Get up that chimney

A happy New year to all of you. Its the festive season which has generated my first thoughts of the year.

During the industrial revolution, the use of child labour was commonplace and well documented by Dickens and others. It provided a source of cheap and subservient labour at a time when the momentum of the revolution needed to be maintained. they worked in mines and factories performing a wide range of menial tasks in terrible conditions. ...and you tell the youth of today that, and they just won't believe you... to paraphrase Monty Python.

Now we are in the midst of a new revolution, and we are missing a trick by not deploying children to help.

I am referring of course to the technological revolution which continues at a pace that adults are struggling to keep up with.

What I say, therefore, is lets get the child labour principle back in vogue. I think when you go to Richer Sounds, Comet, PC World or elsewhere and purchase something, you should get a seven year old thrown in. You can take them home, get them to configure and install the particular electrical product you have purchased and away you go. The child can be fed at your discretion with portions comparable with the size of the task they have performed, and then a call to said retail outlet will result in a cab arriving to take them back for their next assignment.

That should keep them off the streets, teach them that a square meal does not automatically turn up when they are hungry and that the better they are at something the more they are rewarded....more? the boy asked for more?