You might have thought that any measure aimed at helping struggling households during a cost of living crisis would be welcome, particularly at a time when there’s an ever widening gap between the richest and the poorest. The Scottish Government has proposed to introduce a price cap on essential basic grocery items in order to help families who are struggling to put food on the table. It is in fact a terrible indictment of decades of UK Government economic, employment, and benefits policy that such a measure should even be necessary in the first place.
But that’s not how BBC Scotland and the anti-independence press in Scotland see it. BBC Scotland and the anti-independence media in Scotland are embarking on one of their bouts of apoplectic fury that the evil Scottish Government is daring to prioritise the interests of the poor and the vulnerable over the interests of large and profitable companies.
Compare and contrast, Scotland’s First Minister wants supermarkets to cap prices on essential basic food items in order to help with the cost of living while the UK Prime Minister wants to give supermarkets free labour in order to help them with their profits. This is free labour which will allow them to reduce the number of paid staff they’ll have to employ. But we’re supposed to believe that it’s the First Minister who is the out of touch bad guy here.
If the Scottish Government succeeds in forcing the supermarkets to take a loss on basic staples like milk and bread, the supermarkets can recoup the cost from raising prices on non-essential, luxury, or premium items. I’m quite sure Sainsbury’s Asda’s Tesco’s and Morrison’s shareholders and board members will survive. I’m also quite sure that none of them have ever had to fret about not being able to afford a loaf of bread.
Last week Burnham announced the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s would offer 10,000 placements to young people from October, with a focus on those receiving free school meals, as part of his government’s bid to tackle youth unemployment. Sainsbury’s is receiving this taxpayer subsidised free labour despite the company laying off 3,000 workers in 2025 even though it posted more than £1bn in operating. Burnham is enabled a very profitable company which has been shedding paid positions to exploit free labour from underprivileged communities. The BBC has no issue with this.
Martin Abrams, the Green party leader of Lambeth Council posted on Twitter: “Andy Burnham promised to ‘end neoliberalism’ but supporting a scheme to provide free labour for billion-pound companies will only serve to perpetuate it.” Quite
Naturally according to BBC Scotland it’s the SNP which is doing the reprehensible thing here. Will no one think of Sainsbury’s profit margins! The BBC’s Great British clutching pearls are in aisle three, next to the Union flag themed fainting couches and the bottles of Kaye Adams brand concentrated Unionist bile.
What sort of country have we become and what sort of media do we have when giving free labour to a company which just posted £1 billion in profits and has made 3000 workers redundant is allowed to pass unremarked by most of a media which sees it as a desirable “business friendly” policy but a measure to reduce the burden on the poorest households during a cost of living crisis which the poorest did not create is received with angry hysterics.
There was a “discussion”, well I say discussion, a more accurate term is hatchet job, on the policy on BBC Radio Scotland. First Minister John Swinney was invited onto the programme to talk about the policy, or rather to defend it to a universally hostile panel of business figures and Jackie Baillie, doing the ‘Will no one think of the millionaires?’ routine which is symptomatic of the Labour branch office. No representatives from anti-poverty charities were invited to comment. No one who might support an SNP policy can be given airtime. It might create the impression that a party which has just won its fifth Holyrood election in a row is not in fact as universally reviled and loathed as it is in Pacific Quay.
What kind of people aren’t interested in solving poverty and making food more affordable? People who have sold out to corporate interests that’s who. We’re looking at you, Dame Jackie. We’re looking at the only people BBC Scotland thought to invite onto a programme which was discussing reducing poverty and making food more affordable.
Setting her British nationalist scene by insisting there is “overwhelming opposition” to the policy, despite the BBC’s own vox pop segment featuring people supportive of it, the BBC’s Laura Maciver used the opportunity to ask John Swinney what must possibly be the single most asinine question a BBC presenter has ever put to a first minister: “Who likes this idea apart from you and people who are obviously interested in solving poverty and making food more affordable?”
Yes, she really did say that. It must have sounded much better in her head. She really thought it made her sound like a good journalist to declare to the public who pay her salary that the eradication of poverty is in her world view a very narrow minority interest.
Let me translate MacIver’s question from the BBC’s SNPbadish: “Who likes this idea apart from you and everyone with a basic functioning sense of human decency?” This is the kind of ludicrous nonsense that is spouted on our so called public service broadcaster when everything must be refracted through BBC Scotland’s number one priority, the need to defend Westminster rule in Scotland at all costs.
BBC Scotland and the Labour party both fear this policy could be popular and an example of how Scotland can do things better than a Westminster which is entirely in the pocket of corporate interests. That must be prevented at all costs. Expect a barrage of attacks on the policy co-ordinated by BBC Scotland with the aim of destroying it as the bottle return scheme was destroyed. If it means that families in poverty can’t afford bread and milk for the weans’ breakfast that’s just too bad, collateral damage in the BBC’s war against support for Scottish independence.
After wrestling for hours with PayPal, I have finally compiled a list of the emails of almost everyone who makes a regular monthly donation to the blog and will soon launch the weekly bonus premium email article for those who make a monthly contribution to the blog. I had hoped to launch this in June but unfortunately it will be delayed for a while. There are a number of people whose emails I am unable to find. Some people donate monthly by Ko-Fi, one makes a monthly donation to last year’s GoFundMe fundraiser, a few people make monthly payments directly by bank transfer. I cannot access the email addresses of any of these people and so cannot add them to the new mailing list. If you are one of these folk, please email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
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