Can’t pay, won’t pay!
November 11th, 2009
Much handwringing in the news this week over an apparent “epidemic of middle class shoplifting”. Turns out we’re the best in Europe at it, and look at what’s happening:
Hundreds of retailers said shoplifting surged as goods were taken for personal use and not for re-sale by organised criminal gangs.[...]
employee theft is also rising. Branded “silent shoplifters” in the trade, employee thieves are more prolific and steal goods worth £1,585.
First off, these aren’t separate groups of people. “Middle class” is a cultural category, but these are workers as much as the ones in the stockroom. (If you have to go to work, you’re working class, whether that’s as a teacher or a mechanic.)
I think that people are waking up to the fact that they’ve been sold down the river. Their pensions are under attack, their wages are being cut, their jobs are under threat. Our electricity bills rise at the same time as massive profiteering by the privatised utilities (Scottish & Southern Energy also called one of their workers a terrorist). And at the same time, our services are being cut to pay for a deficit caused by an economic crisis we had no part in creating. And yet there’s literal billions of our money thrown at the banks.
They’ve been taking the piss and maybe, just maybe this is a sign of more of us waking up to the lies.
