Arbeit ist Scheisse

Independent Online Edition > Europe: "Just as Germans were starting to feel bored by their election campaign, a little-known anarchist party has outraged television viewers with a no-holds-barred political broadcast featuring bare-breasted women, raucous partying and alcohol-fuelled vandalism.

The German Anarchist Pogo Party (APPD), whose defiant proclamation that 'Arbeit ist Scheisse' ('Work is shit') contrasts sharply with Angela Merkel's vows to reduce unemployment and Gerhard Schröder's labour market reform programme, launched its campaign video on Monday for the 18 September election."

Arbitrary assertion; people are tired of work. Seriously, we're sick of being told we're working longer and harder than ever before, and then feeling guilty because the poor around the world are working even harder for even less, and knowing most of this money slushes around the pockets of very few. I believe firmly that British wellbeing would be improved by a national four day week, and most industries would get exactly the same amount done in that time as they do now, especially as most non-manual industries do very little actual stuff at all (think of us filling out thousands of forms which bureaucrats can then put into non-working central computers for no-one to ever access... there's an obsession with collecting currently useless information, but I digress.)

I think talk of lottery winners going back to work at their old jobs indicates a lack of imagination/ambition on their part or perhaps just how far they've been institutionalised, if they're at all true. I shudder with horror when modern utopias have full employment as their aim (which always seemed more the dystopia of We or 1984 to me.) That's why I've just taken out a subscription to the Idler and why I'm thinking of new and innovative ways to avoid work. Suggestions?