These Foolish Things: It could be you (1995)

The Scavenger column from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It could be you

Mistake! This print-out from a certain charity’s head office should never have been sent out to its members—because against every name there was a cryptic comment about the person’s housing and social status—for fund-raising purposes. Here are some of them:

Low rise pensioners

       Sweatshop sharers 

Rootless renters

       Pebble dash sublopia 

Bijou homemakers

       Aged owner occupiers 

Gentrified villages

       Rejuvenated terraces 

30s Industrial speculative

      Corporate careerists 

Low rise subsistence

       Smokestack shiftwork 

Co-op club and colliery

      Depopulated terraces

Who concocts jargon like this?

Getting rid of pollution (1)

Albright and Wilson, the Oldbury chemical firm, has just set up a joint venture with Hunan Resun Industrial General Corporation in China to manufacture wetting and foaming agents for detergents and toiletries. This adds to the manufacturing plants they have already established in Singapore, Malaysia. Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

The night-time emissions of foul smells from their Oldbury chimneys may soon be only a fond memory. They will have moved to the other side of the world.

Getting rid of pollution (2)

GEC Alsthom of Rugby is to build £2 billions-worth of power stations in China, including a second nuclear installation at Daya Bay, association with two French companies. But this one will be 20 percent cheaper than Daya Bay I because China has forced down the price. Nuclear power stations are no longer popular around the world. The People’s Democracy of China, however, has no such misgivings.

Getting rid of pollution (3)

Resio Moses, a senior official from the Federated States of Micronesia, said pacific governments are worried about “numerous approaches that have been made to some island countries by unscrupulous foreign waste dealers.” These South Pacific nations have recently agreed a draft treaty banning the passage or dumping of all hazardous waste in the region in an attempt to halt this growing branch of capitalist enterprise.

Three in a cell

Britain’s prison population of nearly 52,000 is increasing by 250 a week. New blocks costing £55 million are being built in an attempt to house the 2,000 surplus to capacity. Six private prisons are planned for the future but none of these is likely to be ready for about two years. Meanwhile, severe overcrowding, like that of the 1980s, seems inevitable.

The Scavenger