Sting in the Tail: Warning to our readers (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Warning to our readers

Shock horror! A spate of muggings in what was once ‘appy ‘ampstead has resulted in some very valuable Rolex watches being nicked.

Several of the well-heeled fraternity including one of Michael Heseltine’s daughters and ex-model Jilly Johnson have had their prized timepieces snatched from their persons. Some of the watches cost as much as £20,000 and one is described as being “diamond encrusted' (Guardian, 29 April.)

In a cunning and very well publicised attempt to surprise the muggers, decoy policemen wearing fake designer clothes are parading around Hampstead sporting imitation Rolex watches provided by the company which is, naturally, anxious to see that its customers are not discouraged from buying the real thing.

So our warning to all our readers is: do not go up to Hampstead flaunting your £20,000 Rolex as you could easily be mistaken for a policeman.

Somebody tell them

What happens if you put a lot of predatory fish, large and small, into a fish tank and leave them to get on with it? That’s easy, the little fish get gobbled-up by the big ‘uns.

This is what has happened in Britain’s passenger bus industry since it was deregulated in 1985. The government’s declared aim was to end “public monopolies” run by municipal authorities and “open up the industry to competition”.

For a while, this is what happened as lots of new operators emerged to compete with privatised ex-municipal bus companies for a share of the lucrative market.

But since then hundreds of the smaller companies have been taken over or forced out of business by biggies like Stagecoach or Badgerline, and the end result will be a few big companies each aiming for the legal maximum of 25 percent of the market.

The government and its think-tank advisers completely failed to foresee the so-predictable consequences of their policy, but shouldn’t capitalism’s loudest advocates at least understand how the bloody system works?

Natural unemployment?

Socialists are used to dealing with well-paid apologists for capitalism’s shortcomings. Politicians who tell us that it is natural to be aggressive and acquisitive. Priests who tell us that it is natural to have poverty amidst plenty.

Now we have another piece of “natural” nonsense. The economic journalist Evan Davis in the Independent (20 April) wrote a column entitled “How Much Unemployment Comes Naturally?”. He reviewed various “expert” opinion on what the natural figure for unemployment might be. One of these groups of experts, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, comes up with a figure of 6.4 percent. He favours a figure “of about 5 or 6 percent”; this is based on comparing the commercial property market with the labour market.

“There are significant ‘hiring and firing ’ costs in both—so companies usually don’t hire property by the day any more than they hire labour by the day. Well, I am told by those who work in it that a typical period in that market might see about 6 percent of buildings unemployed, or vacant. ”

One pleasing aspect about the establishment of socialism is that such experts as the CEPR and economic journalists will be freed from their arduous research and allowed to pursue some useful occupation.

Poverty and TB

The British Medical Journal recently carried a report that the incidence of tuberculosis is rising. In the last five years there has been a 12 percent increase.

“Anyone can catch tuberculosis but it is more likely to spread from person to person in overcrowded conditions and individuals who are badly nourished or otherwise in poor health are less liable to fight off the infection, ” says the British Medical Association. Dr John Moore-Gillon and Dr Malcolm Law of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, have now discovered that TB is 10 times more common in the poorer tenth of the population than the richest tenth " (Herald, 13 April.)

The increase of unemployment and homelessness has led to an increase of this poverty-related illness. Just another example of the needless suffering of a section of the working class because capitalism is more concerned with profits than public health.

Who are the immigrants?

The Observer (30 April) under the headline “Jospin hopes to recruit Le Pen’s rag-tag army” reported that the so-called Socialist Party in France were eager to get some of the votes cast in the first ballot for the National Front candidate.

“Pierre Buccelato, 60, is one such voter. A former builder who found himself among France’s three million unemployed when recession struck, he now sells flowers on the edge of a sprawling estate . . . Railing against the foreigners who he claims are awarded council flats ahead of ‘French people ’ he said he once voted for Mitterand but now agrees with Jean-Marie Pen’s National Front. ‘Immigration is why we have no work. Get rid of the immigrants and we’ll get our jobs back,’ he insisted, pausing to admit that he himself was an Italian immigrant who had arrived in France in 1957.”

All workers must seek wages wherever they can. Blaming “foreign” workers for unemployment is stupid. In the world recession of the 1930s there was hardly any immigration to France but there was high unemployment. As long as workers support politicians like Le Pen, Chirac or Jospin capitalism will continue, with all its problems.