In The News

There was quite a pile-up the other day on the main road to Tuas. It involved five lorries carrying workers (in fact there were two separate accidents on either side of the carriage way) and there were some fifty or so casualties. Anyone here who drives to work early in the morning would be able to picture the kinds of lorry involved, the way they are driven, the way the workers are stacked on them, and why there were so many casualties. Fortunately no one was actually killed. The firms employing the workers said the lorries were legally loaded and so they probably were. It's amazing what the law is prepared to accept when it comes to the treatment of foreign workers.

My own experience of factory work - I worked for the best part of a year before going to university and got jobs in factories for almost every school vacation from the age of fifteen, as well as working weekends as an industrial cleaner - was a powerfully educational one. It taught me to do what was necessary not to end up having to do such work to earn a living. And I've got a feeling the guys injured in the pile-up probably faced much worse conditions than I ever did.

The curious thing about being at the bottom of the heap is the clear view it affords of how societies operate at their very roots, as it were. It's not particularly pretty. The odd thing is that the people I worked alongside (not the students being employed, but the 'real' workers) were uniformly decent, admirable types - even the ones who were a bit crazy.

I suppose this all sounds a touch romanticised, hard labour recollected in tranquility, but it's as true as I can make it, or remember it.

The papers here are always telling us how prosperous this little island is. It seems odd to me that it can't afford proper buses for the people building it.