Wearing a ten thousand euro Rolex on your wrist is not in itself a sin, and even less so if your partner gave it to you for your fiftieth birthday. The problem arises when at the same time you are the Secretary of State for Education, and, on the day that three hundred thousand teachers go on strike because they say that their salary is not reaching them, you go through the radio and television studios to ask them for "salary moderation" with the artifact well in sight.
It is not news that conservatives (and politicians in general, from all parties) are privileged few far removed from the reality of life of the working classes. The vast majority of prime ministers, cabinet members, judges, and newspaper editors come from Oxford, Cambridge, and private school, from those schools that cost fifty or sixty thousand euros a year, almost as much as Harvard or Yale. But it is an investment that has no failure, your future is assured, you are going to belong to the ruling class.
This is the case of Rishi Sunak, a billionaire and the richest parliamentarian in the House of Commons, who wears shoes for five hundred euros and suits for five thousand. Not so much that of his Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, born into a working-class family in Liverpool and who left school at the age of sixteen. But she knows that she has prospered in life and she considers herself entitled to wear a Rolex without having to explain herself to anyone. She considers the criticism she is receiving to be "reverse snobbery".
The matter of her watch already arose a few months ago, when she was photographed with it. But she has resurfaced with more fury, flaunting her husband's gift coinciding with a massive strike in the education sector, the strike of three hundred thousand teachers and the total or partial closure of 85% of public schools, and the consequent heartache. head for parents who have to go to work and have nowhere to leave the seven million affected children. A problem alien to the vast majority of politicians, conservative and non-conservative.
In the United Kingdom, salaries in the public sector have been frozen in real terms for fifteen years, many teachers earn just two thousand euros (which in cities like London give very little), and now the increase in the cost of living forces them in some cases to work on weekends as cashiers in supermarkets in order to complete their income and be able to pay for electricity and the shopping basket, which have gone through the roof. There are cases of educators who sign up for free food banks.
In this context, it has not been particularly opportune for Keegan to ask them for wage moderation so that inflation does not rise, with his Rolex on his wrist. “He has no authority to demand anything of us, the millionaires who make up the Cabinet have not the faintest idea of the pressures that civil servants and workers in this country are subjected to,” said union leader Paul Nowak.
For the Secretary of State, going with her Rolex is the most normal thing in the world, something that has been earned hard, and never better said. For the teachers on strike, it is an offense. There are cases of educators signing up for free food banks.
In this context, it has not been particularly opportune for Keegan to ask them for wage moderation so that inflation does not rise, with his Rolex on his wrist. “He has no authority to demand anything of us, the millionaires who make up the Cabinet have not the faintest idea of the pressures that civil servants and workers in this country are subjected to,” said union leader Paul Nowak.
For the Secretary of State, going with her Rolex is the most normal thing in the world, something that has been earned hard, and never better said. For the teachers on strike, it is an offense.
