Stokey Press Watch
By Victor Ardern
I suppose it’s an indictment of the world we live in that well over half of the stories about our little enclave so far this year concern the ongoing trial at Woolwich Crown Court in which one of our community is accused of being part of the 21 July ‘terror bomb conspiracy’ (Daily Mirror).
Following this story over the last couple of months has been a depressing business. Thankfully, however, the world’s overworked underpaid hacks have found plenty of other N16 material to inform, amuse, annoy and even perplex us.
Someone capable of all four of those is our ‘outspoken’ (Independent) Right Honourable Member, who’s been at it again. In the first ever breakdown of House of Commons annual travel claims, the Evening Standard reported that she ‘filed a huge £2,235 claim for taxi journeys’, adding that ‘only five other London MPs claimed for taxis with all but one paying for a few journeys… and nine did not claim a penny at all’. To be fair to Ms A, her claims for other forms of travel were fairly conservative.
I’ll wager a claim for a trip to the grim North won’t figure in next year’s breakdown after her ‘off-the-cuff remark that some local authorities in Bolton or wherever dump all their Asians on one estate, that’s what they do’ (Independent) caused a stir on the BBC’s late night Abbott and Portillo Show. One assumes that Auntie pays the post-show taxis home every Thursday.
‘Starbucks stokes a revolt’ headlined the Evening Standard in a piece about the recent shenanigans down at The Vortex. It painted a rather clichéd picture of us, noting our ‘history of civil disobedience’ and seeing Church Street as a place where ‘musicians and media types pootle about the farmer’s market, old gents thumb second-hand books, mothers graze their free-range children on the samples in Fresh & Wild’. However, on the subject of the coffee chain’s alleged interest in the former jazz club, the quote from ‘local café owner John’ eloquently enunciated for us all I think … ‘frappe-bollock-ccino my arse’.
Having said that perhaps we should be mindful that an American retail behemoth already bestrides our main artery. Design Week reported on ‘a new kid in town… it’s big, it’s brash but it’s also organic’. Apparently the ‘US food giant’ Whole Food Markets is to open ‘a superstore this summer over three floors’ in Kensington and ‘rebrand the 6 Fresh & Wild stores it acquired in 2004’.
‘Amec wins £28m water contract’ (Construction Plus) was a headline that caused my heart to sink. More road works, then, but fear not: ‘the firm will build a 4.4km tunnel to connect a water treatment works at Stoke Newington to the New River Head pumping station, Finsbury’. Underground and at the outer reaches of the republic, thank goodness, so no worries about breaking my leg on the pavement when popping up to get my bottle of Glorioso Reserva from that most redoubtable chain store Oddbins, then!
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