Friday 20 June 2008

Naming and shaming: Labour targets small-fry businesses



The government lurches from one tabloid-pleasing stunt to another, devil taking the hindmost. They've decided it is a good and productive idea to make employers responsible for law-enforcement by naming and shaming businesses who hire illegal immigrants. You'd think that with billions lost to illegal wars and tax evasion, whoops, I mean avoidance, that a Labour government would have better things to do than scapegoat the low-paid grafters who make them their dinners.

With society breaking down as the nation is plundered by big business who suck up public funds and then evade and avoid tax in some sort of cycle of hell, perhaps a different set of priorities might be more effective. But, no, Labour likes to kiss up and kick down. I'm not saying Labour is small, petty, cowardly and unprincipled, but I'd like to see them pour the same energy and outrage into nailing the super-rich non-doms and PFI bandits who are really milking this country. Let's see the government take on the corporations, the war profiteers (especially those employing former Brutish ministers and prime-ministers), the tax exiles and the non-dom Tetrapack billionaires with the same verve and vigour.

Chicken Yoghurt likens the latest immigrant-bashing "do not fuck with us" tactics to "sending Luca Brasi’s body armour back accompanied by the fish".

"Naming and shaming” in this case strikes me, too, as an attempt to get the vigilante vote. So you’re running a takeaway out in the sticks, getting enough grief already, and then your tormentors find they have some sort of endorsement off the government and an excuse to ratchet up the violence?

A return to the stocks and public punishment … or worse.

2 comments:

Phil said...

Why on earth would the government go after firms who will provide them with comfortable directorships when they retire from parliament?

Louisefeminista said...

NL's latest bloody idea is an excuse for racism. They are beyond contempt. But NL is on an ever veering right-wing trajectory and a good dose of the right-wing populism goes down well.

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