One of the most sinister and indeed cynical aspects of industry today, is to look at the laws that exist using highly paid legal professionals, and then find the gaps or loopholes that are not covered, and then identify the opportunities that they can exploit.

Under the guise of being self-employed, many people who want to work are drawn into ‘employment’ that may appear to pay well in terms of hourly rates. But the companies hiring them – who are actually just dodging the additional costs associated with employing people frequently fail to make clear that the rider, courier, driver or whatever trendy name their role has been given has to cover the costs of carrying out whatever work they do from whatever they are given too.

What the media don’t tell us – as good investigative journalists operating without fear of the consequences would do, is that many of the companies that function within or are wholly dependent upon the gig economy can only exist because they have found these loopholes to exploit people legally and therefore make their platforms profitable when they wouldn’t be in any other way.

Many of these companies are now very well known. They may well be bringing something you have ordered using an app to your door today. Yet the people coming to all of our doors to provide these services are being exploited in potentially many ways, whilst our politicians champion such ‘opportunities’ as being ‘jobs’.

Regrettably, the reason the gig economy exists is a) because the people behind them have a lot of money and influence over our politicians and b) because we like having easy and quick access to whatever we want and especially so when we believe that for us its ‘cheap’.