21 miners have been trapped in a mine in China after a flood.
Although, the longer we dangle our tape recorders down the small hole drilled to speak to them, the more we think that they might have done this themselves…
“Is Covid over?”.
“Is the Communist Party still out there?”.
“Has the new season of Love Island started yet?”.
…are the cries that boil up to us from the darkness below.
Not, you could argue, the most pressing issues for the 21 men trapped underground by rising waters.
We hate to be the kind of news organisation that says, “these miners have trapped themselves for the clout”, but we do think they might have had a hand in the events that unfolded purely so they could come above ground at a more peaceful time in the world.
Chinese miners famously have some of the strongest unions and care deeply about worldly issues, such as global pandemics or reality TV.
The above could be true, we wouldn’t know, but we can’t imagine the famously liberal and open Communist Party would be against people grouping together for collective action.
