A Cambridge Journal

by Stephen Hewitt

This column will be an attempt to record the details of daily life in a country advancing more and more rapidly into Orwellian-style totalitarianism.

Sunday 18 November 2007

This evening I found myself in the market square outside the Guildhall with a large crowd of people who were there to see the Cambridge Christmas lights turned on.

Although he was taking photographs like a tourist, the young man standing in front of me had one hand on some switches inside a lamp post, evidently waiting to turn on the lights at the appropriate moment. He was wearing a yellow jacket with "Lamps & Tubes Lighting Engineers" on the back. I asked him if he was turning on all the lights or just some of them. He replied in a foreign accent and bad English that he didn't speak English and told me that he spoke Polish. The lights on, he closed up the lamp post and went on his way.

So now you know. Cambridge Christmas lights are not turned on by the City Council, but by a private company exploiting (no doubt cheap) Polish labour.