The cost-of-food scandal - an masterclass in the inefficiencies of capitalism

Tony O'Neill is sick of your shit.

In a whining letter in today's rag, chief exec of Sandpiper CI - the franchise that runs a lot of big-brand businesses in Jersey like Costa, Iceland and Cornish Bakery - has lashed out at critics who claim that his food is overpriced compared to the UK.  In his reasoning, he sets out a couple of major points explaining why this is - and, in his mind, always will be - the case. These are:

- UK food is exempt from VAT
- Transport costs are very high
- Labour costs are akin to London's
- The new retail tax has pushed up prices
- Store fit-out costs are 25% more than in the UK
- Jersey can't benefit from economies of scale to the same degree the UK can

Cry me a river, Mr O'Neill. Cry me a river.

Sandpiper is a private company - as far as they see it, their first obligation is to their shareholders, not to you or anyone else who doesn't own stock in their company. Even in a life-or-death business like food retail, their attitude is that they've still got to make a profit for their owners.

I'll leave aside the fairly obvious question of whether it's moral to profit off of something everyone needs to survive and simply ask this - why is something so critical to our very survival as an island in the hands of a corporate mafia?

It doesn't take a genius to look at Mr O'Neill's reasoning and think that a lot of that wouldn't be so much of a problem if the people importing food didn't have to make a profit - say, if they were nationalised under the management of the workers who actually do the heavy lifting, so to speak. Sadly, Sandpiper doesn't publish its accounts, so we can't actually dive into how much money citizens could potentially save if the business was run in a socialist fashion, but we can certainly ask the question - is for-profit food distribution, controlled by one large private company or a few large private companies, really the best deal for Jersey? Could cash be shaved off manager's salaries by workers' self-management, or would the lack of an obligation to make a big profit drive down prices for ordinary people? You've gotta ask - is the current system a rip-off, and if so, why is it being allowed to continue?

One need only look at Venezuela for how these oligopolies on crucial supplies like food - or even private, for-profit distribution of food at all - can be weaponised against the population they supposedly exist to serve. Since the early 2000s, opposition-affiliated corporations have systematically hoarded food and medicine in order to push up prices and undermine the socialist Bolivarian government. Opposition-controlled offshore corporations have been caught redirecting food supplies to smugglers near the Colombian border, who then sell the food back to Venezuelans at a higher price. Could this happen in Jersey if a socialist government was ever to be elected?

Corporate ownership of the crucial resource that is food distribution is an immoral, inefficient and dangerous rip-off that drives up profits for a few fat cats like Tony O'Neill and drives up prices for the rest of us. It's time these oligopolies were wound up and shut down - unless, of course, we want the cost of living to keep rocketing up and the continual increase of the amount of people living in relative income.

Do you?