Shoplifting: Not The Real Crime
The Owen Jones Podcast
Owen Jones
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Britain is a country which cracks down on the misdemeanours of the poor but facilitates the crimes of the rich. Shoplifting is soaring - but instead of dealing with the causes - mass poverty in a rich country - the government and supermarkets want to go to war with desperate people instead. Here's what that says about Britain in 2022.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Modern Britain, a country in which we crack down on the misdemeanors of the poor, |
| 0:04.4 | where we facilitate the crimes of the rich. Now, this week, on the Gemmy Vine Show, |
| 0:09.6 | we discussed supermarkets putting electronic tags on essential items, |
| 0:14.7 | including fruit and fibre selling for, and this is not a joke, 7 pounds. Now, listen to what I said. |
| 0:20.5 | We're talking about, you know, one co-op in Manchester's locked £3, |
| 0:25.4 | washing machine tablets, bottles of milk, tagged in one test go this week. I mean, |
| 0:29.7 | the price of the cost of milk in this country is soared over the last few months, |
| 0:33.5 | it's absolutely... Look at this, I've never seen this before. I mean, to put that on. |
| 0:37.6 | And the thing is, what do you say, Owen, is it wrong to do that? |
| 0:40.7 | Well, put tags on. Yes, actually. I mean, look, I think the real crime is ever, |
| 0:45.9 | what do we judge as a crime? I mean, obviously, people judge the law |
| 0:50.3 | to be synonymous with what's moral. I don't agree with that. I think the biggest... |
| 0:53.3 | I get to hang on fruit and fibre. I think £7 for box of fruit and fibre, |
| 0:56.8 | that is absolutely unhinge. So, I think the big... |
| 1:00.7 | That can't be right. What we have to ask ourselves is, what is a bigger injustice in our society? |
| 1:07.0 | Is it the fact that millions of people in a very wealthy country can't afford to feed themselves properly anymore? |
| 1:11.9 | Or is it the fact that people are nicking fruit and fibre? |
| 1:14.5 | Well, the clever thing is wrong for shops to put the tags on. |
| 1:17.0 | I do, actually, I think it's really wrong. And it's wrong on so many levels. |
| 1:20.9 | These companies are multinational companies, right? They've got the money. |
| 1:25.4 | And I'm not advocating at all any form of shoplifting because it's a criminal offence. |
| 1:29.6 | And it's wrong. It's more or less wrong. But if you can't put tags on, |
... |
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