Comment: Rachel Reeves is "othering" non-workers believing they're modern-day graft dodgers

I've seen them everywhere. In the streets, in shopping centres, in the parks and fields. 

They are the people called out - I think that's the term these days - by Rachel Reeves in her "othering" (ditto) Budget. Rachel champions above all the working people, mainly union members, distinguishing them from the "others", the non-working people, the NWPs. 

These are, in Rachel's view, modern-day graft dodgers. And in putting her finger on them she has followed in the footsteps of the great Des Lynam. You'll remember, or maybe probably won't, that during one crucial England fixture played during the day Des introduced the coverage, not with his normal welcome to viewers, but with the accusatory: "Shouldn't you be at work?"

That more or less sums up Rachel's Budget.

Let me admit I have met and consorted with non-working people, and generally have found them pretty decent sorts. But this week I had a dream in which I took up Rachel's war cry and descended on a High Street in our region during working hours armed with a bag of red feathers, to seek out their haunts.

First stop was a little cafe where I came across a couple. I find that it is best to broach these things with an initial air of icy civility.

"Hello," I said. "Can I ask what you are doing here?"

"We're pensioners," they replied. "We're out shopping for blankets for the winter."

"Are you working people?" I asked.

"We haven't done any paid work for 20 years," they admitted.

I reached into my bag and gave them their red feathers.

"Wear them next to your poppies," I snarled.

"But we worked our fingers to the bone every day for 45 years to earn a measly pension," they whimpered.