Olympic Project Breaks Rules and Delivers Anarchy

There is an interesting story in today's Mail about a Lithuanian man who is being paid £50-a-day to spray concrete on the Olympic site in East London. Outrage is the mood because he has been classed as a "local". He lives in Leytonstone (5 mins away) but he has only been in the country for five minutes. The Olympic Delivery Authority appears to have been caught out being very creative with the application of its own pledge to leave a legacy of skills for "local" workers in the East End of London who everyone of course assumed at the time meant "British" workers.

Usually this kind of double-cross would infuriate me to the point of blind seething rage, however, I started to think about it, counted to ten and then something occurred to me. Who the bloody hell else are they going to get for that amount of money other than Eastern Europeans? Nobody, that's who! I would argue quite confidently that there are absolutely no real "locals" left in the East End anyway, let alone any who would work for that sort of money. In fact, the East End having always been a magnet for immigrants is just about the worst place the Olympic project could've been sited if the government was genuinely looking to create jobs for British workers.

Apart from the logistical impossibility of finding an authentic "cor blimey guv'nor" Eastender to do the job, the amount being paid is actually illegal because it's under the national minimum wage. The more important question therefore I think is how, on a government lead project is anyone being paid under the national minimum wage in the first place, regardless of where he comes from. It occurs to me that most people when breaking rules do so in isolation whilst adhering to others in the hope that they will not be noticed. The current government from day one, seems to be of the mind that if it breaks as many of its own rules as possible then it would be impossible for anyone to hold it to account for any of them because nobody would know where to start or more importantly...where to end.

If I'm not too far off the mark, I am pretty sure that this is defined as anarchy...an interesting conclusion I dedicate to Lithuanian worker Arturas Normanths. I hope he finds a better paid job in the near future.