Nando’s Campaign Gets Ugly
A while back I touched a bit of a raw nerve when I argued that a group of local campaigners, determined to stop a Nando’s chicken restaurant opening on Stoke Newington Church Street, had an unspoken motive for their action:
The campaigners are trying to find reasons to stop people they despise from spending time in a street they’ve claimed for themselves.
It’s a motive that anti-Nando’s campaigners have denied, but far from being the only one who believes many of these people simply want to preserve (as far as possible) Church Street as a playground for a certain middle-class clique, David T over at Harry’s Place put the argument equally bluntly:
In fact, all sorts of people eat at Nandos. Rich, poor, gourmets, snackers. And I’ll be one of them.
I reckon that the horror that Nandos represents to the “latte sippers”, is that it will attract people like us to Church Street.
Anyway, someone out there is desperate to prove us right. Last night a commenter calling himself (or herself) Mr S.Hitchchicken left this comment:
IF YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO LIVE IN STOKE NEWINGTON THEN FUCK OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE - YOU CUNTS MAKE ME PUKE JUST LIKE THE NANDOS CHICKEN..WATCH OUT BEN COS WE’RE WATCHING YOU!
It was quickly followed by an email:
You’re not welcome in Hackney..go away and disappear
All of which rather goes to prove my point. The anti-Nando’s campaign is less about stopping a chain store from opening its doors, and more about keeping peasants out of a middle class ‘village’.
It just suggests I’m right when someone starts threatening me for exposing their pathetic prejudices.
Published on 28th June, 2008
Nando’s Revisited
This week’s Hackney Gazette quotes this blog post and reports me saying of the local drive to boycott Nando’s on Stoke Newington Church Street:
“The campaign isn’t about banishing chains - the street has enough of those… It’s not about protecting independent businesses - Nando’s isn’t in competition with them. It’s about keeping Church Steet exclusive, expensive, homogenous and middle class. And an area with a very high average house price.”
Naturally, this has infuriated some. But I was delighted to discover that, in the NO! to Nandos on Church Street group, I’m not far wrong. Try this for size:
Couldn’t be much clearer if he just wrote “Peasants Out”.
This is the same guy who said elsewhere that “You wouldn’t get a fantastic pub like the Shakespeare in Primrose Hill”.
Well, no. I suppose not. But he would get a fantastic little pub like the Shakespeare if he visited some of the others that seem to have the same format, and presumably belong to the same chain - the Approach in Bethnal Green; The Rosemary Branch in De Beauvoir/Hoxton; the Prince George in Dalston; The Royal Inn on the Park, Victoria Park; and so on.
So that’s nice and clear. Chains are fine in N16, as long as they’re the chains middle class people want.
Thankfully I’m not alone in thinking this pathetic.
Chicken wing, anyone?
Published on 13th June, 2008
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