Lunch hour labour

Maybe because I am so busy these days I am particularly alert to news about working patterns, as included in last month's post. But even I was gobsmacked by an article in last week's Evening Standard about folks who moonlight during their lunch hour. Some Londoners are now so desperate to cover the basics of day to day living such as heating and the weekly shop, that according to the website for freelancers,  PeoplePerHour, they even will work in their lunch hour. Now, I am prepared to work early morning and/or late evening around a day's work but in my lunch break - ye gods ! Services such as dog-walking, copywriting, book-keeping and bike-fixing were amongst the 'moonlighting' jobs quoted. It's called 'Hourlies' and is the hottest area of new service growth. How lovely - even more opportunity to work oneself to death !
Though on a more serious note, the recent exposure of mis-treatment of migrant workers in the Middle East, due to the focus on Qatar's World Cup plans, is well overdue. That really is a slave labour situation where workers are paid a pittance for 15-hour days in deathly heat. During my visits to the Middle East in recent years, I have been astounded by the number of 'worker bees' on building sites in boiling temperatures and from a distance, the scruffy and barely adequate accommodation that they are forced to live in, in extraordinary contrast to the palatial office and residential blocks that they are working on. Not that truly is killer work and we don't know we 're born in comparison.