KEYWORDS Episode 5 - Paying The Price

In this 6-part series, comedian and activist Mark Thomas, in his typical style of drawing attention to things the government might rather we forget, talks to essential workers about how they carried on, continuing to hold things together, while the government, in the words of Boris Johnson was ’totally fucking hopeless”. Mark asks what changed for them, what stayed the same, and what the future holds.This week Mark asks key workers about the financial and health impact of covid 19 on their lives. Talking to pub workers, McDonalds staff, carers, bus drivers and cleaners about the financial burdens they have borne this week we ask: What is the knock on effect of the UK having the worst sick pay rate in Europe? How can Johnson claim the arms of the state were put around the working class when 8 million people fall through the gaps of Statutory Sick Pay levels and eligibility? We all knew that Black and Asian workers were disproportionately effected by Covid 19 but what was done about it? Mark's previous podcast collecting working peoples testimony was for the Wellcome Collection - Mark Thomas’s Lockdown Check Up - which followed NHS and care staff through the first lockdown has now been put into the Wellcome Collection permanent archive.www.markthomasinfo.com

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