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.
Hey cool, this is exactly what happened in the years leading up to the French Revolution of 1789. When people were starving, they ended up attacking grain/food shipments and just stealing them. This resulted in repression from the King, which escalated the tension, in a positive feedback loop which ended up collapsing French social organization.
Unfortunately in the UK we aren’t as revolutionary as the French. We’ll probably just lick out oppressor’s boots.