with me. I am some way off my pre-infection vigour, and to collapse on my devoted husband would just be too unfair. Fed up of being called Captain Mainwaring, he heartily agrees.