four months of snow

horsemouth has completed his first 'week' of work (something like 12 hours together with something like 9 hours of mostly unpaid travel to and from donkey portage bookings).

the uber of the donkey portage word has not come yet (and now will not come) - instead by judicious use of registration requirements and expensive auditing requirements the government has ensured that a direct deal between the customer and the labour cannot be done. this will ensure the continued existence of agencies who will now drive down costs by driving down wages right across the sector (until it collapses because people can no longer afford not to work a less than minimum wage job in order to do it).

the government has already ensured that wages will fall by instituting a 'race to the bottom' (requiring the lowest bid to be accepted regardless of ability to perform) in the name of 'value for money' and (by regulation designed to ensure a professional service) ensured the correct barriers to entry to prevent the workers from selling their services directly (and thus saving the taxpayer at home - you lucky lucky people - money).

why is horsemouth even surprised? they after all have a vast amount of experience with the roaring success that was railway privatisation.

... and yet here we (all - mostly) are again.

horsemouth has something every day next week - he's trying to spread himself a little more thinly - he realizes that he cannot get much sympathy due to his low working hours - even the government would like him to work more hours - sore shoulder or not. marvin (the paranoid android) had (you will remember) a terrible pain in all the diodes down his left side - horsemouth has mild pain in his shoulder and various neck ligaments etc. he is still decades from retirement. again he would like to apologise to you for the gig economy.