Shoplifters of the World Unite: My morning rant

Has anyone seen this article about the rise of the middle class shoplifter? In a nutshell, the recession has hit middle class households in the South a lot harder than everyone else - because let's face it, they and the ultra rich bankers (and MPs) seem to be the only people who benefited from the 'Good Times'. Those in the lower socio-economic strata can't lose what they never had.



I can back up my statement with my own experience in London. I was earning a decent living as an editor, but was crippled by back-breaking debt. Like many people my age and in my situation (there were a lot of us) I couldn't afford to live anywhere half decent, so I paid stupid rent to live in Dickensian slums - with other professionals. The last house I was in looked like Fred West's from the outside (minus the corpses), the landlord was probably a criminal, and no matter how much you cleaned it, it always looked grimy and filthy. Everything was broken, the carpets were worn through and tatty, the curtains were older than my parents and the plaster work was crumbling off the walls. It stank of dirt and poverty. Yet my housemates included an architect, an environmental health officer and a camera woman. This wasn't unusual - educated, professional young people in ridiculous amounts of debt (thanks to student loans, tuition fees and a government-approved credit card culture that drove the economy up until the Credit Crunch) all living in slums. Very Victorian.

Anyway, I digress...

Why did this article get me thinking? Well, these people who were 'hit hard' by the recession have been shoplifting to maintain their affluent lifestyle. Favourite target stores probably include Waitrose, M&S and Sainsburies. Items no doubt include Tesco's Finest Caremalised Onion Chutney, a selection of olives and cheesy bread sticks, any mid-range perfume and/or Max Factor make-up and probably a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio.

For me, this could be seen as an interesting metaphor for our approach to environmentalism. I was talking to my parents last night about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ever heard of that one? It's an island made of the world's refuse, larger than Continental America, slap bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sailors try to avoid it.



I also read about the Government's plans to force 10 new nuclear power stations onto the UK, whether we want them or not. NO plans for veto from local people and no substantial research by independent bodies (and let's not forget the 'research' that resulted in the Iraq War - I don't trust these politicians as far as I can throw them). And what for?

Fair enough, we need energy to heat out homes and provide electricity and to produce more stuff. Heat and electricity, fine. Producing more stuff though? How much more stuff do we need? We have a continental floating dustbin on our planet full of the stuff we didn't want. Can we afford to produce more? Why not re-use, re-use and re-use? It's what generations did up until around 40 years ago. Forty years of planetary insanity.

So like these middle class shoplifters who steal to maintain their unsustainable lifestyle, we buy into a society that steals resources we can ill afford to keep producing stuff we don't need. And we're going to use the most dangerous, most polluting, uranium-cancer-causing way to do it. At least in the UK. Horrific isn't it.