Battle for London III – the farmers’ market

Actual posh wellies…

It’s time to talk about a recent East End shopping phenomena that has nothing to do with Smithfield, Spitalfields or Ridley Road — the ubiquitous farmers’ market.

I’ve nothing against people buying overpriced cheese in an urban environment — good luck to them — I just don’t understand why they need to recreate a Devonshire village in Hackney in order to do it. Like running a crack house in Widdecombe-on-the-Moor, it just seems like a juxtaposition too far.

When I was growing up in Devon I never once saw a farmer eating a spinach and goat’s cheese frittata, but if you absolutely have to start selling cup-cakes from a trestle table in Chatsworth Road here are my do’s and don’ts:

1: Do spread gallons of cow shit around your stall— not only will it lend authenticity to proceedings, it will also give the Trustafarians an actual reason to wear those designer wellies (apart from Bestival and Mumford and Sons’ concerts).

2: Do not feel guilty about the liberal use of the phrase ‘free-range’,  even if you imported your eggs from a battery farm in east Hungary. Those chickens lived a short and brutal life, before having their necks expertly wrung by a man with very thick thumbs. Don’t let their deaths be in vain – take the cash.

3: Do put in a fake West Country accent — it will fool the assorted bankers’ wives, architects and generalized media types visiting your stall into thinking you’re as thick as pig-shit, thus allowing you to mercilessly overcharge them for cakes that you bought earlier in Greggs.

4. Do not, on any account, admit that you attended a red brick university and have never been to an actual farm — you risk being dragged through the streets, hung from the nearest lamppost and flayed alive with gluten-free baguettes. If there’s one thing the urban middle-classes hate it’s having their pretensions exposed — do so at your peril.

5. Finally, if selling pies and sausages, do plaster them with Union flag stickers. I’m not saying your average yummy-mummy is xenephobic, they just don’t like foreign meat (unless it’s attached to a man who works in Canary Wharf and drives a Range Rover).

Follow these rules and the produce will fly off your stall. And if you get any trouble from the people who live in the council blocks on the fringes of London Fields and Victoria Park, the ones who shop in Iceland and Lidl, just set the dogs on them…

Photo courtesy of escout83 on photobucket

Battle for London II – art versus cash

I’ve lived in East London now for long enough to see it change beyond recognition — 20 years ago the boozers were full of coked-up Kray twins wannabees in Reebok Classics and Ralph Lauren polo shirts — the same pubs are now packed with design students supping locally brewed beer and discussing their next ‘show’. Weirdly, there are more tattoos now than there were back then, but less facial scarring. You win some, you lose some.

So, how did we get here and what is the typical journey from white working class enclave to trendiest postcode in the city? In my opinion, there are three key stages:

1: Artists

The first to venture into a rough area are the artists and designers. I mean actual artists and designers — sorry if you take photos of interesting buildings on your weekend rambles around Spitalfields or dream of writing a novel in your lunch hour — I mean people who will live in a disused warehouse with no toilet and have a conscientious objection to 9 to 5. You may despise their refusal to get a proper job and their lax personal hygiene, but you have them to thank for turning your local Chicken Cottage into a pop-up live/work space called ‘Evolve’. Buy them a flat white and thank them for attracting the estate agents. Accept you do not have what it takes.

2: Graduates

Once the area becomes peppered with coffee shops, vintage clothing boutiques and a fledgling farmers’ market, the people who like to think they are cool and ‘edgy’ — but who are actually afraid of poor people — will start exploring. These are usually graduates in law, architecture and media from red brick universities. They’ll come at the weekend initially, but then when none of them get stabbed or taxed for their I-phones, they’ll come back. And they’ll tell their friends. Gradually pubs will replace their Sky TV consoles with DJ booths, kebab joints will give way to delis and everywhere you will see fresh-faced young people in watered down, high street versions of fashions that they would have once ridiculed (think skinny jeans, moustaches and deck shoes). When you have stopped laughing, it’s time to get your flat valued.

3: Bankers

When ALL of the poor people have gone, the next stage begins in earnest. The pubs will morph into restaurants and the main danger in the local park will come not from muggings, but being run-down by gimlet-eyed mothers in lycra, pushing their offspring before them in designer buggies as they train for a 10K.

At the weekend you will see a lot of tall, beautiful women walking around with men who have dress shirts tucked into designer jeans and who look vaguely uncomfortable in the fresh air. These are the bankers and their presence on your streets tells you that it is all over.

You will sense the scientifically proven correlation between the exaggerated price of your flat and the concurrent sinking of your belief in human nature and wish that those grubby but good-natured artistic types would come back (they can’t afford to).

Action — buy a cinnamon latte and browse the estate agent windows. It’s all you have left.

Picture: Gordon Joly @flickr.com

Battle for London I – East Village

So, where am I going to park…

I went out to buy a new smart-phone the other day — ‘Why have actual experiences when I can live through a screen?’ I thought  — and on the way through the mall I was stopped outside a pop-up marketing tent manned by an eager-eyed young Girl in a white uniform and even whiter teeth. She promised me a brand new Oyster wallet so I followed her inside.

The tent was a vision. There were more smiling Girls milling about and the walls were covered in artist’s impressions of the new development that’s set to replace the athlete’s village on the London 2012 Olympic site. The Girl told me that East Village (as it is to be named) would be a sustainable development of eco-homes and green spaces for people to gather and enjoy being green together. I believed her because she was very young and very bright looking and the flats and houses looked amazing with modern lounges and views across the London skyline. ‘They’re just putting in the new kitchens,’ the Girl said. ‘Because the athletes didn’t have kitchens.’

‘No, they had the biggest McDonalds in THE WORLD instead,’ I thought, but kept quiet as I didn’t want to upset her.

Then, with a look that fell somewhere between disdain and pity, she asked me if I wanted to sign up for information

‘Great,’ I said, believing that one day I might be allowed to live among the beautiful young people with the shiny teeth. ‘I would love to do that.’

I gleefully gave her my email and postcode and even allowed her to tick the box permitting related companies to contact me with their excellent marketing messages.

‘Why not?’ I thought. ‘We can build a better future together.’

I was about to leave the tent and go on my way, buoyed by thoughts of my new life, when I thought of one final question.

‘How much do the flats cost?’ I asked. ‘On average?’

‘We’re not sure yet,’ the Girl said, the smile remaining, but something like panic beginning to swim behind her eyes.

‘But you must have a rough idea?’ I said. ‘I mean they are supposed to be for local people, right? Affordable?’

The Girl looked at her colleague who gave her the slightest shake of the head, as if to say, ‘No. Not him. Not ever.’

As the Girl ushered me expertly out of the tent, still smiling and mumbling vaguely about ‘significant deposits and ‘high yield returns’ I had the impression that a dark shadow had fallen across the green vistas of East Village and that maybe I had fallen victim to a slick marketing campaign that sought to give the impression that the development might be available to all, when in fact it was already destined to be parcelled up by developers.

However, I quickly put that thought from my mind as too cynical and ever since that day, I regularly check my Inbox for information about when the flats will be available.

Nothing yet, though. Maybe they took my details down incorrectly? Or misplaced them. Otherwise they surely would have written to me by now, wouldn’t they…

Why David Cameron is right about Leveson

Smug, but possibly right…

I’ve just slapped myself three times across the face. Not because I’m into onanistic S&M, or completing a course of strict Ninja training, but because I’m trying to accept the reality of the sentence I’m about to write. Deep breath, here goes…

I think I agree with David Cameron on whether there should be new laws to regulate the press.

There, I’ve said it. And I’m not even joking.

While no one would dispute that the press has a problem locating its own moral compass — one that distinguishes between the investigation of genuine wrongdoing and a prurient interest in whether Hugh Grant has a love child by every woman in west London — the fact still remains that the press is free in this country for a reason. An unshackled press is fundamental to a functioning democracy, acting as a check on the excesses of government, such as exposing the MPs’ expenses scandal, or even more famously in the 1960s, Watergate

Now I don’t think that Cameron is necessarily adhering to high principles when he says that we should be wary of state involvement in the press — it might well be that he is acting out his close relationships with the rich and famous in order to protect them. However, whatever his motives, his concerns still stand.

The problem with state regulation is that it could result in exactly the reverse of the problem we have now. If the freedom of the press to investigate was somehow linked to parliament, what happens in the future when another PM tries to take us to war on a false promise or a pillar of the establishment is found to be a paedophile? Would reporters and editors be free to investigate, as they are now? Or would we discover that the law was in fact being used to stifle them?

Rather than trying to curb the way the press operates at source, the way forward is to maintain its freedom to look into whatever murky pits that it wants, but to ensure that if editors get it wrong, the papers are made to pay proportionately. That means front-page apologies and huge fines. This would make editors think seriously about pursuing people they know to be innocent or vulnerable.

On a final note, it should also be remembered that despite the roll of celebrities, such as Mrs Harry Potter, who are currently voicing their support for state legislation, it is never a good idea to follow the wishes of victims. If we did, we would have long ago seen the return of hanging, public flogging and the castration of paedophiles.

As William Shakespeare famously put it: ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

Photo courtesy of eddie4546 @photobucket

Between a rock and a hard place – Cameron’s Leveson dilemma

Er…

I heard something maddening on the radio while I was flossing this morning (my Nan told me flossing can add years to your life — all those tiny bits of food attract bacteria and weaken your immune system, apparently). Anyway, according to the breakfast news David Cameron gets to see the Leveson Report  a full 24 hours before the rest of us. Why? I’m not quite sure — perhaps he’s a slow reader? Maybe he needs a full day and night to ponder what the rest of us have already made up our minds about? Or does the 24 hours represent a handy window to allow ministers to come up with an excuse  for ignoring the findings of their own inquiry?

In this case it’s starting to look like the latter. If what has been widely predicted comes to pass and Lord Leveson recommends the setting up of an independent body with legal powers to curb the press (an outcome supported by 79 per cent of the public  according to one poll) Dave will be in a uniquely awkward position. Does he side with Lord Leveson and act decisively  to curb a mainly right wing press that has traditionally supported Tory governments, or does he stick up for his erstwhile mates in Wapping, water down the proposals to benefit the papers and risk a huge public backlash?

Press regulation is the media version of the Arab-Israeli conflict – there’s good and bad on both sides, but the only thing you can guarantee is that someone’s going to get hurt. Most reasonable people accept that the press needs freedom to hold institutions to account — police corruption at Hillsborough, for example — but not to splash Charlotte Church’s 16-year-old arse all over the front pages.

In my opinion, the press simply cannot be trusted to judge what is in the public interest and what is purely salacious. A system of proportional justice is required – if a tabloid (because it usually is the tabloids) prints lies about Hugh Grant’s love life all over the front page, then the apology ought to be proportional, i.e. also on the front page with a matching font, not hidden on p25 underneath an ad for the ‘Will and Kate commemorative Toby Jug’.

Press regulation is a thorny issue, but one thing is true – if Dave does the brave thing and forms a regulatory body with legal powers to censure journalists, the press pack will not forgive him easily. Nor will their revenge be taken cold. Cameron will be like a lame deer, limping through the snow followed by a pack of slavering wolves.

Not that many people will have any sympathy for him. Another thing my Nan used to say – if you sleep with pigs, don’t be surprised if you wake up covered in shit (lol).

Photo courtesy of xelakram @photobucket