I note the Telegraph has been making some very strange comments at the weekend. Toby Young wrote:
Has there ever been a more ham-fisted protest movement than UK Uncut? The express purpose of this organisation is to force rich individuals and corporations to pay more tax. ….
What makes the movement so objectionable is that the main victims of this form of protest are the people trying to buy Christmas presents for their loved ones, not the corporations that own these shops. The organisers purport to be sympathetic to the victims of the cuts whom they describe as “the poorest and most vulnerable” — a category I must fall into because my family’s child benefit has been cut to zero — but the ordinary shoppers harmed by the UK Uncut protests will include precisely these people.
Even if this method of protest was successful and Vodafone and Top Shop ended up paying more tax, it wouldn’t be ordinary people that would benefit. On the contrary, the higher taxes would immediately be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. How, precisely, is that going to help “the poorest and most vulnerable”?
His suggestion:
If the organisers of the UK Uncut movement really want to help the most needy at this time of year, why don’t they patrol the streets of their home towns giving food and blankets to the homeless? That way, the rest of us can get on with our Christmas shopping without being screamed at by a bunch of red-faced students.
Ah, as ever, the elite’s response is to say:
Don’t ask why the poor are poor, just hand out food parcels
That’s the Tory view of charity for you — and it’s why Thatcher hated Oxfam so much.
But let’s go back to the main comment and note the claim that “the higher taxes would immediately be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices”.
If that is true then Toby Young has hit on some much more serious issues. the first is that these companies can charge whatever price they like to considers and the consumers have no choice but pay it. Several things follow. First, demand is apparently unaffected by price. I bet that’s news to Vodafone. But just in case it isn’t then that means they’re a monopoly and it’s absolutely right that their prices are regulated (which they are — negating Young’s argument). Third, it says that if the company could increase price at will and doesn’t it’s not acting in its shareholder's interest now.
Alternatively it says that the protests are actually bang on target, this is the right thing to do, and that Toby Young has not a clue what he’s talking about.
I think both are true.
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I know this isn’t the thrust of your article but Mt Young doesn’t seem to realise that there was nothing to stop shoppers shopping at shops which weren’t targeted by UK Uncut. Maybe an independent or two.
I thought Toby Young’s piece was just a bit weak overall. It rather surprised me as he’s a clever guy and well able to robustly argue his case. His Telegraph blog just showed that those people against the protestors had nothing much to pin their views on, other than to rail against the disruption caused to other shoppers, which again, is rather weak.
But the greatest crime in our consumerist society is not to consume. And therefore even asking people to switch their consumption to less damaging forms is an evil that must be denounced.
I’ve decided to start going to some of these protests myself. I’ve realised that this action will have the greatest effect on the budget deficit.
I was so pleased with this pinning of Toby Young … now do his free-school thing which is going to teach discipline and Latin to ‘even’ the kids from the nearby working class area.
Debra,
You’ve hit the nail on the head. And one of the implications is that the purpose of newpapers is not to tell us the news, but to sell advertising space and to sell newpapers. The content is but a means to that end. So as long as you have a large enough audience and pander to their preconceptions, the chances are you will be successful.
A bit depressing this whole modern world business.
This will seem a bit irrelevant, but I was listening to any questions on Radio 4 at the weekend and they were talking about the proposal to take away the educaton maintenance grant – basically, £30 a week that gets paid to 17 year olds to keep them in education. One of the commentators said that he’d spoken to some students who said that removing the grant wouldn’t mean they stopped going to sixth form college, but did mean they wouldn’t be able to afford lunch when they were there.
And I realised how entrenched consumerism is. When I was 17 I took a packed lunch and it wasn’t an issue. Now, that idea is inconceivable: why would you have a cold sandwich when you could consume a panini washed down with a skinny latte? This isn’t to argue for or against the EMA, just to make the point that the consumer mentality seems to be more and more entrenched, regardless of political persuasion.
“Alternatively it says that the protests are actually bang on target, this is the right thing to do, and that Toby Young has not a clue what he’s talking about.” That about sums it up.
What a stupid article. A columnist for the Telegraph is now one of the poorerst and most vulnerable people on society because he’s had his child benefit cut to zero!?
And if companies no longer took advantage of tax loopholes they’d have to put their prices up? So by this logic, if all forms of tax on companies, sole traders, partnerships, and LLPs were abolished, they’d all immediately drop the prices they charge?
This is the intellectual calibre of the right these days? I make no great claims for being particularly clever myself, but how do such stupid people manage to earn a living or actually be in charge of anything?
“A columnist for the Telegraph is now one of the poorest and most vulnerable people on society because he’s had his child benefit cut to zero!?”
He is priceless isn’t he – but then I can’t actually remember hearing anything from Toby Young that wasn’t laughable. Lord Young’s intellectual dynasty has obviously skipped one generation and gone straight to bankrupt.
In total, there were three articles in Saturday’s Telegraph that played a negative spin on the UK Uncut action – the Toby Young article just happened to be the most vocal.
Given that the Daily Telegraph also uses mechanisms to avoid paying tax in the UK, was this an order from on high that the journalists take a robust line against the actions? Sometimes, you have to look after your own. Lucky for them that they have plenty of useful idiots for readers who can’t join the dots to the 20% VAT rate coming their way in January.
“I must fall into because my family’s child benefit has been cut to zero “. Er, not quite Toby. You won’t lose it until 2013!
Mr Young strikes me as a social climber who can’t keep up with his rich friends who pay for private education. Rather than supporting his local school, he uses his sharp elbows to get the state to build him his own pseudo-private school instead.
Regarding the consumerist issue, you see the same arguments about unfettered spending regarding the cold weather. The prolonged disruption should lead us all to have a less consumerist Christmas and encourage employers to trust their staff to work more flexibly. Unfortunately all we’ve seen so far is the scape-goating of who is to blame (councils, gov’t, airlines etc) and how we can be better prepared (more grit and snowploughs) next time. We need a culture change.