Ailidh
Yesterday I'd been going to add here my personally thought-out though hardly new theory that there is an undeclared government policy of keeping "the poor" in their place by pushing carb heavy, sugar rich foods at them at bargain prices. It hit me about twenty years ago, walking round a well-known supermarket that used to claim there were more reasons to shop there that there were no special offers on fresh fruit or meat or veg but plenty bogofs on pies and buns.
If you're on a budget, of course you're going to buy what seems best value but a constant diet of low quality food is guaranteed to keep people unhealthy both mentally and physically.
Then I didn't post yesterday, because I thought I was being daft.
Number One on the BBC news app this morning - "Ministers delay ban on multi-buy junk food deals".
Maybe I'm not daft.
... it's not as daft as it might sound.
I don't think there's an actual 'undeclared' policy as such, but look at it this way.
To a libertarian government that embraces a free-market economy and 'small-state', the poor are a drain. They cost money that could be better used to give tax cuts to the more wealthy. But, something has to be done about them - they can't just be left to die on the streets (so to speak) en massse because even in our fractured, every-man-for-himself, individualistic society, people would be pretty appalled. Even though, to some extent, this is actually happening... ie, the homeless living, and sometimes dying, in their little one-man tents. Nearly every city-centre has them, and we've gradually become inured to the sight, there's a creeping acceptance of it.
I think the government's 'plan' is to do as little as is absolutely necessary. Junk food is obviously a staple of poor people's diet - it keeps them alive. So no ban on junk-food deals make sense.
We saw that food bank being opened - with the mayor beaming as if he was at the grand opening of some new local enterprise, instead of an outlet where the desperate and hungry turn to for a subsistence level of food. Does anyone remember that gentleman from Hartlepool on TV who said that he voted for the Tories because "they gave them more food banks"?
The whole thing is absurd. This is not Conservatism, this is an Executive running the country for its own benefit and that of those it represents. It gets away with it because the media and this current mob of Tories has successfully convinced people that the poor are the authors of their own misfortune (they can neither cook nor budget), or they are simply "scroungers" who've chosen benefits as a way of life. So we're are encouraged not to care. Then, of course, there's the "illegal" immigrants - all, apparently, living in 4 / 5 star hotels with a jacuzzi. Or they jump off their dinghies and are put straight into council accommodation - and if that's not available, they are housed in 5 bedroom houses purloined from the private rented sector. Of course, I exaggerate, but not by much.
Divide and rule. This is how it works. We fight each other. And all the time the very wealthy elite are sucking more and more money out of the economy, whilst the poor - who have nothing, no savings, no investments, put their paltry funds straight back into it in order to survive.
So I don't think there is a 'plan' as such, more a policy of just leaving things as they are. The poor are not important to the wealthy - as long as there are sufficient numbers of minions to do the menial jobs that are needed to keep society functioning, and there are, then it matters little or nothing to them if they simply just wither away, or die.
This is all a bit garbled, but you get my drift... I haven't had my morning coffee yet and my brain doesn't work properly until I get that first 'rush'.
BTW, I'm not anti-Conservative, this is not a rant against the traditional Conservative voter, even though I'm a bit left-of-centre. I have friends who are Conservative voters - the difference between them and this government, is chalk and cheese...
