Is this meant to be a parody of American tourists in Athens? If yes, then at best mildly amusing.
Or is it meant to be taken seriously? If yes, then dire as displays an appalling lack of understanding of coffee culture in Athens.
Mokka is an excellent coffee shop, outside Athens Central Market. A wide variety of coffee on offer. One of the few coffee shops brewing Greek coffee on a bed of hot sand.
Mokka also has an adjacent shop selling coffee.
Across the road, the fruit and veg market worth exploring.
More usual to find Greek coffee over a flame, as will find at Just Made 33 (just off Ermou).
A few years ago then barista at Just Made 33 won the world championship for Ibrik coffee. The coffee used on sale at Just Made 33.
Coffee Island is the Greek Starbucks, to be avoided if care about coffee.
Spoilt for choice with excellent coffee shops in New York. Why therefore would anyone wish for Coffee Island in New York when already have Starbucks serving bad coffee? [see Drift Manhattan edition]
Frappé is not a Greek drink. It is an example of cultural colonisation by a global corporation. An unpleasant cold frothy coffee made with Nescafe.
And no, do not walk down the street drinking out of plastic, even worse bragging about it.
Coffee sit and relax outside a coffee shop with coffee served in glass or ceramic and watch the world go by.
Fifteen minutes wait whilst change from local bus to InterCity bus.
Time for a brief walk through Ayia Napa International Sculpture Park.
A couple of brain-dead pig-ignorant Russian tourists who think OK to climb onto sculptures for selfies. When told to get off, they ask why. When they refused I offered to call the police.
I first came across Om Nom during a recent trip to Brighton late last year in Magazine Brighton then again in Infinity Foods. I decided to pick up what was on sale In Infinity Foods, issue No 3.
Issue 2? I checked to find impossible to obtain, long sold out.
Then another idea, Outpost Coffee. I was in luck, not only a copy, they kindly gave me their copy.
Afternoon Christmas Day, after Christmas dinner, I settled down to read Om Nom issue 2.
“Labels can be bad because being vegan doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy. I want to be more inclusive and give a chance for people who are veggie-curious to try out more vegetables and add them into their diet rather than think, ‘I have to be vegan to eat like this.’” … pic.twitter.com/UPxxLrtHyT
Om Nom is a food magazine, ethical food and lifestyle.
What is ethical?
Veganism is not ethical. It is a lifestyle choice. A lifestyle choice bordering on quasi-religious fundamentalism.
A new gene-edited soybean oil which is designed to avoid the oil's natural tendency to oxidize (and hence cause inflammation in the body + cancer). Soybean oil is what #dietaryguideilnes and other authorities say we should eat over natural fats like butter https://t.co/NiH9zWMXD5
Hopefully not almonds then as each nut takes over a gallon of water to produce ( ~5 litres). Walnuts, hazelnuts, pistachios & cashews not far behind. Interesting podcast on the subject https://t.co/38ORdaI0bmhttps://t.co/sxjt6lQ54q
— Prof Chris Elliott OBE (@QUBFoodProf) March 6, 2019
If you do not want milk in a cappuccino, fine, but do not expect a quality cappuccino with fake milk. It will look and taste disgusting.
What of soya milk, is it ethical? Where has the soya come from? Plantations where once stood rain forests. Soy can be an allergen. The soy is possibly genetically modified. Soy is bitter and has to have additives to remove the bitterness.
What of almond milk? If California, what of the water used in a state suffering from drought and over extraction of water? Five litres of water for each almond.
If do not like milk, for whatever reason, have single origin V60 pour over.
But if insist on fake milk in a cappuccino, then ask for Oatley not an inferior cheap oat milk, and blend in the pouring jug. It looks and tastes marginally better but is not great.
How will we feed the growing population a healthy diet in 2050 without stretching the planet’s resources too thin? A new report from #EATLancet establishes targets aiming to make this future possible. https://t.co/cBYhE4YnV7#food#diet#health#climate
New low-meat diet vital for people and planet, say scientists @TheLancet@EATforum
‘Planetary health diet’ requires huge cuts in red meat eating in rich nations, but prevents 11 million deaths a year and avoids dangerous climate change
Heard that spinach is an excellent source of iron?
Eh… not exactly. This explains how the iron content of spinach was originally overestimated in the early 1900's, how much iron it actually has, and how much of that iron is actually absorbed.
Yes, we should eat more fruit and vegetables, grains and nuts, less processed food, maybe less meat, but we need to take a whole systems approach, not be the latest bigot in town jumping on the latest fashionable bandwagon, the latest fad.
In many parts of the world, grazing animals is more environmentally sound than growing crops.
There is nothing intrinsically healthy about a vegan diet, especially when highly processed.
Organic food heavily processed is still heavily processed food.
Fake milks are highly processed, loaded with sugar. Fake meats heavily processed, laced with additives, just for starters, pea protein isolate, expeller-pressed canola oil, refined coconut oil, water, yeast extract, maltodextrin, natural flavours, gum Arabic.
Was the demand for vegan sausage rolls from Greggs an indication of how bad their regular sausage rolls?
Then there is the need for supplements, on what is claimed to be a healthy diet.
And what of the environmental cost?
Nitrogen-based fertilisers, pesticides, palm oil, genetic modification, reliance on oil industry, just a few of the issues.
Africa, Europe, Asia, North America was covered in open woodland and grassland, savannah, prairie, across which roamed huge herds of herbivores. Man was a hunter gatherer, ate red meat, ate fat, grains did not form part of our diet.
Almost 6 weeks after submission, @TheLancet has refused to publish my letter about the EAT diet being nutritionally deficient: https://t.co/3rxL4Rh8QE@bmj_latest rapid responses are far superior: faster; fairer; and less prone to censorship.
— Dr Maryanne Demasi (@MaryanneDemasi) March 5, 2019
A far more rational and reasonable approach to fixing our food supply – a welcome contrast to the kooky EAT-Lancet brigade. “Farmers are trapped by the economics. We eat their food, so if we want them to change, we have to change” / Borough Market https://t.co/SgqkUPm9bL
#EATLancet reference diet, for a future scenario in 2050 where 10 billion people eat 25g nuts daily, would require increasing current production by almost 540%. NUTS!😳 https://t.co/ihWq0LUAyI
Study blows EAT-Lancet propaganda out of the water. Further confirmation that beef contributes only 3.3% to all US GHG emissions – among other key facts. Study Clarifies U.S. Beef's Resource Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions : USDA ARS https://t.co/iCyczZ2eBH
Thanks, food loving Italy, for stating this truth #EATLancet: “A standard diet for the whole planet, regardless of the age, sex, metabolism, general state of health and eating habits of each person, has no scientific justification at all” 🇮🇹 🇮🇹🇮🇹 https://t.co/eFGlmrH6BK
#EatLancet “would mean the destruction of millenary healthy traditional diets which are a full part of the cultural heritage and social harmony in many countries.” https://t.co/eFGlmrH6BK
Grazie, @ItalyUN_Geneva, for rejecting the #EATLancet diet. "A standard diet for the whole planet, regardless of the age, sex, metabolism, general state of health and eating habits of each person, has no scientific justification at all." Viva l'Italia! 🇮🇹 HT @fleroy1974https://t.co/on5yYUuzYD
Except for Italy and Ethiopia, I haven't seen any other country with enough bravery to question this excess of dietary dogma and the related putsch for global governance over our plates. https://t.co/WLvfmIOkXB
How come the "dangerous diet" critique of skinny, faddy, "clean eating" Instagram influencers doesn't extend to this #EatLancet woman? Billionaire spouse, corporate backers from "poison cartel", and size zero model looks buys airtime in corridors of power? https://t.co/YIX7lyU0R9
EAT-Lancet diet for a small planet, almost vegan, good for our health, good for the planet, too good to be true, the wheels fell off within days when subject to proper scientific scrutiny. That promoted by agribusiness should send alarm bells ringing.
Too much fake science. For example a vegan burger compared with a meat burger, the former served with green tea, the latter served with a latte with half a dozens spoons of sugar.
There is no such thing as cheap food, we simply externalise the costs, social costs, human rights abuse, environmental degradation, climate chaos and animal welfare.
A handful of people eating plants does little to address ethics in food production.
It is not ethical when we praise quality but expensive food, nor when we praise cheap substandard food.
It is not ethical when rich folk enjoy food produced by poor folk who get poorer the harder they work. It is not ethical when the rich get richer peddling junk food to the masses.
It is not ethical when we live in a world where McDonald’s, Starbucks and Costa colonise our towns.
Is it ethical to put a brick through McDonald’s or Starbucks? Or should we create and support alternatives, indie coffee shops, direct trade, serving specialty coffee served in glass or ceramic, local restaurants, the Italian osteria, supporting local producers, serving local and regional dishes?
An act of unbelievable crass stupidity when vegan quasi-religious fundamentalists target Hisbe, an ethical food store. Where next, Infinity Foods, a workers cooperative? Maybe not, Infinity Foods bake vegan cakes and where would we be without vegan cakes? Maybe do something useful, target and shut down McDonald’s or a kebab shop.
Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all say they care about climate change. So why in the hell did they each sponsor a conference that promoted climate change denial? Read @smencimer's big scoop. https://t.co/4ZTRgAYnai
Use of instagram is not ethical. Owned by facebook, claim ownership rights to your pictures, act as bait to draw into the facebook walled garden, pictures posted via robot to twitter are not visible on twitter, the pictures could be used to promote something you are opposed to, you would not know as they do not ask permission to use your pictures, complicit in teen self-harm and suicide.
Business model of facebook is to steal and abuse personal data, to manipulate. Facebook are part of a lobbying group opposed to CO2 reductions.
Post pictures direct to twitter, post videos to youtube or vimeo, put a link to videos on facebook, drive traffic out of not into facebook.
Instagram is hosting material that is leading young teens to self harm and take their own lives. A shocking account of how one young teenager was led to take her own life by material on Instagram.
Latest evil of Instagram, complicit in eating disorders.
Anyone encouraging use of instagram, is complicit in teen self harm. People and companies must pull the plug on instagram. Or do they wish to be complicit in teen suicides?
Engaging in a partnership with Tesco is not ethical.
To engage in partnership with Big Business is not ethical. It will be business as usual, at best greenwash.
It is ethical to create and support alternatives, build from the ground up, local, cooperative networks, disrupt, build disruptive business models that topple the existing entrenched order, but not aid, to let their existence continue.
We need to look at the entire business cycle, not focus on one aspect.
The Mylkman delivers nut milk in bottles via bicycle and now electric milk float. That he is using and recycling glass jars from a nearby restaurant is good, also that he is finding uses for the nut waste products, but where do the nuts come from, how are they processed, what happens to the waste?
With every business featured, I would ask are they coops, open coops, do they network with other local businesses, do they accept local currencies, faircoin?
Traditional cheesemakers kick up a stink ~ placing a Camembert in every French MPs letterbox to protest over industrial Camembert's use of EU protected food name #PDO (£)https://t.co/9PG3lI8GTv
Cheese comes from the milk of ruminants, they process what we cannot eat, turn it into milk, rare breed cows out on pasture, unpasteurised milk, turned into cheese, is a wholesome natural product, without any additives, flavourings, not adulterated in any way. Slow food at its best. Anything else, is not cheese.
If not made from milk, it is not cheese. It is disingenuous to claim threatened when asked to desist on calling a product cheese when it is not cheese.
Chocolate is very strictly defined:
cocoa solids – sugar
cocoa solids – cocoa butter – sugar – vanilla
Anything less is not chocolate, at least in the US, in EU 5% vegetables oils. Which means cheap crap chocolate substitutes vegetable oils for cocoa butter, the really cheap crap palm oil.
If we have standards for what can be called chocolate, it is reasonable to expect standards for what may be called cheese.
The demand for cashew nuts to satisfy vegans, especially for fake cheese, is leading to appalling working conditions for those in the Third World who shell the nuts
Threatened is when vegan fundamentalists and terrorists send pig farmers death threats. Yes the pigs may be reared in inhumane conditions, and yes that should be addressed.
Zero waste is a journey we should all be on.
In nature the concept of waste does not exist either in time or space, the output of one process the input to another.
People walking down the street with coffee cup in hand is a fairly recent phenomena, a recent trend.
Pret a Manger was once part owned by McDonald’s, now 100% owned by German Vulture Capitalists. Pret a Manger even before acquisition dodged tax.
Reusable cups address symptoms not the underlying problem of grab it and go, pointless consumerism.
We need to stop buying stuff we do not need. We buy stuff, own it for six months, a temporary pause from extraction, manufacture, then ownwards to incineration or landfill.
More coffee shops need to follow the example set by Napier Quarter, a coffee shop in Australia that has banned takeaway coffee.
Relax in an indie coffee shop with specialty coffee served in glass or ceramic, single origin coffee, direct trade not the FairTrade scam, transparency, traced back to origin to the farm where the coffee was grown and the best ripest reddest coffee cherries picked, the farmers paid for quality, a higher price than the FairTrade price which is a tiny premium above the price for commodity coffee.
It is indie coffee shops that have led the way with direct trade, compostable coffee cups, keepcup and ecoffee bamboo clones on sale, discount if bring in own clean barista friendly cup. They are leading the way serving specialty coffee in glass or ceramic.
Ask what do they do with coffee grounds? Ask they put out in a strong paper carrier bag for gardeners to carry home.
Small Batch in Brighton have an arrangement where coffee grounds are collected by a mushroom grower Espresso Mushroom Company and used to grow oyster mushrooms. The cycle is closed when Small Batch sell the mushroom growing kits.
Shop in zero waste stores, Hisbe in Brighton which recently celebrated five years, Keep in Farnham, a small room above a vegan restaurant which only opened a few weeks ago.
If shop in Waitrose, harangue the staff and management, ask why fresh produce wrapped in plastic, bananas rotting on the shelves, ask are they still in the environmental dark ages? In M&S individual turnips shrink-wrapped in plastic, coconuts with shells hacked off shrink wrapped in plastic.
In Hisbe, all the fresh produce loose, not wrapped in plastic, pick what you want, pop in a paper bag, weigh, label then purchase.
Bad as Waitrose and M&S are for plastic and over packaging, as nothing compared with Hotel Chocolat with their excessive over packaging and obscene use of plastic.
It was not so long ago buying water in a bottle would have seemed a strange choice when it came free at the turn of a tap. Similarly it would have seemed strange to carry milk back from the shop when it was delivered to the door.
I remember being at my grandmother’s when the milk cart passed by early in the morning, I would hear the rattle of the milk bottles, one of the first sounds I would hear of a morning. It may have even been horse drawn.
I also remember how as children we would knock on doors, and ask for their empties, take to the corner shop and claim the deposit.
We recycle stuff, what of people and places?
There are many abandoned and derelict buildings, abandoned land, people thrown on the scrap heap.
ReSpace puts to use empty and abandoned buildings.
The Hive in Dalston hosted conferences, workshops, small businesses, social enterprises, theatre, music.
A derelict shopping centre in Aldershot could have been reused, but no one came forward to take it on.
Nomadic Community Gardens, a spare bit of land, two people toiling away, bringing back into use. They did not ask for volunteers, the community joined in.
Land in London, ethnic communities, amazing variety of vegetables grown.
A large garden, too much work, people who desire a plot to work, join forces, share what is grown.
A good summary of our work this week in Poland. Fantastic to meet so many likeminded people. https://t.co/H6LTmGYdJ4
The system outlined by Dale Vince of Ecotricty for power distribution is neither green nor ethical. No we do not need large lithium-ion batteries, fields covered in solar panels, crops grown for biofuels. Lithium is scarce, comes from conflict zones.
We should be creating community owned and controlled local area networks, fed by renewables paid a fair price, mandatory for every new build to have solar on the roof, consumers pay a fair price, any surplus generation fed to other local grids via a publicly owned National Grid, any monetary surplus either fed back into the local grid or used to fund local community projects.
Biodigesters on farms can power the farm, feed into their local grid, the residual waste put back on the fields.
The so-called smart meters being rolled out across the country are anything but smart, all they do is provide real time indication of the electricity we are using.
A real smart meter would enable remote switching on and off of low grade usage. For example an immersion heater for hot water could be turned off to help reduce peak demands, with an override switch. Electric cars can be charged over night to deliver a base load for wind and wave turbines.
We need heat pumps. All new build should have heat pumps.
Imagine an estate powered by one power station. Build a second estate, conventional thinking is we now need a second power station. No, reduce power consumption of existing estate, build second estate to much higher standards, maybe even a net contributor to the local grid, now not only do we not need a second power station, we have surplus generation from the first, or can be replaced with a more efficient power source, which could be an off-shore wind farm.
We need a Green New Deal. We need a soft energy path, where generation is matched to supply.
IN PICTURES | We had a cracking day when @jamieoliver and @jimmysfarm came to visit in the summer. They were really interested in our #vegan food and enjoyed speaking to our chef Jade, chairman @DaleVince and players.
Jamie and @jimmysfarm look at how a #vegan diet can be a great way to support a healthy lifestyle… with a little help from the guys at @FGRFC_Official!
Dale Vince owns Forest Green Rovers, a football club he has taken from a village side to the Football League with ambitions to go further.
Classed as the greenest football club in the world. The pitch is chemical free, mowed by a solar-powered, GPS-controlled, robot mower. Real Madrid visited to view the pitch.
A new stadium will be built using wood from sustainable sources, solar power on the roof. Outside the stadium, charging points for electric cars.
Food served is vegan. Fans come from miles around for the food, not because they are vegan, the food is better than typical football club fare.
The reality of the ‘vegan surge’ in numbers: 16% of the 2% new temporary vegans is 0.032%. of all food shoppers. Thanks @andrews86495144 for doing the maths pic.twitter.com/tvj9AIivKB
Veganuary was much hyped, yes a big increase, but a big increase on a small number is still a very small number. The real measure, how many stuck to a vegan diet? A mere 16%, a tiny number on an already small number. Butchers reported no loss of business.
A vegan sausage at Greggs was much hyped. Did sales increase because their sausage rolls were so bad? Bad diet, highly processed junk food, a diet rich in highly processed carbohydrates.
Several of the people featured in Om Nom issue 2 have come from what David Graeber would describe as bullshit jobs. The classic bullshit job marketing. Was it these bullshit jobs that was the impetuous to do something different, to add meaning to their lives, to make a difference? What they fail to comprehend is that it can no longer be Businesses as Usual, we cannot draw from businesses, we have to implement radical changes, there is no Planet B.
Do you have to be a vegan to be an activist?
Do you have to be an activist to be a vegan?
What is an activist? What is activism?
Signing an online petition. Joining a protest. Occupying Starbucks. Refusing to cross the threshold of Starbucks or McDonald’s. Blocking access to a fracking site. Supporting local coops. Relaxing in an indie coffee shop serving direct trade specialty coffee served in glass or ceramic. Objecting to obscene use of plastic by supermarkets. Lobbying politicians. Buying fresh produce off local markets, dried goods from zero waste stores. Objecting to McDonald’s trashing a local pub.
Activism takes many forms. And no, do not have to be a vegan to be an activist.
The Mediterranean diet supported by zero "strong" evidence ( randomized, controlled trials) for prevention against heart disease Vast majority of studies are of "low" or "very low" quality acc. to new review of by Cochrane. https://t.co/sFWBWpUBeZ@ACCinTouch@American_Heart 1/2
If we look at meat consumption, be it per capita or per country, it has risen. It would appear the richer we are, the more meat we consume, no meat or little meat is seen as a poor person’s diet. This level of meat consumption is not sustainable.
In 1961, global meat consuption 22kg per capita, 2007 40kg per capita.
There is though a large disparity between countries. India 3.2kg per capita, for Brits and Americans, 85.8kg and 125.4kg per capita respectively.
One of the driving factors was in the USA, post WWII, increased production was going to lead to a glut, people were urged to eat more meat.
But the figures are highly misleading. Meat consumption has risen, but only because of the increase in poultry consumption. This is for the last century. If we go back two centuries, meat consumption, red meat consumption, has declined. If we look at the the historical record, red meat consumption was much higher.
We should also note that if we go back to 1900, consumption of vegetable oil was near zero, if we compare with today. The exception being olive oil in Greece.
But even in Greece, use of olive oil does not stretch back into antiquity. The use of olive oil was cosmetic not culinary.
The Mediterranean Diet is recent, conferences in Mediterranean locations, good food, favourable reports, get an invite for next year, all floated on an olive oil industry slush fund.
No food magazine is complete without recipes. Om Nom is no exception and has a handful of recipes scattered throughout its pages.
As traditional food publications shrink & cut staffs, small indie print magazines like @ambrosiamag, @JarryMag, @kitchentoke & @thisismold are part of an unexpected groundswell. Their ink-saturated pages and complex stories are beautiful, inviting & bold. https://t.co/UMxGesQSVr
The magazine that started it all. 🌚 A lot of people ask us why we chose to do a print magazine rather than publishing digitally. Well, one of our favourite things to do on a lazy day is head to a book shop and browse books for hours. This same obsession with printed words on… pic.twitter.com/s5AVCqsw9p
They say print is dead. Who they are I do not know. Print is not dead.
What is dead is the rubbish we find in the newsagent, the glossy freebies no one wants, vehicles to peddle crap we do not want, an appalling waste of trees.
Om Nom is available as a digital copy, the price is too high. It should be set at one pound, maximum two pounds, made available on LeanPub, set own download format.
Also make Om Nom available on Issuu to browse on-line.
Independent Life is an example of a quality print magazine available on Issuu to browse on-line.
The name Om Nom, I have absolutely no idea. I have asked wherever found, and everyone admits they do not know either. It has been suggested it may mimic the sound of eating.
Around 150 people joined a protest outside The Black Cap public house in Camden yesterday after it closed suddenly and without warning last week. The long running LGBT venue opened in the 1960s, surviving throughout the days when gay people faced prosecution. Now it is falling victim to rampant gentrification that respects neither culture or history and seeks only to make as much money as possible for greedy property developers.
Speaking at the protest drag artist Titti La Camp, a former performer at the pub, said 10 gay venues had closed in central London since the current Tory government weren’t elected. In an all too familiar story, those trying to save The Black Cap believe it is likely to be converted into yet more luxury flats that nobody local can afford.
A few hundred yards away a large part of Camden Market is currently a building site, awaiting being converted…
But this is nothing compared with the loss of our diverse cultures.
The Earth can only exist because it is breathed into existence by human conciousness.
If you believe a mountain houses a mountain spirit, whose displeasure you must not incur, or it is a pile of rocks to be mined and exploited, determines the respect you have for the mountain, how you treat the mountain.
Each and every culture is a unique answer to what it is to be human.
A rainbow world or a monochrome world dominated and controlled by global corporations and the corrupt politicians in their pocket?
In a thousand years time, assuming humankind survives that long which is highly unlikely, will cultural historians look back and see this as a time when Man destroyed cultural and ecological diversity, the very diversity that was necessary for survival?
Do we want diversity or zombies that sit in front of widescreen TVs, all thinking the same thoughts, assuming of course they are even capable of thinking?
In the West we have an ignorant, arrogant world view, where we see other cultures different to our own, that do not not lead meaningless lives, sat in front of a widescreen TV, engaged in consumerism, eating junk food, as somehow inferior, underdeveloped in need of development, or in other words, to turn them into inferior copies of our own meaningless existence.
The West sees itself as superior, further along a path called Progress.
If we are to survive Climate Chaos, we need diversity, diversity of culture, diversity of eco-systems.
A slightly longer version of this article posted on Medium.
The Lord Tennyson destroyed for student accomodation
The London Unity under threat of redevelopment thanks to greedy PubCo
The Tumbledown Dick under threat of demolition for Drive-Thru McDonald’s
Iris Murdoch once wrote of pubs as ‘universal places, like churches, hallowed meeting places of mankind’. This leads you to two inevitable conclusions: 1) she had a lovely turn of phrase and fully deserved that DBE, and 2) she had clearly never been to the Wetherspoons in Leeds city centre on a Friday night.
Like churches, however, pubs are facing a period of great challenge: the British pub is battling with diversifying consumer trends. The latest figures show that pub closures have slowed in 2012, but are still occurring at a rate of 18 a week, leading the Chief Executive of CAMRA to remark earlier this year that the future of Britain’s valued community pubs is ‘in jeopardy’.
Despite this, the emotion people have for community institutions like pubs sets them apart as a distinct political issue for local authorities. And recent planning policy suggests this is a concern shared by central government. The 2012 National Planning Policy Framework includes new responsibilities for local authorities to promote local pubs. According to the framework, planning policies and decisions should:
plan positively for the provision and use of shared space, community facilities (such as local shops, meeting places, sports venues, cultural buildings, public houses and places of worship) and other local services to enhance the sustainability of communities and residential environments; and
guard against the unnecessary loss of valued facilities and services, particularly where this would reduce the community’s ability to meet its day-to-day needs. (NPPF, March 2012)
The public house has never been specifically identified in a document like this before, so its inclusion is significant. The Localism Act too raises similar issues. The new Community Right to Buy makes it possible for communities to list local pubs as assets of community value, and to bid for them should they come up for sale.
There is certainly a strong argument to be made for the social and economic value of the community pub. IPPR’s recent report Pubs and Places: the social value of community pubs, placed the wider social value of a sample of community pubs at between £20,000 and £120,000 per pub. It noted that pubs inject an average of £80,000 into their local economy each year, besides their cultural and practical community value.
With this in mind, some local authorities have already gone out of their way to safeguard the future of their local pubs. Cambridge City Council and the London Borough of Islington, for example, have both established their own ‘pub protection policies’ to make it more difficult for planning loopholes to be exploited to turn pubs into housing, or betting agencies.
Of course this won’t be a priority for all councils. Pubs have the potential to exclude as well as include, and councils will need to weigh their decisions against the views of their community. Nevertheless, if councils want to protect the pub, they now have the powers to do so. We hope those authorities that plan to use them will get in touch to share their work with us.
Pub closures, although they have slowed, are still running at the rate of 18 a week.
They are being sold by zombie pub owning companies that are unable to pay their loans for redevelopment as Tesco supermarkets, housing, drive-thru McDoanald’s.
The Lord Tennyson, a fine example of a Victorian pub was sold last year against strong local opposition for redevelopment as student housing.
The greedy Pub Companies will falsely claim the pub not viable. What is not viable for them, is not the same as the pub not being viable. CAMRA has shown that pubs sold freehold without economic burden of extortionate rent to a PubCo can flourish thereafter.
Around 150 people joined a protest outside The Black Cap public house in Camden yesterday after it closed suddenly and without warning last week. The long running LGBT venue opened in the 1960s, surviving throughout the days when gay people faced prosecution. Now it is falling victim to rampant gentrification that respects neither culture or history and seeks only to make as much money as possible for greedy property developers.
A few hundred yards away a large part of Camden Market is currently a building site, awaiting being converted…
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