Them and us fishes, photo Suzanne Beishon

Them and us fishes, photo Suzanne Beishon   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Champagne buttons

Hedge fund managers at a new office complex will have ‘press for Champagne’ buttons installed at their desks.

The £100 million development in Soho, central London, will also have buttons for caviar and cocktails. A high-end restaurant downstairs will send up celebratory drinks on demand.

The Socialist looks forward to supermarkets installing ‘press for tin of beans’ buttons at checkouts for staff on poverty pay. Perhaps the foodbank out back could run the service.


Tampon tax

Young women from low-income families have been skipping school because they cannot afford sanitary products.

Police in Leeds have found that periods are often a cause for truancy. The Tories’ barbarous tampon tax will only have compounded the problem.

Meanwhile, some of the income from that very same tax has gone to an anti-abortion group. The government has granted £250,000 to the anti-choice ‘charity’ Life from newly added VAT on feminine hygiene products.

Sanitary protection is not ‘non-essential’. Public funds should not go towards undermining a woman’s right to choose. Scrap the tampon tax and fight for full abortion rights.