For hardworking people? What about the rest of us?

Labour and the Conservatives are falling over each other to be the party that represents hardworking people. But where is the party for those of us that would rather work a bit less, if we’re quite honest? Sadly, it isn’t there.

I was out campaigning for the Labour Party last weekend, as is my wont. Afterwards, some of us retired to the pub for a well-deserved drink. There, I joined a conversation involving two Labour councillors who were extolling the benefits of taking sleeper trains around the country.

The main advantage of this, they said, was that there was no ‘dead time’ – one went to sleep in Aberdeen, presumably hunched over one’s laptop having sent e-mails furiously to the limit of consciousness, and then woke up refreshed in London, just in time to get to the office for 9.30am and start working again.

I think I fairly started salivating at the mention of ‘dead time’. What I wouldn’t give for some. I said something along those lines, about how the excuse to do nothing for a while would be most welcome, and they looked at me as if I was an alien.

So, in an attempt to move the conversation on and hopefully get someone to crack a smile, I repeated the joke I’d read on Twitter that while the Tories said they were the party for hardworking people, where was the party for the majority of us?

They didn’t get it. ‘But the Tories aren’t really the party for hardworking people, if you look at their policies,’ came the response. At first I tried to insist: ‘No, but whatever their policies are, the point is that they have to say they are standing up for hardworking people. But what about the rest of us who…  oh, never mind.’ I gave up. Frankly, I couldn’t be bothered.

The fact is that the Tories and Labour do both have a lot of policies and rhetoric aimed at hardworking people, it’s just that in the former case it’s hardworking people who are well-off, and in the latter case it’s people who, despite being hardworking, have not so much to show for it.

But then there are the lazy aristocrats, and the people on benefits who just can’t even get out of bed, because they simply can’t be arsed, and nobody seems to be even trying to win their votes. Is that not peculiar? I assume they far outnumber their diligent counterparts, and if not, they certainly outweigh them.

And I’m not entirely sure hardworking people are inherently any better than people who’d rather just have a sit down and stare into space for a while.

This worship of toil has been going on for far too long. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, and industry, I believe, one of the cardinal virtues. I’d look it up, but it would be too much effort.

The idolisation of drudgery may have served the human race well enough in the past, but I am beginning to think that this obsession with hard work is starting to be counterproductive.

Look at all the recent disasters that have taken place in the developed world, and you’ll find that they were caused by those who put the most hours in: Bankers, accountants, management consultants, entrepreneurs, lawyers, politicians, regulators.

The entire financial crisis had absolutely nothing to do with people who were sitting on their sofas watching TV, and everything to do with hyperactive financiers, regulators and the like.

Look at any huge fraud case which leads to lost jobs, ruined careers and huge, expensive financial clean-up operations, and you will find starring in the production a cast of actors who never seem to sleep but are constantly engaged in networking, hatching plots, typing up reports and filling in spread sheets.

Regard instead great artists like Da Vinci and Michelangelo, who always missed their deadlines, and not because of overwork but because “divine inspiration would not keep to a timetable.”

They produced arguably near-perfect masterpieces, whereas the highly qualified workaholics at outsourcing behemoth Capita make dreadful fuck-up after dreadful fuck-up.

We’ve reached the point in the article where I ask whatever happened to the 15 hour week promised by economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1930, he predicted that technological progress would allow us to spend more time doing whatever the hell we wanted instead of slaving ourselves out longer and longer in order to scrape by.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that so many middle class people are now conned into thinking they find their work rewarding or fulfilling in some way, and therefore are only too happy to put in extra hours gratis, because the good work they do is payment enough in itself.

These are the people who made the rest of us look bad at school, because they had always done their homework. They make us look bad now, because we would rather be sitting on the sofa staring into space than getting something productive done, because we couldn’t ever find that perfect job that was so socially useful that we would practically pay for the privilege of doing it, and anyway, we had a pint at lunchtime and we are feeling very sleepy.

And while we’re on the subject, some people basically do pay for the privilege of doing one of these supposedly worthy jobs, and then do unpaid overtime on top! At least, I’ve heard of these people. They’re called interns. I’ve never met one, though, probably because they are always at work or collapsed somewhere in an exhausted heap. Sometimes their parents pay for them to maintain this absurd lifestyle, if they are rich.

Then at the other end of the spectrum you get the really high earners who you'd think had earned a rest, but who just won't give up. Instead of sharing their 80 hour a week job with someone equally capable and cutting their six figure salary in half in exchange for a normal sleep pattern, which would furthermore slash unemployment in the blink of an eye, they hold on to their unmanageable workload with the iron grip of the irredeemable control freak.

But you can’t really blame the political parties for appealing disproportionately to hardworking people, because those are the people who vote. The rest of us, when it comes round to election day, often can’t be bothered.

It’s time for us to fight back. Those of us who would rather just have an easy life need to seek representation, we need to knuckle down and write a manifesto, and get out and vote each other into power, and then, my brothers and sisters, I am telling you we could have that 15 hour week! Slackers of the world, unite! I’d stand under this banner myself, but it sounds like an awful lot of work.