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Who can pay £3 for loaf of bread?
• NEW Labour-supporting Adrian Watson trivialises remarks I made with regard to EC1 New Deal’s use of public funds to sponsor the gourmet food market in Whitecross Street (Protest over invasion of gourmet food markets, June 8).
The uniform feeling of people I have spoken to locally is that the Whitecross initiative has been deliberately designed to exclude the very people EC1 New Deal funding was supposed to help.
What it all seems to amount to is a New Deal board so removed from reality that it is now thumbing its nose at working-class residents.
This was borne out by the event held on Saturday, June 2, that was overwhelmingly attended not by residents of Bunhill but by the conspicuously well-heeled residents from nearby Barbican.
A small selection of the goods on sale and their prices demonstrates very clearly why: goats’ cheese, £6.90 for 200g (that’s about £15.50 a pound); a slice of hand-made wood pigeon and roast plum pie, £5.10; a single loaf of Norwegian Winterhouse rosemary bread, £3; and 57g of Morecambe Bay potted shrimps, £2 (roughly £1 an ounce).
Mr Watson sneers at the type of people who shop in Iceland. Obviously, he has the kind of income that affords him the choice of shopping at either exclusive gourmet markets or Iceland.
Needless to say, the vast majority of the EC1 population do not.
Statistics for 2004 found 71 per cent of households in EC1 New Deal area are surviving on an annual income of less than £10,000.
This is probably something Mr Watson and his chums find amusing.
He may also consider the use of £75,000 of EC1 New Deal and council funding for these “let them eat cake” examples of decadence money well spent, but I am equally confident the majority will likely share the Independent Working Class Association’s view on the matter.
SHARON HAYWARD
Independent Working Class Association, WC1 |
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