Waitrose is a chain of 200 UK supermarkets flogging high-quality nosh at extortionate prices. The company is run as a co-op and prides itself on its image of ‘corporate social responsibility’, despite its core client base being the over-privileged English white middle-class. Its branches are concentrated around London, there are only four in Wales and two in Scotland. Some readers of this blog will recall that way back in January we got into a discussion of Waitrose in the comments to my Anti-Capitalist Shop Closure Wish List. I made my feelings about Waitrose clear then when I wrote:
“Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership but I object to their client base. Watching the mega-rich residents of the Barbican complex in the City of London campaign to get the supermarket that had been Safeway and more recently Somerfield on Whitecross Street turned into a Waitrose was pretty horrible, but all part of the (anti)-”social cleansing” of the area. When it was a Safeway, and latterly a Somerfield, this supermarket used to have a lot of working-class customers from nearby Peabody and council flats (social housing) but they’ve all pretty much disappeared. Instead middle-class Barbican residents shop at Waitrose, rather than having to trail all the way to the M&S Foodhall on Moorgate! These days it’s the poor who have to trudge further for their food, they’re not jumping in cars and taxis like the owners of flats in the Barbican would. Scumsuckers!”
This comment floated back into my mind as I was cruising for Waitrose reduced price bargains (food that had reached its sell-by date) in the Canary Wharf branch yesterday. While doing this, I noticed the stupid slogans on a line of Waitrose “Cooks’ Ingredients”. One thing that particularly offended me was the strap-line “Discovered by Columbus” on their red chillies. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, there were indigenous civilisations and peoples on the continent for thousands of years before he arrived. Columbus was an imperialist! Which leaves me wondering whether or not Waitrose care that the fraudulent claims carried on its chillies will piss many people off (mainly those too poor to do their main shopping in their chain). And just how much did the idiot who came up with this offensive piece of marketing spiel get paid for the inanity?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by Justin McKeown on 2009-06-24 08:46:12 +0000
There’s no Waitrose in Northern Ireland. I’ve always used that as a kind of barometer of the populace.
Comment by dave kelso-mitchell on 2009-06-24 09:25:29 +0000
I dont honestly think that it will piss that many people off to be honest. I think if they wrote on the cans that Robbie Williams discovered China people wouldnt bat an eyelid any more. In fact I think that the climate of consumer-passivity has reached such a peak that more people would object to you ‘making a fuss’ than they would to the abominations that advertising companies get away with nowadays.
btw – as regards false advertising, I was lured here from Facebook on the promise of sexual deviance involving chillis. Very disappointing.
Comment by Adrienne Deaville on 2009-06-24 10:47:53 +0000
I have known Waitrose to sometimes respond to customer emails of comments/complaints. Perhaps we all should cut and paste your blog to Waitrose and see what happens? Also–I think for the same reason a certain section of the public these days like to flash their “bling” even though we know they probably don’t have a job and probably stole all their gold jewelry and Burberry, the Newark-On-Trent Waitrose in my area has a large class section shopping there. So, you can look at it as another sort of “status symbol” or maybe certain people just don’t care about comparing prices before they buy. I personally don’t shop there much (unless it’s the discount bins) as I refuse to spend more for something I can get cheaper elsewhere…but maybe it’s more to do with the city than the Waitrose…I’m not sure. People buy into anything no matter the class. I’m always confused by the hoards of poor people who shop at the 99p and 1pound places when they can get most of the things sold there for about half the price at Tesco, Asda, etc… People buy into it. Still I must admit, as elitist as Waitrose seems to some…I still feel worse shopping at Asda as it is now a part of Wal-mart and being from America I have seen first handedly how many jobs that company has destroyed and devastated the whole country basically changing everyone’s way of life to suit the Wal-Mart power. Some small towns literally revolve around the local Wal-Marts. When I found out that their cancer had now moved to other countries…it’s pretty much downhill from here. Wal-Mart is the new Columbus.
Comment by Phina on 2009-06-24 11:32:58 +0000
Blatant false advertisment about blatant false advertisment!
Not many people care about Native Americans. I feel blessed for having Sioux grandmother, and the teachings she has past to me. Being “red” at one time was the worse thing you could be. Still to this day Natives don’t have equal rights/laws, wether that is because they are rebellious and refuse to live under the government that runs America is a different matter.
As Dave pointed out, more people would object to any fuss being made than would actually make a “fuss”. A rather sad state, but the beat goes on.
Comment by Adrienne Deaville on 2009-06-24 11:38:03 +0000
I just checked to see if those chillies are on the Waitrose website–they don’t seem to be. Hopefully discontinued? Next time I am actually at a Waitrose I will check for them. If I see them there I will definitely send an email complaint.
Comment by Michael K on 2009-06-24 12:07:52 +0000
Bring back Kwik Save!
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 12:08:18 +0000
Behold the Spear Burning — over yonder.
What a long way from home
I and I longing to go home
Within a Red, Green, and Gold Robe
Come on Twelve Tribe of Isreal
Come on Twelve Tribe of Isreal
Out a Jam Down land ya
A whole heap of mix up mix up
A whole heap a ben up, ben up,
Come on Twelve Tribe of Isreal
Come on Twelve Tribe of Isreal
Out a Jam Down land ya
Christopher Columbus is a dam blasted liar
Christopher Columbus is a dam blasted liar
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 12:11:48 +0000
Phina, why is it that nearly every American I meet goes on and on about having Cherokee and Sioux grandparents, even those who are so obviously Anglo Saxon?
What’s that all about?
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 12:12:27 +0000
I hope you are not one of the yanks I mentioned.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 12:22:22 +0000
Billy Bob Thornton ,Burt Reynolds, Tarantino, Johhny Depp, Val Kilmer, Johhny Cash, Ward Churchill ( lol ) , Chuck Norris ( ! ) , Justin f***g Timberlake,Tori Amos — all have errrr…….urrrmm…..native Indian origins — apparently.
Don’t these people have any shame?
Here’s more —
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Self-identified_people_of_Cherokee_ancestry
Comment by dave kelso-mitchell on 2009-06-24 13:42:55 +0000
Those ‘Native Americans’ did put it about, didnt they!
I love it when they claim to have Irish ancestors, to which I usually remark, ‘who the fuck hasnt?’
Comment by Time on 2009-06-24 14:00:26 +0000
north american indigenous heritage is kool
Comment by howing wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 14:04:37 +0000
Here’s another one FFS — Tommy Lee Jones — apparently ( lol ) has a errrr…..urrrmmm….Cherokee grandparent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Lee_Jones#Early_life
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-24 14:07:52 +0000
Columbus by Harold Pinter
Columbus-lumbus-lumbus!
Columbus-lumbus-bus!
Bussss!
Bah-bus!
Um… Col…
Sub.
© Harold Pinter 2009
Comment by howing wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 14:17:29 +0000
Here’s another phony “Indian” , Ward Churchill, freaking out when he is caught out over his “Cherokee ancestry”…. What a total a..hole.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN0ZxytJ1G4
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-24 14:38:01 +0000
Wheezing Wizard by Harold Pinter
Wheez-wheez wizard
Toads and lizards
Potion bubbles
Shriek!
Eek!
Joan!
© Harold Pinter 2009
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-24 15:13:57 +0000
If you are saying I am a witch just because I have my shopping delivered from Waitrose I am not impressed Harold. And yes I do prefer to have my salmon delivered rather than fish for it myself! This is war – you may think you have the best fishing tackle from Glasgow but I know that the ‘fish don’t know you’.
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-24 15:16:27 +0000
Joan baby, what are you going on about? I’m a poet, not a fisherman.
Comment by howing wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 15:26:03 +0000
“(Trivialization in our existence is partially due to ) an “end of realism”, the end of a belief in absolutes, the end of belief that the world is ready made to be our home, with all the rules to be kept already laid down and built in. People are becoming de-traditionalised, nomadised, “casualized”, as the old fixed points of reference disappear — Instead of marriage a series of relationships, instead of a home, a series of addresses, instead of a career, freelancing, instead of belief, whatever one is currently “into” ,instead of stable identities , pluralism and flux; instead of society, the market and one’s own circle. Culture seems to have become all fringe and no mainstream. Popular (and essentially trivial) beliefs multiply exceedingly; but it’s all a fad. None of it is to be taken seriously, because it is not clear that anything is, or can be taken seriously anymore. There is a complete break with the past along with the rapid movement of capital, people and ideas around the world. There is a pervasive sense of groundlessness and outsidelessness. “Is that all there is? You mean this is it?” This loss is becoming so complete so quickly that very soon historians will find it very difficult to re-imagine what it was like to genuinely believe in something” ( c/f “The Time of The Angels” Don Cupitt 2003 )
Comment by howing wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 15:28:37 +0000
Within anarchism and fascism the state is fetishised from both negative and positive perspectives. This polarisation takes place within rather than between these creeds. If the Italian fascist movement was able to arrive at the altar of state worship through a combination of Mussolini’s widely praised translations of the Anarchist Kropotkin and an engagement with anarcho-syndicalism, certain strands of the Nazi movement were able to oppose the interests of the state with those of the nation. One of the principle errors in the seemingly antagonistic positions defended by anarchists and fascists — is the idea that the state is the source of all social power. During the middle ages, feudal modes of class exploitation were maintained despite weak or non-existent states. Likewise, today, capitalist social relations are anchored in economic institutions which can and do function independently of the state. Capital reproduces itself not only within nation states but across nation states
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-24 15:30:13 +0000
Don’t you baby me! And I do know that I believe in Waitrose and fisherman (metaphoric or otherwise).
Comment by howing wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-24 15:36:17 +0000
In the old consciousness identity was something metaphysical ;now it increasingly became simply a corporate ID, not a substance but a sign. Reality itself was becoming only an effect , something conjured up within and by the motion of signs. The line between drama and documentary,reality and fiction became blurred. ( After God, Introduction, ix )….
“In modern, media led culture , we have in effect a return of the Middle Ages: it used to be the church that supplied everyone with an imaginary world in their head; now the media do that job,with celebrity as the new sainthood…..in the all encompassing anonymity of the new global culture.”
“In the new high rise post modern cities of South and East Asia,the wipe out of tradition is breathtaking –without any obvious resistance or regret,and within a single lifetime. It is perhaps the most severe and sudden cultural rupture in the whole of human history. The new global technological culture brings with it a very naturalistic cast of mind. The world is like a communications network. Everything is open,public,accessible and all on one level. Nothing is deep and nothing can be kept hidden for long. There is no secure privacy…the world of signs is a flowing , one level continuum with no one outside and no secret places….The presumption is that we can draw at least one clear line…between the public and the private, between objectivity and subjectivity ,or between the dominant culture and the counterculture . But post modernity as a cultural condition has been constituted precisely by the erasure of the erasure of these very distinctions. The public realm, the sea of meanings , is outsideless and endless,nothing is fixed;everything moves and shifts together. It engulfs everything ,incuding values , private life,selfhood and the counterculture. There is no way of hiving off a little cluster of meanings ( absolutes, certainties, or fundamentals) and preserving them unchanged. On the contrary, as the long history of religious esotericism demonstrates,meanings and truths kept unchallenged and out of the public view very quickly deteriorate into simple nonsense.”
“In the new understanding of culture as a system of signs in motion ,the world of symbolic meaning in which we live is …an unanchored floating continuum. All reactions against it must use its vocabulary and are therefore part of it, and will be engulfed by it. You cant really drop out. There is nowhere to drop out to. Your protest against the system remains a part of the system.”(INTRODUCTION vii — xv )
Comment by dave kelso-mitchell on 2009-06-24 15:55:23 +0000
Wow, Mr Toad-Wizard. Do you get invited to a lot of parties?
Comment by Tim on 2009-06-24 16:21:31 +0000
Stewart,
It is amazing, after all this time, how little attention is paid to the people who inhabited the Americas before the Europeans came along and ‘discovered’ it. Even I, raised in northern Canada with native Indians, was only dimly aware of the history of the MesoAmericas – and aware not at all of the history of the non-Plains tribes so popularized in cowboy and Indian westerns like the Iroquois and the Cherokee.
In fact the Aztec city of Mexica was one of the largest (and most beautiful – even the conquistadores were stunned by the city’s art and splendour – before they razed it to the ground) cities in the world at the time of contact, the Iroquois held a territory covering most of the eastern North America, the Maya had their own great cities, astronomy etc . . .
That Mel Gibson can get away with making a film about the Maya that shows them practicing human sacrifice says it all. THe Maya didn’t practice human sacrifice, at least never on a mass scale. The Aztecs did, but even there you have to understand sacrifice as part of the Meso-American cosmology – they didn’t kill in battle, but took captives for sacrifice – and most Meso-Americans considered it an honour to be sacrificed. I’m not saying they would have LIKED it, but it wasn’t just some bizarre killing cult, but part of a larger whole.
Something like 90 % of native Americans dropped dead in the years after contact from European borne disease. Without this fact, the Aztecs, the Iroquois and many, many others would never have been conquered and the Americas would be a very different place. Surely this Apocalypse is one of the greatest dranas in human history – a drama that is still unfolding – it’s amazing that so little attention is paid to it.
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-24 17:37:45 +0000
whatever
Comment by Inqalab on 2009-06-24 18:36:15 +0000
Da Inqans discovrd Inqaland around 30,000 yrs ago. Wi should abolish da EG from Inqlish lankwij, reinstat IQ and rturn to our Inqlish roots.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-24 21:08:18 +0000
Wow, quite a debate today… Too much to pick up on….
Tim thanks for pointing out it was European disease wiping out the native population that created a situation in which the imperialists were able to conquer the Americas… An important fact that is often left unsaid….
And Howling Wiz, you do the best cut ‘n’ paste, you use some fabulous sources!
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-24 21:36:29 +0000
Oh Harold, honey don’t be like that… why don’t you pop over and I will cover myself in Sainsbury’s baked beans and you can recite from Das Kapital?
Comment by dave kelso-mitchell on 2009-06-24 23:43:14 +0000
Ilove the way the obviously anglo contributors to this site make ironic comments about people of ‘obvious anglo saxon’ background making claim to being native anmerican, when it’s been proven that about 80% of people claiming to be totally ‘English’ are in fact no such thing.
In fact there is no such thing as ‘anglo saxon’. The whole culture is made up of a mixture of all sorts of disreputable cultures cobbled badly together over a period of centuries. Nobody makes as much fuss about their nationality as they do and yet ‘methinks the lady doth protest overmuch’.
Comment by Díre McCain on 2009-06-25 01:13:33 +0000
In the province of the mind, what is believed true is true, or becomes true within limits to be learned by experience and experiment…
Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder or HPPD is a psychological disorder characterized by a continual presence of visual disturbances that are reminiscent of those generated by the ingestion of hallucinogenic substances. Previous use of hallucinogens is a necessary, though not sufficient, cause for the disorder. HPPD is distinct from flashbacks by reason of its relative permanence; whereas the latter is transient, the effects of HPPD occur for a prolonged or indefinite period. It is a DSM-IV diagnosis with diagnostic code 292.89…
Oopsy! I thought this was Totally Tripped Out at Raven Row…
Comment by Pelantaru on 2009-06-25 03:01:05 +0000
Both in Chile and Argentina, each night of June 23rd the Mapuches celebrate the “Wetripantu”, their New Year’s Eve and one of the three large originary rites they have preserved until now. The celebration begins at night with a family reunion, and before sunrise (during the “epewun”), men, women and children submerge themselves in the nearest river to purify and renew their body and spirit, and feel the force of their God (Gnechen) to receive a new Sun.
During the early hours of the morning, the Mapuche greeting of the Akui We Tripantu marks the beginning of the New Year. It can alse be called “Wiñoi Tripnatu” (“the sun is returning yet again”). There follow several activities during the whole day, all of which tend towards reunion and the balance of family relations. To the south of the Toltén river, the Huillliches also celebrate the New Year during the Winter solstice.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-25 05:27:10 +0000
I went out for a drinking session with my American and Canadian workmates recently. Amongst them were Tom McMillan, Pete Kennedy, Jack Murphy, Tim Schmidt, Mark Eckardt, Jim Hanson, Jon Meyer,Jamie Cervenka, and Pete Wurst.
After the first bottle of whisky, half of them were all blurry eyed, telling me about the folk tales they heard at the knee of their Cherokee and Sioux grandmothers…..after the second bottle of whisky, the other half of them got all noble on me, telling me about their great grandparents castle in Austria and their heraldic coat of arms…..
Blimey — After the third bottle of whisky, it became a veritable fancy dress party, as McMillan, Hans, Murphy and Wurst got all weepy about their Arapaho,Pawnee and Creek ancestors, the rest of them got all worked up about their aristocratic auntie Von Schmidt who lived in a castle and was brought up reading Goethe and Kant… they had to sell the castle of course, which is why they had to go to America…..where their …errr……great great great uncle , Baron Von whatever, ended up living on a reservation with a Sioux chief’s daughter….
Blimey, I just didn’t know my workmates had such interesting origins – I could have sworn most ’em looked like Kentish Town locals ,squaddies from Monmouth and greengrocers from Banbury and Munster……
Oh, I just read that Britney Spears is quarter Cherokee too….isn’t that something….
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-25 07:25:12 +0000
Another pretend native indian exposed —
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2GdMqYPwF4&feature=related
Comment by The Man on 2009-06-25 08:10:44 +0000
Dude,
You really need to get some persepctive. Your ‘call to arms’ over some chilli labelling is really quite laughable. And I have so many issues with your issues I don’t quite know where to start.
What have the middle class done to be ‘over privaledged’ and since when is it a crime to be white?
In any case whatever you think about the people who use Waitrose, this is not a supermarket that should be shut down as per your anti capitalist shop closure list – and here’s for why!
Waitrose really look after their staff, who incidentally are all partners in the business. You can tell they look after their staff as when you shop in a Waitrose you’ll find the people that work there are pleasant and knowledgable and if you have any interest in what you are eating, this makes for a much more amiable experience. they get paid well, they get good benefits and surely by making the staff partners in the business this subscribes to some anti-capitalist ideal that you can cling to?
Your acertion that the prices are extoritionate is unfounded. Waitrose price match Sainsbury on many items. And in most cases the expensive items are usually foods that by their very nature are more expensive, it just happens that Waitrose sell more of these luxury items than other supermarkets. The whole experience of shopping in Waitrose can feel a luxury due to their efforts to create a nice shopping environment, but perhaps if you scratch beneath the surface you will see all is not as it seems. Their new value range offers foods of unparalled quality at reasonable prices. the ‘value’ brands available in other larger supermarkets are invariably really poor quality. Not so in Waitrose!
Waitrose have only approximately 3-4% market share, in contrast to Tesco who have approximately 30%. It is the larger supermarkets that should be attracting your wrath, if indeed you had well founded anti capitalist motives. Where actually you come across more as someone really angry, with a chip on their shoulder about something or other!
The larger supermarkets use their scale and power to drive down the costs of the goods they stock, at detriment to the suppliers and to competition. This hurts the smaller supplier companinies run by individuals, it means that Tesco can make bigger margins whilst still coming across as the shoppers champion. £1 in every £8 in the UK is spent with Tesco – this is not a healthy trend.
Smaller supermarkets need to be encouraged in order to preserve competition. Waitrose can’t compete on price with the likes of Tesco so they compete on service. Whilst they have been a regional supermarket based in the South East, they have rapid expansion plans (you will no doubt be dissapointed to learn) and they are opening up more and more bracnches across the country.
Your class issues have clouded your judgement regards your views on this supermarket. Your opening gambit that “Waitrose prides itself on its Corporate Social Responsibility despite its core client base being the over-privileged English white middle-class” is non-sensical. These are in no way mutually exclusive attributes.
Waitrose looks after its workers and it’s suppliers. It does much for charities, and it has strong ethical policies guiding its purchasing which for example ensures they only purchase sustinable fish. They are a healthy dose of competition for those of us that dont want to live in a homogenised ‘Tesco’ society. Anti Capitalists – leave Waitrose alone – they’re not your enemy!
As for me, I run a small company which I set up from scratch. I supply Waitrose, and I won’t hear a bad word said about them – the world would be a much poorer place without them.
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-25 08:37:35 +0000
You seem to be missing the point, and clearly the notion of corporate social responsibility is in itself nonsensical. And the Whitecross Street branch of Waitrose is a very clear example of this, because that has been the most effective vehicle for so called social cleansing in the area, although obviously the council led transformation of the street market there has also been a factor in this.
You also seem not to have checked the link on the post to my anti-capitalist shop closure wish list. It ran as follows (I won’t rerun the reasons why here, you can go to the actual post and see them):
- MacDonalds.
- Countrywide.
- Somerfield. (Including the comment “A big supermarket chain going bust would really send out the message that capitalism doesn’t service our needs.”)
- Marks & Spenser.
- Barclays Bank.
- Waterstones.
- Blockbuster.
- Argos/Homebase (both owned by Home Retail Group).
- JJB Sports.
- Tie Rack.
I’m also well aware that Waitrose are a co-op and part of the John Lewis Partnership, and that their food is of a better quality than that found in most of the other supermarkets. All of this was discussed in the comments to the older blog linked to on this page. Perhaps if you’d checked out what had been said in the comments to the earlier blog you’d have been able to make a more sensible contribution to this one, perhaps not.
You do have a curious email address, but you may not be the JG I’m aware of who used to run a business called, as far as I recall, “Third World Imports” out of Metropolitan Wharf in Wapping, with JB – a man with a sharp class analysis! If you are the JG I’m thinking of then I’m sure if you look through this again you will be able to make a much better contribution. Most small businesses would like to be big businesses if they could be, and just look at the expansion plans in place for Waitrose…. Waitrose is just a way for the local rich to completely screw ordinary people around places like Whitecross Street, and make themselves feel good about this as they are doing it. You have to look at the big picture – capitalism is a totalising system – not just the PR-hyped ethical elements. Of course, the working class should be eating Waitrose food too, but the capitalist racket means we can’t afford it.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-25 08:46:40 +0000
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.”
-John Maynard Keynes
“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”
-Howard Scott
Comment by The Man on 2009-06-25 14:08:23 +0000
I’m not the JG you know.
Ok, I have now read your comments from the link and am glad to see Waitrose didn’t feature on your list. Apologies for diving in head first – I don’t always have the time to link back.
I’m afraid I don’t share your pessimism regards C.S.R. Whilst it is often used as a platform for PR it is not in itself ‘nonsensical.’ As a notion it can be hijacked by corporations with dubious claims over social responsibility, but there are business’ with good motives who can use their profits and staff to contribute to society.
I’m not claiming Capitalism is a great system but as a pragmatist, it’s what we have and gradual change of that system towards a fairer society is the most realistic path towards a better world. Consumers do have the power to influence and change Corporate policy as more often than not Corporate policy is dictated by greed not some dastardly plan to destroy the Earth. Consumers need to harness this greed for the greater benefit of society. The internet is providing the means for dissemination of these ideas and the cohesion of consumers into a useful group. Have you ever come across the Viable System Model by Stafford Beer? It’s a socialist theory of system control which was triallled in the 60’s in South America. I won’t go into too much detail as it’s liely to put you to sleep, but needless to say a viable system requires effective audit controls, something capitalism with (effectively) self regulation, has always lacked. Of course, this system was doomed for a fall, and in it’s wake we have a situation where audit controls are now at least being sensibly discussed. It’s more than likely that these controls over capitalism will end up watered down and possibly ineffective. But this is part of a greater pattern, and in time the system will fail again and we will create greater controls still. I do look at the bigger picture Mistertrippy. Sometimes the parameters of change are so slow it looks like nothing is happening, but things are changing for the bettter.
As for the assertion that working class people can’t afford to shop in Waitrose – this is nonsense. A generation ago, people sepnt a much higher proportion of their income on food, we’ve all grown up in an era of plenty where we don’t have to do this. Working class people make a choice where they spend their money, and on what. It is much more cost effective to prepare and cook meals from scratch, however these skills have been lost and people waste money of pre-prepared over packaged foods. It’s amazing what money you can save by cooking real food and by understanding that you don’t have to eat meat at every meal – our parents certainly didn’t and it didnt do them any harm! There is no capitalist racket stopping working class people from shopping at places like Waitrose and eating well, it’s all about choice.
Comment by Phina on 2009-06-25 20:32:11 +0000
In answer to the question about why so many people are claiming to have Cherokee or Sioux grandparents, even those that are obvioulsy Anglo Saxon.
Well that kind of thing annoys most Natives, but a lot of American people do have native blood along the line somewhere, simple as.
There is also a Native tribe that consists of pale skinned, blonde haired, grey eyes, not the whole tribe, just the majority, this is obviously not the usual features attributed to Natives…just proves one lesson, you can’t judge what “blood heritage” someone has by their features.
Pip Pip!
Comment by Christopher Nosnibor on 2009-06-26 07:24:16 +0000
‘Corporate social responsibility’ sounds like an oxymoron to me… bring back Kwik Save!
Comment by mistertrippy on 2009-06-26 09:59:49 +0000
Mister Man. We’ll just have to disagree about whether it is better to ‘transform’ capitalism or overthrow it and the validity of corporate social responsibility. If you check back you’ll see that someone explicitly says: “…Waitrose. The food is good. I’m a foodie. I can only afford to go there as a treat though. The problem is the price. If it were cheaper then the working classes would shop there…” I happen to know the person who left this comment works as a professional chef, she isn’t buying ready meals but she is a single parent. Likewise, I don’t eat meat and I’m not fond of ready meals, but Waitrose is too expensive for me. A generation ago, people may have spent more of their income on food, now they spend a lot of their income on rents – rents in London are extortionate. A lot of people are on benefits, a lot of people should be on benefits but are denied them. People on benefits and low wages do not have the choices you claim they have and cannot afford to shop somewhere like Waitrose. Cabbies and cops can probably afford to shop at Waitrose but they’re not exactly representative of the entire working class.
Comment by howling wizard, shrieking toad on 2009-06-26 10:47:44 +0000
Stewart, you are right regarding London rents, in fact, rents anywhere in Southern England — they are extortionate.
Long gone are the days of fair rent and housing trusts. If a person didn’t get in a “secure” place then,back in the 70’s/early 80’s, it is really very tough to keep your head above water in the rental market now.
It’s criminal, literally, what landlords charge.
F*\**g c**ts.
Comment by Fritz Zimmerman on 2009-08-14 15:34:46 +0000
Now available is a new publication entitled, “A Photographic Essay and Guide to the Adena Hopewell Sioux and Iroquois Mounds and Earthworks” It is avaiable at Itasca books. 222 mound and earthwork sites were photographed and directions provided in Ohio,Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and Michigan. Overwhelming evidence is presented that the the Hopewell were Sioux along with the kindred tribes of Cherokee and Iroquois. Analysis of the measurments of the earthworks reveals that the Adena and Hopewell had knowledge of complex mathamatics that included the formulations of pi and square roots.
The future for the mounds and earthworks is to restore, protect and return them to the Native Americans.