Convicted for grieving!
The recent case of a grieving mother in South Wales – convicted for unpaid car tax amounting to £8.75 – lays bare the cruelty of Britain’s so-called justice system under capitalism.
Following the death of her newborn baby, this woman faced not compassion but prosecution under the Single Justice Procedure (SJP), a fast-track, paper-only court process designed to deal with minor offences.
She had already paid £260 in clamping fees, declared the vehicle off-road, and submitted a letter explaining her mental health struggles following her child’s death. The response? A criminal conviction, court costs, and trauma.
Pensioners with dementia, cancer patients, the terminally ill – these are just some of those swept up by the SJP’s conveyor belt of punishment. Magistrates themselves have raised concerns, yet the system persists.
The message is clear: in capitalist Britain, failure to navigate bureaucratic fines, even during deep personal crisis; is criminal if you are a worker. If you are a capitalist, you get a free unlimited get out of jail card.
Labour now promises a review. We know how these go. No meaningful change will happen, while a bunch of bureaucrats are given a meaningless task for a couple of weeks.
What happened to this mother isn’t just an oversight; it’s the logic of the system. The SJP serves the needs of a ruling class more concerned with enforcing order and extracting revenue from workers.
We need a revolution, then, we will have our own judgement day against the real scroungers who don’t pay up – the billionaires at the top.
Maciej Krzymieniecki, Swansea
Nothing funny about clownish tactics
June 14, there is a protest planned outside of the US embassy, organised by the 1st Amendment events team of the Democrats abroad. There’s plenty to protest; the cuts he’s made to government jobs and recently the attacks on protesters in LA for example.
What guidance are the Democrats abroad giving to those attending this protest against Trump? “Dress as a clown. Seriously”. Their words, not mine.
Yes, their tactics for challenging the so-called ‘fascist’– and ‘tyrannical’ Trump admin is to ask everyday people to come to this protest dressed as clowns to show they wish to “rid the US government of Trump-era clown-car ineptitude, and begin the work of rebuilding American democracy”.
Hypocrites! Whilst the Democrats abroad parade around, Kamala Harris and the Democrats in the US shed crocodile tears about the violence against protesters; as if they were not doing the exact same thing to Palestine protesters not even a year ago!
Whilst everyday people are taking to the streets to defend their neighbours, the only lead these people can come up with is to put on clown make-up!
By all means, leaders of Democrats abroad dress up as clowns. It suits you. To all those everyday people incensed by the state of the world and the US, the only solution is revolution! Sweep away all the clowns in the White House and The Democratic Party.
Hugh Nankervis, Oxford
Critical support for Biden’s tumour
Since news broke that Joe Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, the bourgeois media has fallen over itself in an outpouring of sympathy.
Hours of airtime and column inches have been devoted to whitewashing the legacy of a genocidal capitalist. But among ordinary people on social media there has been no such sympathy.
The working class response has ranged from jokes that Biden’s tumour has ‘the right to defend itself’ to serious comments about his role in facilitating genocide in Gaza.
This disconnect between the media and the masses couldn’t be clearer. We are meant to believe that Biden’s life is worth more than the tens of thousands of Palestinians slaughtered by Israeli and western imperialism.
We won’t weep for a man who will receive world-class private healthcare whilst millions suffer.
Abbie, University of Sheffield
It’s in capitalism’s nature
Early last year, sweeping changes were made to English planning law.
Now, all development projects in England that pass through the planning system must provide a 10 percent net gain in terms of the site’s ecological habitats, calculated by Ecologists using Natural England’s Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) Metric Tool.
This appears to be wonderful news on paper. However, all is not so rosy on the ground. If a developer decides their scheme is not profitable enough when taking into account these mandatory biodiversity gains on site, or it is too small to accommodate both the development and natural habitats, they turn to the newly created BNG unit credit marketplace to provide an offset.
We have already seen how the capitalist class abuse the existing carbon credit system for financial speculation and continuing their colossal carbon emissions unhindered. This biodiversity credit scheme will inevitably arrive at the same fate thanks to the ruthlessness of market forces.
Furthermore, even when a development proves in theory it will increase the level of biodiversity on site, this gain shall only materialise through consistent adherence to a complex habitat management scheme, which is monitored by local councils. At a time when council budgets are stretched so thin, essential services are being cut in some areas, they clearly will not have the resources to ensure all developers keep to their word!
It is in the capital’s nature to cut corners when profit is at stake. Mandatory biodiversity net gain would be an effective way of boosting nature in the UK but is unfortunately doomed to fail under the capitalist’s destructive hand.
Ben S, Bristol
Infrastructure drought
Through nearly half a century of mismanagement and lack of public investment, no new reservoir has been built in the northwest of England for 30 years.
And now in one of the driest springs, United utilities has reported the North West to be in a drought. A recurring problem for the climate catastrophe.
This is hardly a northwest problem as 40 percent of Europe is reported to be sliding into a drought with pockets of Greece, Italy, and Spain reporting below average rainfall. Yet Rachel Reeves and the mayors of Manchester and Liverpool, wax lyrical about a new train connecting the two cities.
While we welcome new infrastructure projects, this trainline reveals the disconnect between them and us. Reeves and the mayors are setting up this new line with the hope that it increases local tourism. But with capitalism it’s a zero-sum game. Investment in one sector can only come at the expense of the others.
The decision to add a high speed train on existing infrastructure rather than building new infrastructure to tackle Britain’s outdated water system and build new reservoirs in the face of further dry weather exposes their real aims: To squeeze the people dry.
We can trust these thieves with nothing. They destroy all that they touch. We need these capitalists ripped from these sectors.
Ben Cownley, Manchester
Criminal negligence by police
A recent study by the University of Leicester found that more than 30,000 criminal cases collapsed between 2020-2024 due to lost, damaged, or missing evidence.
This shocking figure also includes 70 murders and 550 sexual offences. This yet further proof that the real role of police is not to solve crime by any stretch.
The poor storage of evidence has been on the rise since the closure of the national Forensic Science Service (FSS) in 2012 as a package of austerity cuts, with evidence handling outsourced to private contractors. As a result, local police forces do not have the resources available to handle the vast volumes of evidence they obtain.
In one particularly shocking example, Lancashire Police lost the recording of an interview with a 9 year old girl who had suffered years of abuse, and as a result her abuser remained free for a further ten years before finally being convicted.
The aforementioned study also found that 75 percent of lawyers surveyed had worked on at least one case that collapsed due to mishandling of evidence, with 50 percent saying that it happened more than once.
It is clear that British capitalism is increasingly unable to afford even the most basic protections for its citizens, and is discrediting its own institutions in the process.
Soon the Law Commission will present these findings to Parliament and suggest re-establishing the FSS in some way, but Starmer’s priorities lie elsewhere. To the government this is a zero-sum game, where some other essential service will be cut if a new FSS is to be made.
Sam Lovesey, Milton Keynes
Evidence of a rotten system
The BBC and Guardian have recently reported that tens of thousands of criminal cases have collapsed in the last five years due to lost or damaged evidence.
This includes many violent offences, like homicides or rape and sexual assault cases, in 2024, 9 percent of all prosecutions collapsed, to the tune of 8,180 cases. This problem is largely due to staffing issues caused by austerity and cuts to the criminal justice system, with officials being overstretched and having to deal with archiving evidence alongside many other responsibilities.
The human impact of this on the victims of crimes like sexual assault is devastating: ranging from having to re-testify about their most harrowing experiences because the original recording was lost, to seeing their perpetrators walk off scot-free in a complete miscarriage of justice!
It’s no wonder that trust in the institutions of British capitalism is at an all-time low amongst ordinary people – when the state cannot even fulfil the most basic task of keeping people safe and maintaining ‘law and order’.
The horrific murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer a few years ago should act as a stark reminder that the solution is not more funding, more cops, more judges.
The only way we will know justice is to sweep the whole rotten system away.
Beatrice Palmieri, Holloway
