Mick Hartley

Janice Turner on Jack Polanski’s latest:

For a tribune of the left, Zack Polanski is an astounding elitist. On BBC Question Time the Green Party leader said high immigration was essential because “I don’t know about you but I don’t particularly want to wipe someone’s bum”. The scoffing condescension. Me? Wipe a bum? The very thought! So of course a privileged, private school-educated man such as Zack needs to import an infinite Untouchable caste.

Beyond the insult to people entering Britain with higher skills than failed actor and boob hypnotist Polanski, it was a crass reduction of care work to bed pans. The magnificent Yorkshire women who tended my bed-bound mother for four years said wiping up bodily fluids didn’t bother them: the hardest part of their job was maintaining a calm, cheerful demeanour for the frightened, querulous old people in their care. These “bum wipers” were also trained in complex medical procedures and end-of-life care.

But for Polanski bum wiping is intrinsically low-grade and therefore beneath him. He reminds me of those fathers who “don’t do nappies” and hand a whiffy baby back to its mum. Because, the world over, bum wiping is mainly women’s work: repetitive, dirty, thankless, only noticed when it is not done. Which is why it is unforgivably low-paid, and will remain so as long as liberal globalists like Polanski demand lives of frictionless convenience at a bargain bin rate.