Mumsnet -v- M&S

"Hooters" a nasty sexist "family" restaurant who require their staff to be sexual harassed has recently decided to move into the UK.  Bristol is one of the cities they want to open in.  They have managed to sublet a former Marks & Spencer's "Simply Food" outlet on the harbour-side.  Bristol Council have agreed the necessary planning permission.

The plans to open the branch seemed to steamed ahead when one local Bristol woman, JessinAvalon decided to express her opposition on Mumsnet, a social network for predominately affluent middle class women in their 30s and 40s. I have been watching the responses and the tactic of the mumsnetters have been to target M&S, where I suspect many of them spend rather a lot of money.  M&S has resisted to date, claiming their decision to sublet to Hooters is commercial and in no way endorses the company, its sexist employment practices or its sexist products.

M&S have an existing relationship with Mumsnet and are listed on their front page as supporter of the Let Girls be Girls campaign.

If this is true it will be interesting to see if this decision really was in M&S's commercial interest.  Whatever rent M&S is getting for their Bristol property is likely to be dwarfed by the amount charged to the high credit limit plastic the mumsnet women flash in their stores.  If the boycott takes off expect a rapid retreat by M&S.

The campaign is now spreading into the broadsheets with the Indie on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph both running stories today.  Both stories provide excellent publicity for Mumsnet and very bad publicity for M&S.

M&S were earlier this month one of the British retailers caught up in a sweatshop scandal with workers at their suppliers forced to work 18 hours a day at rates as low as 25p an hour

Whose Fraud? What Cheats?

Early this month it was reported that the Labour Party was considering including rewards for people who grassed up  so called "benefit cheats".  They hope this idea will appeal to middle class voters and essentially involves offering (often poor) people cash rewards for spying on and grassing up other poor working class people.  What they are not offering is any reward for exposing tax cheats, planning fraud, safety crimes, corruption or consumer fraud.  These crimes which do far more damage to ordinary people and cost the tax payers billions more than benefit fraud are carried out by powerful people who wouldn't want ordinary people snooping on their cheating and stealing.

I was interested to see in today's times that attempts are being made to target the richest 100,000 people in the country for tax fraud.  However despite these good intentions the article reported that:

• In 2007 four hundred people earned more than £10,000,000. Out of the 400 on 65 paid any tax.

Which makes you understand why these people don't want ordinary people snooping around their very private business. However utilising all the skills developed from my training as a Criminologist I estimate that leave 335 evading tax.  I will report this to the Inland Revenue immediately and hope to soon have my reward.

P.S. For those not familiar with the picture at the top of this blog its graffiti from Stokes Croft in Bristol showing five "benefit cheats" - Harry, Wills, Charlie, Liz and Phil.  (thanks to Bristol Graffiti for the picture)