Went to the supermarket today to spend what little I have left on my gift card. I am not having much luck getting a response to my mutual aid post this month so I knew people must be hard up. But in the supermarket I’ve found they have now put electronic tags on almost all the food, even really cheap items. I always buy basics, nothing fancy, so none of the items I’ve bought before ever had a tag on them. But today my usual staples did. For the first time I had to call the attendant over to remove the tags and she thoroughly checked my receipt first to make sure I wasn’t stealing anything. I guess many more people are now in food poverty and turning to shoplifting to survive. I also saw a tiny little girl holding up a cheap block of cheese and asking her mum if they could get it and her mum apologetically saying no, they couldn’t afford it.
There have been reports in the news that food banks are running out of food due to more people needing to use them, combined with fewer donations as fewer people have spare money now. And my local food bank was already awful, giving mainly drinks and such tiny amounts you go hungry a lot if you have to rely solely on them. Now it’s going to be even worse. How much longer can this go on? How many more people are going to starve? Meanwhile a news report from yesterday says Jeff Bezos’ wealth has increased by another £24 billion this Friday!
This fucker is worth $260 billion while a mother can’t afford a piece of cheese for her child. Clown world.
Though not as extreme as in the US I’ve seen the same tendency in Denmark where I live as well. Lidl has put tags on coffee, chocolate, meat and lots of processed food, like small chicken sausages, the kind of slop you would feed to children. In the supermarket where I do most of my shopping the more expensive cuts of beef has been locked inside a metal cage.
Some foodstuffs have doubled in price over the last few years with salaries lacking behind and benefits and pensions lacking even more behind the salaries.
They even have the tags on £3 blocks of cheese, the cheapest cuts of meat, the really cheap butter and even £1 bars of chocolate.