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The Socialist inbox: letters to the editors, photo Suzanne Beishon

The Socialist inbox: letters to the editors, photo Suzanne Beishon   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Send your news, views and criticism in not more than 150 words to Socialist Postbox, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD, phone 020 8988 8771 or email [email protected].

We reserve the right to shorten and edit letters. Don’t forget to give your name, address and phone number. Confidentiality will be respected if requested.

Views of letter writers do not necessarily match those of the Socialist Party.


Disability Campaigners

photo Paul Mattsson

photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

I have had a good relationship with the press recently, not only the Socialist’s response to my letter, but the Derbyshire Times last week featured some of my quotes with photographs about my campaign work.

I and my friends Elaine Evans from Bolsover and Adrian Picton from Chesterfield, both Socialist Party members, are involved with ‘Disability Campaigners’ here in Derbyshire.

We are protesting the fact that people on benefits pay a measure of council tax, whereas before 2014 they did not.

By having to pay this tax, people on benefits have their income taken below basic living levels and into poverty.

We have had favourable responses from the three district councils in north Derbyshire (but no changes of heart yet!) and will press our MPs for a change in the law.

The culmination of our campaign ‘Give it Back’ is a strike of payments in December called ‘Buy yourself a Christmas present’.

More details of our actions are on the ‘Disability Campaigners’ Facebook group. Please ask your readers to investigate and join in by spreading the word and follow-up actions?

Adrian B Rimington

BBC bias

Sir David Cecil Clementi, newly appointed BBC chairman, has said that politicians have been guilty of allowing the abuse of BBC journalists. If so this is reprehensible.

However, it cuts both ways. The disgraceful treatment of the miners during the strike when the BBC faked footage at the Orgreave Coke depot has not been forgotten.

Nor has the fake report of Jeremy Corbyn’s view on shoot-to-kill for terror attacks, for which Laura Kuenssberg was even criticised by the BBC Trust.

It was all part and parcel of a BBC hate campaign against Jeremy Corbyn which shows no signs of abating. If these journalists want respect, then start acting like journalists.

Derek McMillan, Brighton

Sun and socialism

I’ve just got back from the Sozialistische Linkspartei (CWI in Austria) summer camp. It was a wonderful week of sunshine and socialism and I’d like to thank all the comrades who helped in it.

I’m going again next year and would like to recommend it to anyone who has a spare week in August.

Andy Beadle, Deptford, south London

Price plunder

Wine photo Greg Pye/CC

Wine photo Greg Pye/CC   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

The press would like us to think prices are going up due to the decline of the pound versus the euro.

The other day I went into three supermarkets on the same day and I looked at the price of a bottle of a particular Australian wine. In the first it was £7, so I declined to buy.

In the second it was £8.99 – this was the ‘consumer-friendly’ Co-op – I kept my money in my pocket. In the third it was £8, still too high.

I cannot tell if exchange rates were moving violently on that afternoon, but I suspect prices are rising more because supermarkets think they can get away with it and make a quick profit than anything else.

Pete McNally, Worcester

Mystery shopper

Just imagine working for a drive-in fast food outlet, where maybe six people should be working but just two are left due to holidays, sickness and easy sackings.

Coffee machine broken, ice machine broken, each customer has to be served in a two-minute limit or else; while serving one has to have a smile, hold conversation asking how the customers day’s gone, how lovely their clothes look, that their kids are marvellous even though the kids are spitting at you, and by the way do you want one of our superb muffins?

Then a car pulls up. Someone gets out, takes a photo of the outlet and dread hits you, for you have served the company’s “mystery shopper.”

You’re called in the next day by your manager to be told you will not be receiving the extra 50p an hour for that week because the mystery shopper waited for two minutes and 15 seconds to be fully serviced – and worst of all, you didn’t ask them if they wanted one of our superb muffins.

Smarten up or else – even though to get a mark of 100% from the mystery shopper and qualify for a week’s extra reward in your pay is near on impossible.

‘Rebel with a Cause’, Rotherham