Oh to be a well paid middle-class Evening Post editor; sat moralising, judging and damning the poor to sate your middle class readers’ appetite for bigotry and vengeance.
“Have you noticed how few benefit cheats get sent to jail?”
This Post editorial (Cheats prosper, Jan 9th 2009) was the paper’s considered response to the case of master criminals Tracey and Anthony Eddolls. The Post’s report in the same edition screamed “£24k benefit scam couple spared jail” (Although the headline has been changed for the online version: A common practice by the Post where they don’t want their hysterical headlines and comments available to the world for eternity.).
The story is about a couple from Hartcliffe who were dragged off to court for benefit “fraud”. They were both found guilty of falsely claiming £24k in housing and council tax benefits over a period of six and a half years; about £300 per month.
Mrs Eddolls works part-time in a supermarket and is raising the couple’s three children. Her relationship with her husband is described as unstable; he “comes and goes as he pleases”. Basically, this sounds like a fairly typical state of affairs for millions of people in dysfunctional relationships trapped by economic circumstances.
Mrs Eddolls’ crime was to not inform the council every time her on-off husband stayed the night. Then, of course, she would have had to reapply for the benefit every time he left again. Have any of the Post’s editorial team been through the process of applying for benefits? Have any of them had to rely on benefits because of their shit wages and fucked up relationship?
If only we all lived in nice, moral, stable, cereal-packet families where Daddy goes out to work to provide for the family and earns a nice regular wage in his nine-to-five job. If only we all lived like the moral middle classes of newspaper editors’ imaginations.
But we don’t. And so Mike Norton and his Post cronies want to put this couple in prison, bang ’em up. 150 hours community service, a suspended sentence and the stress of a court case just ain’t enough for these blood thirsty shits. They want to ruin these people’s lives; ensure they’ll never get a proper job; fuck their kids up so they become dysfunctional. The Post demands vengeance.
What the fuck do they think prison would achieve? Set an example? Force people to stop being poor? Fuck off.
Have you noticed how few bankers get sent to jail?
And where are Norton and gang when it comes to the real fraudsters? Those bankers, traders and other corporate pigs who are bleeding us dry and destroying lives? What about those fraudsters and cheats, Evening Post? The ones who look like you and talk like you and went to the same public fucking schools as you? Those cheats really do prosper.
Have you noticed how few corporate killers get sent to jail?
Compare and contrast. Here’s the Post’s editorial from January 8th, the day before the frothing rant above was published (the Post’s frothing rant, not mine). The story is the death of a pensioner at the Concorde visitor attraction in Filton, Bristol. Mr Livall’s death was caused by multinational aerospace corporation Airbus (annual turnover £1.8bn) and its contractor BAC Trading Ltd who admitted installing an unsafe gantry 
walkway to the Concorde.
71-year old Mr Livall, a Concorde enthusiast, was killed in September 2004 after falling seven metres to his death through a gap in the gantry. The companies both admitted breaches of health and safety laws in court.
The Post report quotes the judge,
“Airbus should not have let the exhibition open without a safety assessment which would have made the risk glaringly obvious.
“They provided an unsafe structure in the first place and then handed it over to BAC, who were lulled into a false sense of security, expecting that what Airbus provided would be safe.”
The judge said the tragedy was “an accident waiting to happen” and Airbus could and should have done something about it after concerns were raised on three occasions about gaps in the gantry.”
The judge then handed Airbus (annual turnover £1.8bn) a fine of £200,000 with £58,000 costs. He also fined the group involved in running the attraction £10,000.
So, what does the Post say? Does it demand jail for those responsible for this pensioner’s death? Does it decry the injustice and the soft-touch court system? Does it ask why so few corporate killers get sent to jail?
No. The Post says that the investigation and prosecution were unnecessary. It says that Mr Livall should have accepted before he visited this attraction that there was a risk he could end up dead.
They say that a fine of £250,000 won’t make any difference to a multi-billion-pound company like Airbus, so they shouldn’t be fined at all.
Corporate killers prosper
That’s right, the Post thinks that if you are a rich corporation not only should you be able to get away with killing people, but you shouldn’t even be put through the hassle of an investigation.
Anyway, we couldn’t possibly bang corporate killers up in jail. We need the cell space for all those benefit scroungers, don’t we.
Pic credit: 
Bristol Evening Post Watch 