12 March

On Sundays I often remember the ‘day of rest’ idea we got from religion. It was against God’s will to work on the Sabbath. The Sabbath was actually a weekly ‘lockdown’. It bemuses me to watch those who hopped on the anti-lockdown train in this pandemic, as if the greatest sin was to stop us all working every day. It’s like slave philosophy, us defending our own slavery. In an ordinary year, there are over 50 Sabbath days. About 10 weeks of ‘lockdown’. Of course we long ago gave them up for the sake of continuous commerce. Just as we gave up the use of the sun to regulate our time, because clocks are about commerce too. Business invented ‘Daylight Saving’ too, so they wouldn’t have to give workers fewer hours to work to get social time in the sunshine. The people who defend it each year ‘because they like that extra hour of sunshine after work’ never seem to stop to think - why does it have to be ‘after work’? We’re now all ’on the clock’. It’s not progress.