A shoplifter says she feels bad about stealing from shops: ‘the police need to stop people like me… [the shops] are trying to do business, so when you’re stealing it’s costing them money’ (BBC News, 1 Oct)
She might imagine they put up their prices to cover the loss, but that’s not how it works. They already charge what the market will bear, so any ‘shrinkage’ has to come out of their profits.
Why do people steal? See this month’s Standard for a personal view.
A John Lewis executive argues that people are not stealing for need, but for greed. Easy for them to say. The cost of living has skyrocketed, while Nottingham police report a 36% rise in shoplifting since July 2022. Surely no coincidence there.
It’s been nice to see a broad generational trend towards tolerance for LGBT+ people, considering the entrenched bigotry that seemed to pervade western societies until quite recently.
A new study suggests a darker side to this trend though, particularly among conservative voters. It turns out that if you ask them straight out, they’re not very tolerant of LGBT+ rights, gay marriage etc. But if you first prime them with pictures of Muslims, whose religion is widely known to be homophobic, they profess themselves much more tolerant of LGBT+, possibly as a way to justify anti-immigration views.
‘This may indicate that the liberal credentials of the UK, and other western nations, is likely far more superficial than first thought.’ Indeed!
If you’d walked around big London rail stations like Victoria before the pandemic, you’d have seen streets like dormitories, lined with people in sleeping bags.
Then, when the state wanted people off the streets during lockdowns, accommodation was miraculously found.
Now, around one in 50 living in London are thought to be homeless. The cross-party group London Councils estimates that nearly 170,000 people in the capital are living in hostels, bedsits, or temporary accommodation, a probable increase of 17,000 in a single year. The group thinks this includes over 83,000 children. Many more people are sofa-surfing or ‘roofless’, ie, sleeping rough.
So much for caring, sharing capitalism.
How exciting that a sign of life may potentially have been discovered on a distant planet, especially after last year’s thrill over phosphine on Venus turned out to be a damp squib. And what a feat for science to be able to spot (or maybe spot) an organic molecule on a planet that’s 120 light years (1.1 million billion miles) away.
Who but a terminal cynic could be indifferent to discovering life in the cosmos, even though there is zero chance of us ever visiting it? Mind you, the cynic might point out a certain irony in that capitalism spends a fortune looking for life on other planets, while simultaneously doing its best to obliterate life on this one.
There’s general disbelief in England right now as over 100 schools have been closed right at the start of the autumn term, because the concrete in them is in danger of collapse. The same is reportedly true of much of the country’s building stock including hospitals.
The Romans knew how to make concrete for buildings that are still standing after 2,000 years, so how come modern concrete buildings are falling down? The answer is because the Romans didn’t use cheap concrete designed only to last 30 years. The stuff is so bad, say structural engineers, it shouldn’t even be called ‘concrete’.
This is typical of the Bodgit & Scarper short-termism of capitalism, where private savings today take priority over public disasters tomorrow.
Shout out to the protesters in Syria, braving a brutal regime for the second week running and demanding Assad’s head on a spike.
They’ve attacked ruling Ba’ath party offices, calling for wholesale political change, and no wonder. The currency has depreciated threefold since last year, and 90% of the population is below the poverty line. ‘People want a fair government, and al-Assad’s regime is incapable of giving his people that…’
Governments oversee the wholesale capitalist exploitation of people and planet, and that can never be called ‘fair’ in any circumstances. But there’s no denying the protesters’ courage. The global revolution for socialism has to start somewhere. Why not in Syria?
If you just got here from this BBC article about our recently published accounts, you might be wondering how come a socialist party that wants to abolish money seems instead to be amassing it.
You may as well ask why, if we’re so concerned about the depredations of modern capitalist production, we don’t try to help by living in unheated caves and eating grass.
The article is wrong in one detail. Nobody in our Party pays ‘fees’, or any kind of compulsory dues. Members can choose to pay donations, the amount being up to them. Just like with all our tasks and activity, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.
A bit different from most other organisations you know, we think you’ll agree. Go here to find out more.
Are you struggling to make ends meet on the UK minimum wage of £10.42 an hour (or less if you’re under 22)? It’s even worse in the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’.
If the US federal minimum wage had gone up in the last few decades at the same rate as Wall Street bonuses it would be a mighty $42 (£33) an hour. In fact it hasn’t gone up in 14 years, and is still where it was in 2009, a widow’s mitey $7.25 (£5.69) an hour. That’s only slightly above what UK employers pay 16-year-olds.
Capitalists (like Trump) are living the American Dream, while workers virtually live on air and work for free.
How is it that Britain has its lowest unemployment rate on record, while around one in five are classed as living in poverty? That’s capitalism working normally, folks.
14.4 million in 2021/22 were living on the breadline according to the UK government’s own figures. That includes nearly one in three children (29%), a figure that’s risen by around 600,000 in the last ten years. 71% of those children belong to a family where at least one adult is working.
The rich get richer, but you won’t. The Food Foundation estimates that a further 800,000 people will end up in ‘absolute poverty’ over the next year, and child poverty is expected to rise by 170,000 by 2027-28.
Doncha just love Tory politicians? They can’t help showing themselves up. Every time they open their mouths, out pour the tactless attempts to gee up workers with faux-positive thinking. Recently the work and pensions secretary suggested that over-50s could find rewarding new careers delivering pizzas for Deliveroo:
“What we’re seeing here is the ability to log on and off any time you like, no requirement to have to do a certain number of hours over a certain period of time, which is driving huge opportunities.”
Er no, what we’re seeing here is a gig economy which provides no holidays, no sick pay, no guaranteed hours and no pension scheme.
In the words of Del Boy, “What a plonker!”
