Queensferry Crossing

I was very sorry to read about a construction worker losing his life today in an accident on the new Forth bridge. My sympathy goes to his family. Another employee has minor injuries and I hope he makes a good recovery.

It's normal to hear people talk as if all jobs are risk-free and we can always expect them to be. If you work in an office, as Jeremy Vine has said on BBC radio, you should expect to be safe. Not everyone has that assurance and pillocks like Jeremy don't seem to get this basic fact: most people don't in fact work in an office. They don't have toilets laid on for them, or a canteen where they can get subsidised food or have a locker for their stuff - or have a Health & Safety officer onsite.

Many workplaces are not safe. Some just can't be.

Construction workers, factory workers 'on the line', farmers, truckers, train drivers, fishermen, postal workers, mechanics, police and other emergency services - all of them and many more run risks every single working day.

Scotland has a terrible record in workplace accidents. Employees here are often put in a position where they have to work faster, finish later so they drive home tired and often in the dark - and they work longer hours than in almost any other country in the EU.

A few years ago, I read an article in New Statesman by Melissa Benn (yes, daughter of Tony and sister of Hilary) in which she mentioned the small army of workers needed to look after her children, clean her house, and deliver her shopping and ironing. All this so that Melissa could be freed up to be what she wants to be: an intellectual, someone who spends a lot of time thinking and producing good ideas and writing them down for the rest of us to enjoy. It never seemed to occur to her that the people who did all this work for her deserved her consideration. And some of them might even be good thinkers and good writers but will never get the chance to show us what they can do.

I think we are at the bottom line here of what's wrong in the UK: people who need things don't appreciate people who make things and deliver services and basically keep life going. It seems everything should have a price and that price should be rock bottom.

There's a debate going on in one wee corner of Facebook right now about whether we think £45K is a big wage and whether people earning that amount should pay more tax than those on  £25K. Honestly? I'm a Green, so yeah. But then I also think we need to scrap the minimum hourly rate in favour of the living wage, set a limit on the profit utilities companies are allowed to make, make people who got a free education and a student grant pay some of it back - and consider whether people who got tax relief for their kids and family allowance and tax credits should also pay some of this back when the kids start to do well.

We could start with a bit of understanding: we don't live in a 'service economy.' We live an economy where services are shored up by the rest of the workforce. And they deserve the reward for doing that: decent wages and some guarantee of safety at work.