There’s cheats and there’s cheats...

From the World Socialist Movement discussion forum

copy of e-mail to BBC, Sky News ITN and Channel 4 News

Dear Sir or Madam

There’s cheats and there’s cheats, apparently, as there’s victims and victims

As a viewer, I’m watching all the coverage of the John Darwin and his wife Anne, the alleged insurance fraudsters and the huge expense that TV stations and newspapers are expending to cover this story. They are alleged to have cheated insurance companies of some 200 thousand pounds?

A couple of months ago, however, the Office of Fair Trading signalled an investigation into the allegations that the main supermarkets are colluding to cheat the public over the price of milk, butter and cheese. Today, 7 December2007, the Office of Fair Trade announced that the supermarkets were indeed guilty of cheating the public of 250 million pounds.

The Darwins’ alleged cheating, like those who actually cheat the government in benefit fraud etc are not directly cheating working class people, but insurance companies. Is there more urgency among the media to expose the cheats of government and private companies than the cheats of working class people? It rather seems so.

The supermarkets are cheating against the principles or ideologies of both‘free trade’ and of ‘competition’, which are bound into capitalist law and aresaid to create the condition for cheaper goods and services. The supermarkets broke this law. A supermarket doesn’t operate itself; it needs human involvement to direct its operations, legal and illegal.

Why, then, both months ago and today are not the faces of the supermarket individuals, (the directors, who orchestrated the cheating and law breaking), handcuffed arrested and all over the TV and newspapers branded as ‘cheats’? Oh no, don’t tell me, that they too like the cheating police chief, the cheating British Airways directors, the cheating Virgin Atlantic directors and the cheating politicians too are getting off ‘toff free’? In Great Britain, a worker who has cheated is a branded a cheat for life, so why are not a company and its cheating directors cheats for life?

Incidentally, the man called Branson who owns or certainly runs the cheating Virgin Atlantic, is being allowed to buy Northern Rock Bank, the bank that’s gone bust, and be in charge of peoples savings?

Ah, Loony Tunes or what!

Yours
JB Books

Deal or No Deal

The Independent reports that the head of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Tony Woodley, is to face the wrath of British Airways cabin crew furious at the way they believe the union leadership "sold out" in last week's deal to avert a strike.

Mr Woodley, the union's general secretary, had been due to appear today before a mass meeting of cabin crew at a hotel near Heathrow to defend the settlement, but it has been delayed for a week in an attempt to allow tempers to cool.

Members of the British Airways Stewards and Stewardesses Association (Bassa), a branch of the T&G, are angry at what they see as the failure of union negotiators to extract sufficient concessions from the airline's management. The nine-strong Bassa branch committee voted 6-3 to accept the deal and two of those who voted against the deal, the convenor Nigel Stott and deputy convenor Chris Harrison, have subsequently resigned their posts.

The union leadership defends the settlement as ".... the best that could be achieved by negotiation..." and that "...the vast majority of cabin crew were relieved and pleased the issue has been resolved..."

A ballot of the union membership was held for the authority to call the strike . A vote should be conducted on whether to accept or reject the agreement . Is there going to be one ?