So the UK government has been having talks with British supermarkets to try and convince them to introduce voluntary price caps on basic goods such as bread and milk to help consumers through the cost of living crisis...
This all feels a little last minute, a little desperate: the UK economy has been mismanaged so badly for the last decade and a half of Tory rule, accelerated most of all by Brexit, that we've got the stage where millions of ordinary people can't afford to feed themselves, and most of these people are actually working.
This means people aren't earning enough to feed themselves, and the Tory's solution: ask food corporations to take a tiny hit to their profits to hold the prices of basic goods level for a while, so at least the workers have bread and milk.
I mean things are pretty imbalanced: Tesco made £750 million profit last year, it usually makes well over a Billion, and all they're being asked to do is to slow down the rate of extraction.
Of course the Torys won't consider anything too drastic like price caps or setting up some sort of nationalised basic food infrastructure (which wouldn't be a bad idea TBF) as they are ideologically committed to maintaining the system for optimal extraction: so their rich buddies can make as much they can from the British people without the system cracking.
And that's what this ploy is about: get the supermarkets to look good by voluntarily agreeing to a temporary price cap on a few goods - the meeting was probably to co-ordinate things of course, it makes no sense not to do this, take a 5% reduction in profit for a massive image boost in the eyes of the British public.
But of course we shouldn't thank either the government or the corporations, they are just part of the global elite who have mismanaged the economy so it's gradually working for fewer and fewer people, and this is just another sticking plaster in the hope that things will be better this time next year.
Which they obviously won't be.
One of the (many) worrying things is food security - both maintaining supply chains and the quality of food in the supply chain. We seem to have a lot of food producers going out of business through a combination of Brexit, pandemic, weather and the hold that supermarkets have on prices to farmers. Whatshername Coffey (is she still the Minister? Can't keep up) doesn't seem to give a proverbial about any of it.
The News Quiz was quite good this week about the comparison between this dying government and the John Major one (not that I'm a fan of parliamentary politics, but it's what we currently depend on) and how both governments were cannibalising themselves and everyone else in the country.
Extraction is right, shameless.
Fair points, this is just focussing on the damage at the front end, I think I heard something about that ripping themselves apart on R4, the end is in site, time for the red Tories to have a go!
😁
The 'food industry' is horrifically evil in so many ways anyway. The milk example is one where the government already pays large subsidies to farmers to keep it all going.. Meanwhile the role of cow milk on many health problems caused by the acidification that results in the body of those who consume it, continues to fill up hospitals and to make giant profits for other corporations.. While keeping the population at a low energy/health level.
They will never do anything substantial to improve the health and welfare of the population because their actual intent has always been and likely always will be to crush the population as much as possible, without triggering violent revolt - in order to artificially boost the position of their own groups. This isn't hard to understand, but the massive denial that pervades society has people thinking they can vote their way out and that 'people are generally all good and want the same things'.. Neither are remotely accurate
Yes I'm not a fan of large scale solutions either!
'solutions'
I think it is going to be forecedly rather than voluntary, at least in some countries.
'strongly encouraged!'
It’s all a joke! They all making tons of cash
Too damned much!
It becomes difficult to do in this way, but here in Pakistan, there was also an attempt to do such things that the poor people will be given cheap petrol, but it has not yet been possible. Too much would be good because it has become more expensive to survive. The people who are rich here are getting richer because they kept their money in dollars, and the value of the dollar has gone down here in the last couple of years. The petrol used here used to be 100 rupees a liter, now it has become 280 rupees a litre. Everything has tripled in price.
That's much worse than here, I know inflation is a problem in a lot of places, we've got it relatively easy but even at 10% it's a problem!
Yeah you are right.
How long are they going to keep up with the games and camouflages? Trying to look good in the eyes of the public by taking a profit hit is not going to fix the economy. Someone should tell them that to their faces.... That's if they will listen.
Yeah the economy needs a total rebalance!
I completely agree
I think the same applies to the US and also here in Japan. How long before the system cracks? I just read a piece the other day about how a good half of workers in Japan can no longer afford groceries comfortably. Wages have been stagnant for... well, about 3 decades in Japan. But everyday goods and houses are jumping in price every year.
It's the same all over the world, all that money going to tax havens and with the return on capital so low the logic is to just extract more and more, it makes no sense - we need to focus on redistribution!
Does the UK have anything analogous to America’s SNAP (food stamps)?
I don't think we do, just universal credit, although there may be food bank vouchers, something I'd have to look into.
Therr are no doubt that yhe government has mismanaged the economy
Now, they are trying to do something about it but things have spoilt beyond control
That's neoliberalism for you!
The big supermarkets have too much power. Okay, so I do shop at one, but I buy some stuff from smaller suppliers. The fact that some people cannot afford basic food in this country is a scandal. You even have a minister who says people should not even expect to be able to have cheese sandwiches! They are scraping the barrel for talent these days.
The growth industry these days is food banks.