Anthropology Free-For-All

There Was An Attempt To Buy Instant Coffee

September 14, 2025 by David 106 Comments

Specifically, in a London branch of Sainsbury’s:

It does, I think, capture the absurdity of where we are.

For those blissfully unfamiliar with the phenomenon above and how it came to be, broader context can be found here. Along with some telling contortions from our progressive betters.

And from which, this:

And so, the preferred, progressive trajectory, as implied above, entails a more demoralised, more dangerous, low-trust society. In which pretty much anything one might wish to buy will be out of reach or shuttered away, and in which every customer will by default be treated as suspicious. Because apparently, we mustn’t acknowledge a difference between the criminal and the law-abiding. Except, that is, to imagine them as more vulnerable than we are.

We will lock up the product, but not the thief. And utopia will surely follow.

Ms [Martha] Gill is not alone, of course. According to her Guardian colleague Owen Jones, expecting persistent shoplifters to face consequences for their actions is now among “the worst instincts of the electorate.” Because shoplifters are “traumatised,” apparently. The real victims of the drama.

At which point, a thought occurs. If repeated thieving is so high-minded and so easily excused, perhaps Ms Gill and Mr Jones would be good enough to publish their home addresses, the whereabouts of any valuables, and the times at which they’re likely to be out, or at least preoccupied or unconscious.

Or do our betters only disdain other people’s property?

See also, the Progressive Retail Experience series, a recurring feature of Fridays here, and whose entries currently number 666.

Update, via the comments:

Jen quotes this, from the post linked above,

Ms Gill is not alone, of course. According to her Guardian colleague Owen Jones, expecting persistent shoplifters to face consequences for their actions is now among “the worst instincts of the electorate.” Because shoplifters are “traumatised,” apparently. The real victims of the drama.

She adds, drily,

“The Guardian: wrong about everything, all the time.”

Well, it’s quite the feat to construe brazen and habitual thieves who merrily degrade the lives of those around them – the ones sexually assaulting retail staff and brandishing machetes – as somehow being the victims of the drama, the ones deserving of our empathy and indulgence, the ones who shouldn’t be punished.

While blaming the law-abiding, on whom they prey.

And while pretending not to know that the kinds of people who thieve and loot repeatedly, dozens or hundreds of times, often while visibly exulting in a sense of power, an ability to menace others, are quite likely to behave in other vividly anti-social ways. And while somehow ignoring the damning statistics of her own chosen sources.

I mean, even by the standards of the Guardian and Observer, that’s some pretty solid perversity. One might, for instance, contrast Ms Gill’s article, or that of Mr Jones, with all available statistical data, with the accounts of the victims, and with actual footage of the crimes in question – I’ve shared 666 examples to date – and then behold the utterly jarring dissonance.

As I said in an earlier thread,

Progressive wrongness is, it seems to me, often of a particular type. It isn’t just unrealistic or factually incorrect or logically or morally incoherent. There’s very often a sense of contrivance and perversity, of wrongness via effort, suggesting a psychology one might find worthy of study.

And Ms Gill’s Observer article is littered with quite glaring factual and logical errors – things that a professional journalist should know and which are easily found out. And yet she somehow doesn’t know, or pretends not to know, and makes no effort whatsoever to check. Because moral perversity is, among her peers, much more statusful.

Again, a psychology worthy of study.

Consider this an open thread. Pick a subject, any subject.




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