This morning it struck me where things are heading.

We have London becoming increasingly dominant in terms of the UK economy. We have London house prices going to stratospheric levels and far, far out of reach of most ordinary people and large swathes of London becoming home to the relatively and extremely wealthy. We have a cost of living crisis. We have a government wishing to starve out the unemployed, cut housing benefit costs and cut immigration.

So, where's it heading? The answer is staring us in the face. It will be back to the future - send your girls into service in London. No need to worry if some of the big house owners do not have sufficient income to pay wages because they government will send those claiming job-seekers allowance to work for free.

Far-fetched? I don't think so - it will be the logical conclusion of current thinking and an economy that does not function for all.

Posted at 11.13pm, so now we know the exact time that the combination of too much vodka and your black dog anxieties kick in.

Its strange because I thought it would be much later.

Will girls be allowed to do those sorts of jobs in the shariah law Britain of the future?

Will girls be allowed to do any jobs? Or will it be like the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Let the message above serve as a warning to any of our younger members: DO NOT POST WHEN YOU'VE JUST COME HOME ROARING DRUNK

Thought it had to be tongue in cheek. After a quick post search, it isn't.

Dally touches on an interesting issue, although perhaps not in the way that he intended.

Historically, because it's really not that long ago that the UK still had upstairs, downstairs etc, the idea of 'service' is not well received in these islands.

But does that also mean that the service sector as a whole is seen as not an industry into which young people in particular want to go or are encouraged to go?

I'd suggest that generally low wages don't help, but that that can become part of a cycle.

Or is it 'aspirationalism' that says that working in a bar or a restaurant is not a decent, long-term job?

Perhaps more closely echoing what Dally is describing, how do posters here feel about private households hiring a cleaner – assuming that any person who takes such a job is paid the proper rate and is treated with the respect they'd treat any other person they came into contact with who was doing a job?

I can well imagine that relatively affluent young dinkies or high-earning young singles with either no "house sense" or no interest in keeping the house clean would be better off employing a cleaner, not demeaning at all, it converts the employer's money into free time and the cleaner's time into money ... and the cleaner would probably be a professional cleaner with several or even many clients, rather than being the the looked-down-upon Mrs Mop of the old days.

If the cleaner is originally from a mediterranean country, the client will pay a fortune for the gallons of bleach and polish but the house will absolutely reek of reassuring cleanliness.

You could term it as domestic outsourcing, like getting pizza delivered instead of cooking.

As an aside, I have an elderly aunt who has employed a cleaner for many years, even when she (the aunt) was at home all day with little to do.
Like a lady who lunches.
She was tut-tutted by family disapproval on that count, the general consensus being that she was a "mawk" and way "above herself".
Mind you, she used to tidy-up before the cleaner arrived, she didn't want the cleaner thinking they were an untidy family.
She and the cleaner used to spend more time drinking tea together than the cleaner spent cleaning.

Just to give you an insight into how the modern day "staff" work, a few years ago when she was unemployed my wife applied for a cleaners position from the web site of national branded household cleaning company and was put in touch with the local franchise - thats the first point to make, you deal with franchisees in your area.

The local franchisee who not by coincidence had an office in one of the most affluent areas of our city came to our home to interview her and almost immediately offered her a position as a supervisor for the simple reason that she had her own car.

The job entailed her visiting a number of private homes in the rather affluent area in order to do a set regime of cleaning in each property, as a supervisor she would be responsible for picking up and dropping off one or perhaps two other cleaners and for distributing them to other houses for their cleaning duties, at the end of each week she would also be responsible for collecting the money from each of these houses and for banking that money, and she would also be expected to tout for more business in the area to develop her "role".

Travel time between properties was not paid for, you were paid per completed property and the number of properties given to you was down to your franchisee, there was no mention of compensation for the use of your car but then again she didn't get that far into the conversation before she decided that it wasn't for her.

I did ask her later "What the fook does the franchisee do then ?" because it seemed to me that the whole job offer was no more than self employment with the franchisee giving you the starter pack of houses and pocketing the proceeds while you got by with not much more than minimum wage.


After that she went for a trial afternoon at a nursing home, but thats another story

I believe the future of the service economy is where the everyday taxpayer will have the licence to force the unemployed to do household chores for them at a moments notice. This will all be done under the threat of losing your benefits so expect the vulnerable to be bullied into 24/7 servitude by those that currently treat the unemployed with utter contempt. After all taxpayers deserve to get value for their money and don't have enough time to do everything because they work.

There's no doubt this idea will be an election winning policy proposed by the Tories sometime in our lifetimes.

Can we choose which race we want?