The truth about the lies about the miners in Chile.

Look, I’m not sure how to put this politely, so I’ll just say it bluntly. You’re an idiot.

It’s not just you. It’s everyone on the planet apart from me. So there’s no need to take it personally.

Though you should all be ashamed of yourselves. How could anyone honestly believe this nonsense about Chilean miners being rescued? It’s patently ridiculous.

I know you may have been fooled by the constant news reports, the footage of people walking around above the mine with fancy digging equipment, the crying wives, the letters supposedly sent up from under the ground. And I’ll admit the mistress was a good touch. It added a little romantic drama to distract the suckers (that’s all of you people) from the central flaw in the prank’s logic.

And the flaw is a whopper. We’re actually supposed to believe that people care about miners.

Let’s be clear about this. Nobody on this planet has ever given a damn about people who work in mines.

In China there is a death in the mines every thirty minutes. These deaths are caused by shoddy equipment, a complete absence of safety procedures, forcing children to work seventy hour weeks, and every imaginable shortcut taken by mine owners to make money.

But nobody cares. Nobody stops buying goods from China. And the reason for this is simple. They’re only miners.

It’s not just China, of course. All around the world miners get treated like cheap disposable tools, and when they try to organise to get a better deal, the standard response of governments is to send in soldiers to shoot them. And why not? Sure they’re only miners.

Of course, it isn’t only miners that get abused like this. Their families are fair game. After the Tories were finished battering the British miners in the eighties it was perfectly acceptable to leave the miners and their families in devastated towns with no industry, no jobs and no future. It was perfectly fine to look the other way and think that the profits in the City of London meant that thousands of people weren’t consigned to lives of pointless crime filled misery. And why not? They’re only the descendants of miners.

Those men who were pulled from the ground this week are no different from rabbits pulled from a magicians hat. And just as we all know that Paul Daniels doesn’t actually use a zoo to keep his head warm, you should have known that the whole rescue was a sham.

That was stupid of you.

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