Christmas is not that far away
As you know - you get Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" pushed down your throat in some form or another every Christmas.
What gets me about this story is that it is obviously a load of Liberal (in American terminology, “liberal” means something completely different in Europe – for my European readers use the words “extreme left-wing”) hogwash where a good employer called Scrooge gets taken to the literary cleaners while his employee, Cratchit, for some reason gets all the plaudits. This Dickens was obviously some sort of Communist lackey.
It is time that the true story was presented from an infallible Conservative perspective. Consequently, please find below the abbreviated version told the way the story should be.
NB – anyone wishing to complain about copyright, use of the original names etc, I am perfectly prepared to modify the text to take that into account.
It is some time in the mid 19th Century in England.
Eberneezer Scrooge, a hardworking small businessman, is desperately working hard to keep his business afloat.
One of his employees is a certain Bob Cratchit. This guy is obviously a dangerous Communist. He does not take his responsibilities seriously. He is always goofing on his job, showing more interest in what is happening at home, pretending his son is sick, and certainly not concentrating upon his job to the detriment of his employer's business.
Despite the obvious difficulties that his employer is undergoing, he is pushing for extra paid holidays (he wants Christmas Day off for starters!), full health insurance for his family (no, he is not prepared to take full responsibilities for his son's alleged medical needs himself), and, though it is not directly stated anywhere, a massive wage increase, which could well bankrupt his employer. And this despite no promised increase in productivity.
His son, Tim (nicknamed "Tiny" as he has not reached full growth for his age - maybe because his father is probably whittling away his income on booze rather than providing his family with food), is malingering at home.
He should, like any normal kids of his age at that time, be doing the usual sixteen-hour shift at the local factory. He would not be earning much, but it would be in his interests (according to the infallible logic of the never mistaken theory of trickle down economics) long-term, it would teach him the work ethic necessary to make him a valued member of society, and the occasional necessary beating with a rod would teach him proper respect for authority.
The story takes a weird turn when something happens to Scrooge. It is not abundantly clear exactly what, but it would be fair to surmise that Cratchit, being the deviant Communist that he is, slips some sort of opiate into his boss's tea (in the 20th Century this could have been done with LSD, but at the time of the book, this obviously was not available).
When he gets home, Scrooge, already exhausted from his strenuous efforts to keep his company afloat and keep his idle workers from slacking, falls asleep and, obviously impacted by the opiate, starts to hallucinate about ghosts and how wicked he has been, and what a foul future he faces if he does not change.
Wonderful things these opiates! The voices in these hallucinations start telling him to be generous to the Cratchits. Consequently upon awakening, he gets loads of presents for "Tiny" Tim, and goes round to the Cratchits' house and, abominably, gives in to every one of Cratchit's demands! Extra holidays, better wages - he even agrees to cover all of "Tiny" Tim's medical bills himself. He is last seen wandering round the city uttering some fool phrase like "A Merry Christmas to You All".
Not mentioned in the book (Communist revisionism as ever), Scrooge is forced into bankruptcy, and eventually into poverty. Cratchit gets a job as a Trade Union organiser earning five times as much as Scrooge ever paid him, but the Union can strong-arm employers into paying, threatening them with what happened to Scrooge. Meanwhile "Tiny" Tim is now out on the street begging. There is nothing more touching to passers-by than a crippled child begging (even a child, as here, pretending to be crippled), and Cratchit finds the extra income useful for buying the copious amount of beer that he consumes.
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