Tesco's Racist Sign

"WE'RE WATCHING YOU. 

This store is working with police/other retailers to identify thieves."  

In Polish.  How classy.  This lovely sign has pride of place in my local Tesco store at Diss in Norfolk.  I consider it to be completely racist*

Let's talk this through.  It's not unusual to have information signs up in different languages where there's a large foreign speaking minority who will see them.  When you catch the ferry to Calais there are safety signs up in English, French, German, Dutch and Polish.  It's the whole reason the international system of road signs was designed: so that essential information doesn't have to be translated into multiple languages.  If you can't use a symbol though, I've absolutely no problem with this: it's unquestionably sensible.

Let's see whether Tesco thinks it's a good idea to provide essential information for the convenience of its Polish customers.  There are signs up for "Parent Parking", "Reycling", "Customer Service" and "Toilets" in and around the Diss store.  All of them are in English.  Not one of them is translated into anything.  There are all the special offers, the "Every Little Counts" advertising slogan - all of it in English.  There are even signs setting out rules, such as saying you can only park for 2 hours there - but they're only in English too.  Nope, the only sign they've bothered to put into Polish is the "WE'RE WATCHING YOU" one. 

Tesco Diss.  You're welcome, if you're not Polish

Tesco Twitter Intervenes

Is there a corresponding DO NOT STEAL sign in English? Yes, there is.  It's to one side and I had to look for it.  It was the Polish one that caught my eye.  It's right in your face where you walk in.  I tweeted Tesco about the issue on 19 July.  They said they understood why I thought it was wrong and said they'd speak to the branch manager.  Just to be clear, I've no problem with a sign in English.  Every other sign in the store is in English and it is the language of this country.  I doesn't single any particular national group out as being potential thieves.

The net result of this intervention is that a Latvian sign has now appeared too.  If you're in any doubt which nationalities are being singled out as being potential criminals, they've neatly written the language on the back so we're all aware.  How thoughtful.  Lovely handwriting too.

What's more - it gets better - since my complaint they've added a SECOND "We're watching you" sign in Polish and it's double size.  It has absolute pride of place in the store: it's impossible to enter without seeing it.  Look here on the central door that closes and opens.  The single English one is to its right on the fixed panel on the side.

Why is this so offensive? Well clearly two nationalities are being singled out as being suspected of potential criminal activity.  They are being greeted in a sign in their own language (a rarity in this country) that tells them they're being watched.  Polish families with children entering might be delighted to see their own language, only to realise they're being told that Tesco regards them as potential thieves.  Welcome to Britain.  Welcome to Tesco.

What's next - "DO NOT STEAL" signs in Romani to fulfill another nasty, negative racial stereotype?

Local Poles

Perhaps Tesco has a major problem with this demographic locally.  I seriously doubted it, even before I had a delve into the official statistics.

The last census revealed just 1.1% of the population of the whole of the East of England region was born in Poland.   Lithuania registers at 0.3% of the population and Latvia is so small as to not even make the top 15 table.   Together there are more people born in Germany and the US in the region than there are Poles.  In addition, the bigger Polish speaking communities are not in this part of Suffolk/Norfolk, but up in places closer to the Lincolnshire border.  The only Poles I've personally ever come across in this area are the phenomenally hard-working local hand car wash guys, who have put up a large England flag to try to fit in.

What we do have locally is another fellow EU community: the Portuguese of Thetford.  Wikipedia comments : "During the late 1990s, a slow trickle of Portuguese immigrants started to arrive in the town of Thetford, East Anglia.  By 2004, the media were suggesting that there may be as many as 6,000 Portuguese-speakers in the Thetford area, where there are many Portuguese cafés, restaurants, delicatessens, etc.  This figure would represent around 30% of the local population." 

I note there is no "WE ARE WATCHING YOU" sign in Portuguese in the store, if this is all simply about providing information signs for second-language speakers.

Might there be justification?

However, what if the miniscule Polish and Latvian communities are however single-handed and disproportionately responsible for a outbreak of shoplifting in this area?

Well, let's look at the national crime statistics for the area.  It seems that the East of England has one of the lowest regional crime rates in the entire country.   Life expectancy is among the highest in the UK and regional unemployment is one of the lowest.  My local village newsletter recorded a total of four crimes dealt with by the police in the whole of the last month.  FOUR.  It's not exactly the Bronx round here.

Okay, I don't live in the metropolis of Diss (5000 inhabitants!) so let's see their exact local crime figures based on Tesco's postcode.  Here we have it - a total of 82 crimes reported in May 2014.   One third were anti-social crimes (31.7%) and one fifth (20.7%) were domestic burglaries.  Shoplifting made up 3.6% of the total for last month: a grand total of 3 reported instances of it.  Bear in mind there are three supermarkets close to one another that total is split between: Tesco, Coop/Somerfield and Morrisons.

So we have 3 reports of shoplifting a month, typically, split across three Diss supermarkets (offenders' nationalities unknown), and Tesco responds with these in your face signs that give the impression there is a petty crime spree caused by two specific nationalities: the Poles and the Latvians.  It is utterly disproportionate, misleading, offensive, unclassy and I'm afraid, just plain nasty.

Moreover, even if there were a major problem with shoplifting that was borne out by figures, and these criminals were proven to belong to one or two national groups, it still absolutely wouldn't be appropriate to single them out in this way.  Hire more security staff, but do not label all the other members of the group as potential criminals to the world at large in this way.   It's the equivalent of saying that because you've had a problem with certain individuals, you're okay labelling every one of them by shoving up the "no Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs" signs of yesteryear.  Several, or even many members of a particular societal group might objectively give you problems, but in 2014 it is just not acceptable to go on to label all members of that group with a highly negative label because of this.  There's a simple name for it: racism.

And here we all are wondering how UKIP manages to persuade people the country is sinking under the weight of criminal East European immigrants.  I'm a lawyer who bothered to check up on what the actual local statistics are.  I wonder how many other people will just see the sign and just assume there must be a Polish crime wave locally because the sign is there.  It's inflammatory and perpetuates a slur against a national group (actually, two national groups in this case).  It's racial stereotyping, it breeds prejudice, and it's inherently wrong.

Shame on Tesco

Shame on you Tesco Diss.  Shame on you Tesco nationally for not stopping this.

Aside from the moral position, you've also not thought for a moment how this will offend and piss of not just law abiding Polish and Latvian customers but everyone else too.  This is idiotically avoidable bad PR that your business should be seeking to avoid.  Instead, after a complaint, you've decided to make the situation worse.






* A couple of people have questioned whether it's possible to be "racist" towards Poles.  Simple answer, yes.  At the highest level, national origins are expressly covered in the 1966 United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  In terms of UK legislation, the definition of a racial group is "A group of persons defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins." If you want an example of the legislation applying in an anti-Polish case of May 2014, please see here.





 

Fog

An house now inhabited by geese on the northern shore of Seyðisfjörður

We've been away traveling quite a bit, and just got back into 101 from Seyðisfjörður, an absolute gem of a town with stunning waterfalls and craggy, intrepid mountains everywhere you look. We tented again and this time enjoyed warm, sunny and windless skies, which was welcomed after the dreary stuff we've had to accept in the capital region this summer (to be fair, of course, we are in the North Atlantic, just under the Arctic Circle, and this place is called Iceland...why do the locals always complain about the weather?)

On the day I took this shot, though, a thick fog settled into the valley and dropped rain, which meant a good opportunity to don our rain boots and go adventuring along the north side of the fjörður (fjord.) It's an especially quiet and eerie place, populated only by animals (as far as we could see) who seemed to literally own the land. The horses that came up to greet us seemed to be scrutinizing us for the whole herd, eventually giving us a green light to move along. Sheep were especially lazy about getting off of the road, and there was even a bit of trouble with a gaggle of calico-styled geese determined not to let us pass.

This house in particular was home to a peculiar pair of geese, chocolate brown in color with white throats (you can see one on the right-hand side of the photo.) I saw them from the road and couldn't figure out what kind of bird they were...too dark to be geese, but too big to be ducks. I fancied that maybe I'd discovered long-lost living members of the extinct Dodo bird, or Great Auk, family, and that Iceland could now be redeemed for having killed off the last of that grand, harmless species. I got out of the car, and once again got the feeling that I should have called ahead to announce my intended visit: the birds seemed non-plussed with me, and even a bit irritated at my trespass on to their property. But up close I saw that they were definitely geese, and that they seemed to guard over a family of the classic-grey variety. I asked to take a few photos, then politely said my goodbyes and moved along...

Vík

Óðinn on a great rock at the Vík í Mýrdal campgrounds

We camped at Vík í Mýrdal last week, my son and I. I always have a tent and blankets and basic supplies in the trunk of my car so we can skip out of town with a moment's notice if the weather looks good, and last week, though it rained and rained in Reykjavik, the sun shown down on the south coast.


I had intended to put down stakes in Skógafoss but an evening's chilly wind had come up and the camping ground there is pretty unprotected. Plus it smelled like someone had just fertilized the whole region. So we jumped back into the car and zipped over to Vík, where we were lucky enough to find this excellent spot right next to a pyramid-shaped rock, which conveniently had a large metal loop driven into it that I used to anchor our tent (if you look closely you can see the line between them.)  Yes, we escaped the smell, but here it was even windier, and the chill had turned to nighttime cold. It hardly bothered us, though, because we were out in nature, on an adventure, just the two of us!

Near midnight Óðinn climbed our rock and I snapped this shot. Soon we snuggled into our little blue home and got cozy, ready for rest. With nesting gulls on the little cliff above us, a gurgling nearby child-sized waterfall, and the crunched-plastic sound the wind made with our tent, it was hard, though, to finally get to sleep. It sounded like elves or spooks were trying to get into our tent the way the wind was whipping it around, and I realized that I was a bit scared! When I thought back to all the nights I've spent in tents out in the total wilds of the Sierra Nevada, where it's pitch-black outside and bears roam (and you'd better be damned sure you don't even have a bite of food in your tent or they'll come in and get it!) I laughed at my fear. The worst thing that could happen to us here was to maybe have a midge trapped inside our tent with us, or to have to listen to some late-night drunken singing from some other campers. I smiled at that, the sense of safety I feel here in Iceland, and soon fell fast asleep : )

Sky

Kid with towel at Nauthólsvík beach in Reyjavík

I just love this photo! I snapped it today out at Nauthólsvík, the white-sand beach here in Reykjavík  (btw, read the post in that last link for a good journey down memory lane - I wrote it in 2007 about how amazing Iceland's economic growth was, and how much we deserved it! Haha!) which sits just below Perlan and the Öskjuhlíð forest (here's a good article from the Grapevine about this area.).  A group of pre-schoolers were on a field trip to the beach, and this little dude was spreading his towel out at the top of the hillock above where we sat.


It ended up getting a bit chilly when the high, grey clouds from the east floated in front of the sun, but until then the 14°C temp kept me, at least, pretty happy. As always, I recommend visiting this outdoor marvel, especially if traveling here with kids (hint: there's a constructed hot pool on site for parents to relax and warm in ; )

June Sun

Skólavörðurstígur

11:30pm last Thursday night, looking down Skólavörðurstígur. Lovely!

Jökulsárlón

Getting ready for a carboat trip at Jökulsárlón

I think this pic is so charming and silly somehow. The carboat was filled up with people and just waiting there on dry land. It reminds me of a photo I took years ago at Hljómskálagarður, the park by the town lake (interesting historical info at that link, btw.) All prepped up in their safety vests, the mighty seafarers of the glacial lagoon get set for their adventure...


Like I mentioned on the Facebook page, the lagoon was very filled up with small bergs when we went there the weekend before last. The woman in the shop said that they usually have a safety boat that cruises out into the lagoon with these bigger ones to rescue any unlucky visitors who go overboard, but that there just wasn't room for two boats at once, as was. I didn't ask, and couldn't find anything in a cursory search, so I don't know if the size and quantity of the bergs are because it's early in the warmer season, or due to retreating glaciation. I'll try to dig up more on that, but in the meantime, you can read the Wikipedia entry (which someone should edit...) for this natural wonder The lagoon is getting bigger with glacial retreat, and deeper as well.

Regardless, it's still pretty easy to get a good photo, even with a goofy pink compact camera like mine, and without the towering chunks of glacier that sometimes command over the lagoon. And if you're lucky you'll find a large chunk of millennia-old ice floating by the shore that you and your son can pretend is an inter-dimensional crystal from a watery planet far far away...

Stockfish

Fish heads out to dry on the Reykjanes peninsula

On our drive south to Krýsuvík and Grindavík last week we passed by a forest of fish-drying stocks, and decided to stop for a closer look. Planted there in the middle of a lava field, the sight of all those low-tech A-frames hung with thousands of cod carcasses is somehow primitive and reminiscent of a simpler time.



I’ve seen these racks before, so I initially stopped to show eight year-old Óðinn but ended up mesmerized by the bright green grass and the thin layer of chartreuse moss covering the wooden poles, and how the sunlight danced over the whole scene. Out of curiosity I googled ‘dried fish heads iceland’ and discovered that we export most of the stuff to Nigeria as one of their major sources of protein. We're not the only country to do so, as you can read about in this interesting interview with a Scottish exporter, but we seem to be at the top of the field.

While I was researching, I ran across a heartwarming story of an Icelandic exporter, Salka - Norfish Ltd, that donates money to an eye center in Nigeria to fund cataract surgery for locals. But then I also discovered a more sinister angle to the business, as detailed in a harch 2011 article in the Nigerian Ships & Ports media outlet about foul dealings on the part of Icelandic exporters, including: "Mixing of orders or types of stockfish unilaterally without refund...Non-performance of agreed contract terms...Non-delivery of consignment after payment/shipment (evidenced by bill of lading) ...Fraud... Use of unseaworthy containers, allowing rain and sea water to soak consignments...Average 50-kilogramme, fish head bag less 26 30 kilogrammes sent on many occasions..." and more.

My first thought on reading this was, of course. My second thought was, maybe it's fair karma for all the Nigerian phone and email scams we've been inundated with here in Iceland. If you've been reading my blog for a while, though, you'll know that I'm under no delusion that my countrymen and women are above a common swindle or two. As a matter of fact, I believe that duplicitousness is part of our opportunistic national character, nurtured by the need to survive in historically harsh conditions. You do what you have to do to make it through the winter, right? And especially on an arctic island that seems to be one big very active volcano.

A little more research gave me this article on a British man who was arrested by Interpol for having defrauded tons of money from Nigerian importers of Icelandic stockfish. In the end greed truly is an international state of mind...