Asda and arms-dealers

From Greenpeace.org.uk

ASDA nearly killed me last week. True story. I was driving to work, listening to Radio 4, when an Asda representative ‘revealed’ that he suspected that people didn’t seem to trust big businesses anymore. I laughed so hard I nearly drove into the Thames. Really, mister British representative of one of the most reviled and hated corporations in the world? You think?

Asda’s parent company in America, Walmart, came third in Corporate Accountability International’s Corporate Hall of Shame list of most irresponsible businesses in the world last year (just behind mercenary corporation Blackwater and the world’s leading rainforest destroyer). When a corporation rated less ethical than Nestle by consumers starts talking about restoring trust, that is sort of like the Conservative Party bemoaning the demise of Trades Unions.

The thing is, while supermarkets are particularly damaging to society (their size and structure drive down wages and make it very hard to compete with them if you are an independent store, as the Competition Commission amusingly ruled last week) it is not because the people running them are evil. It is not even, despite what my Marxist agitator friends might say, because the people who own them are evil. It’s because their structure and the category of organisation they fit into carries inside it the potential for great evil. Because they are corporations.

They exist to make profits. Their priority is growth, even if that growth is environmentally unrealistic or damaging to society, because corporations do not worship Jesus and they don’t worship Satan, they worship Mammon.

In pursuit of lower costs, they will cut wages and pollute the earth, because neither people nor the environment show up on their balance sheets. They will even break the law, as we saw last week as BAE systems was facing fines of up to £1bn for paying bribes to support their business around the world. Such a fine is to be welcomed, but it is only the first step.

Corporations play a massive role in our society and it is only a severely idealistic leftist who believes that can change any time soon. But if they are so inherent to our society then they must be brought back under our control.

A ‘corporate person‘ (for that is what corporations are, under law) that commits crimes again and again should not just be fined any more than human recidivists should be allowed to simply buy their way out of justice. It should be incarcerated, its assets nationalised or handed over to competitors on the understanding that if they break the law (and laws must be made with ordinary citizens, not corporate bottom lines, in mind), they too will be ‘executed’.

Of course, the huge, putrefying dead elephant in the room during discussions of this story is that BAE, the UK’s largest manufacturer, is an arms-manufacturer. They make weapons. To kill people.

The British government is blessed to live in a world so hypocritical that Libya (not even in the top 20 of arms exporters) faces a righteous campaign for restitution from the victims of its weapons, while Britain (the world’s seventh largest arms exporter) does not. Christians need to speak out when businesses harm people (and applaud strong judgements against them). But we also need sometimes to evaluate what those businesses do, even when they are not breaking the law, and speak out prophetically against that too.

Here’s a trailer for a movie about Asda’s parent company. You should really also watch The Corporation, tho.

Pity to the powerful

It’s not fair. It is also not right. Right now I am stamping my foot, shouting “no, no, no!” and pouting, so you know I’m serious. I’m expressing my intense, yet mature exasperation at the deep injustices facing a few people in last week’s news. And no, I’m not talking about starving Africans, those imprisoned without trial or victims of violence. Those people are the voiceless. They have Bono. But what about the rich, the powerful and the obscenely privileged? Who will speak out for them? They are the ones I want to talk about. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: people you might find it hard to feel sorry for.

The first of the waifs and strays selling matches in the merciless blizzard of international news are Barclays Bank. Barclays (and, to be fair, the other high street banks too) sought our pity last week because more and more people are opting for Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs). IVAs are agreements that enable people with massive debts they cannot repay to have part of their debt written off in exchange for regular repayments. Banks have accused private debt advice firms of encouraging people to go down the IVA road just to secure commissions for themselves. What? Companies profiting off the misery of unsustainable debt? Surely banks have the right to defend their monopoly? I know you may find it hard to side with an industry that is once again boasting of record profits (Barclays alone unveiled £5.2Bn profits last month) and has recently faced criticism from the Office of Fair Trading for overcharging customers. But try.

Try also to feel sorry for that nice David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, baby-kisser, hoodie-hugger and cyclist without portfolio (it’s in the car behind him). Yes, I know he is ahead in the polls. But pity him. Because last week a dastardly Labour MP put a video on the YouTube website that aimed, hard as it is to believe, to mock the Tory leader’s attempts at being “down with the kids”. The rather amusing spoof was removed from the site (though copies are easily found through searching YouTube for “Sion Simon” I hear), but don’t feel sorry for YouTube, fans of political satire or even the unfortunate Labour MP who has caught it in the neck for being funny. Think of David, his thin skin and hurt feelings.

Think also of Walmart (the struggling little company that owns Asda and almost everything else in the world) as it has to pay $78 million to employees who were lazy and greedy enough to expect not to be pressured into giving up lunches and breaks guaranteed by law. Think of Kim Jung Il, too, as crushing sanctions against his nation cut off supplies of essentials like lobster, French wine, jet-skis and caviar to his administration in North Korea. Think also of George W Bush, as he tries to deal with a country that not only has nuclear capabilities but may be willing to go against UN wishes and attack other nations. It must be hard to deal with a concept that foreign.

But most of all, pity Christians in our country who may soon face outrageous discrimination concerning the expression of our faith, as experienced by a British Airways worker who was forbidden from wearing a cross with her uniform last week. Pity especially those Christians who thought Muslim women were making a lot of fuss about nothing concerning a supply teacher forbidden to wear the veil last week. Yes, irony can be harsh.