We’d rate this as piffle

The capitalists are gouging the staff, watering the workers’ beer and ain’t it all a shame the whole world over:

The owner of British Gas, Holland & Barrett and EG Group are among nearly 500 companies that have been named by the government for breaches of employment law in which tens of thousands of workers were paid less than the minimum wage.

The Department for Business and Trade has released a list of 491 employers who have now repaid a total of £10.3 million for underpaying about 42,000 workers over several years.

If we take “several” to mean three then that’s some £80 a year each worker. Or 5 pence an hour. This really is one of those things that can be described as piffle. It’s also - as the report itself agrees - about things like allowances for shoes, time spent at home doing a bit of “training” and the like.

Still, it’s all useful displacement activity from anyone thinking about the soaring youth unemployment rate caused by the minimum wage. So, there’s that. Concentrate upon the pennies stolen from some handful not the lives and careers ripped from the young. For it’s very much more important to emphasise how tough the government is being on the capitalists than it is to consider how much ruination that same government is doing, right?

One of these little thoughts - dreams even, phantasies - does cross the mind. Perhaps we should in fact pay more attention to what is being done wrong and get people to stop doing that rather than this excitement over piffles?

Tim Worstall