It is Labour day, so I spent the morning doing work in Cochrane and working on some emails, and then this afternoon I have spent more time working on the blogs. In the hope that things speed up, I have changed the theme at shattered light. And I have moved this theme to Tonal: this is an ultraminimalist theme that hides much of the backdoor stuff. Might as well do some work, as the entire Labour day story is nothing more than a myth, as Rodney Hide notes (Hat tip Cameron Slater)

The Labour Day bunk dates from the start of European settlement. Carpenter Samuel Parnell arrived at what we now call Petone aboard the Duke of Roxburgh. The Duke was just the third migrant ship to Wellington. Parnell was newly married, 30 years old and had travelled from London in search of a better life. He found it.

On-board was shipping agent George Hunter, who asked Parnell to build him a store. Parnell agreed but on the condition that he work only eight hours a day. Hunter wasn’t happy. Eight-hour days weren’t the custom in London, but he had little choice: there were only three carpenters in Wellington. Hence was born the eight-hour day. The practice caught on. For more than 100 years we have celebrated the eight-hour day as a victory for trade unionism. We know it as Labour Day which, on the fourth Monday of every October, is a public holiday.

We hear every year of the union movement’s long, hard struggle. It wasn’t easy winning the eight-hour day, we are repetitively told. Without unions, greedy employers would have us working every hour, every day. It’s a myth. The so-called victory had nothing to do with unions. It was simple supply and demand. The demand for skilled labour was high in the new and growing settlement. The supply was low. Parnell could have negotiated more pay. But he chose fewer hours. That was his choice. That was the free market. Every Labour Day we should be remembering how the eight-hour day was “won”: it was by two men negotiating, no third party involved.

One of the things that is happening in my life is I am going more analog — in part because of the nasty habit people have of trolling through ideas. My best ideas are often put on a white board or written up as emails. I am learning to put these thoughts down on paper: in particular when doing analyses (which I was doing this morning) noting the results in a lab book. I prefer bound notebooks: I lose bits of paper and I have too many of them. In addition, despite using Google calendar for years, the analogue method of sorting things out works better, and is a little more secure.

In this time, when everything is online and ultraorganized, going analog is a quiet means of taking back control. Now, at present I intend to continue to blog online particularly the lectionary, but the longer essays may take a few days to work out, and some paper. For once it is on a computer, secure it is not.