Cryogenics, Robotics and Workers’ Rights – you couldn’t make it up…

You see, I’ve been frozen for a year and they defrosted me last week…to wake up to this!

What a difference a year makes. I awake to the news that the world’s most powerful democracy is going bonkers; our own democracy has decided to exit the EU; and France’s latest tilt at radicalism is to tax robots and give humans free money…and that there is a draft EU motion to apparently give these robots some form of ‘human rights’?...

I’m told it’s not some cruel joke being played upon me for boldly going coldly where no-one has been before – it’s all actually TRUE…

The U.S. is trying to protect its workers (good thing) through protectionist policies preventing imports of nicer cheaper products from abroad (bad thing). It’s not keen on robots either. Although some people are suggesting aliens are already in charge over there...

Meanwhile, its old allies in France are in danger of being run by a socialist who wants to protect its own workers by taxing the machines which are apparently taking the jobs of those poor workers still in need of half a carafe and a kip in the afternoon. Sacre bleu!

I’m also reading somewhere that ‘robots will be given worker’s rights’…(“ The draft motion called on the European Commission to consider "that at least the most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations". )

Now it could be just me suffering from early-day neuron defrostation, but am I the only one who can see a potential problem here?..

As I emerge into the cold light of day only to then feel the white heat of democracy self-combusting, the world also appears to be under threat from an invasion of irate machines no-doubt whirring excitedly at the prospect of becoming fully-fledged workers, thanks to the EU.

My advice to my new fellow well-oiled workers is watch out…if the more bonkers Eurocrats have their way they’re about to tax you for the privilege of parity with us less-reliable, more troublesome humans!

Then what happens? Who’s going to negotiate on behalf of the machines? Who’s going to fight their cause for equal rights in the workplace? Let’s face it, if they're taxpayers like the rest of us, they deserve fair representation…

And then of course you’ll get every half-automated piece of code jumping on the bandwagon claiming parity...but they’ll regret it when they see for every piece of protectionism offered to them, they end up paying two pieces of silver back in tax.

And then what happens when the National Union of Robot Workers is eventually run by someone we don’t even know? We cannot see them to negotiate with. The lights go off and we don’t know who to blame? Stuff just, stops…

Once eccentricity is lost to electricity, and there’s no room left for a little downtime in the sunshine, and you can’t afford your new 8-litre Cadillac anyway. Where will it all end?...be careful what you wish for….