The threat to working class culture is demonisation, denormalisation, temperance and prohibition not appropriation

Let's start this with the (I'm sure pretty unsurprising) fact that I'm not in the slightest bit 'working class'. It's important we start there because I like pubs, enjoy some of that fatty food, used to smoke and have been in my fair share of working men's clubs, pubs and bars. This isn't showing off but rather an observation about what we might understand by 'working class culture'. We might add greyhound racing, course fishing and pigeon racing to this list plus such delights as bingo, betting shops and seaside amusement arcades. Others might add things about taste in furniture, music, clothing and even styles of gardening.

Some don't seem to get this and, watching what we might call 'social worker chic', get all confused about what is and isn't working class. Just like those trendy middle-class social workers who dressed scruffy because they thought their working class clients would like it, we have a new generation of chippy (and probably middle class) sorts who think bars under railway arches with bare brick walls, uneven tables and unmatched seating are in some way a pastiche of working-class culture:

Visit any bar in the hip districts of Brixton, Dalston or Peckham and you will invariably end up in a warehouse, on the top floor of a car park or under a railway arch. Signage will be minimal and white bobbing faces will be crammed close, a Stockholm syndrome recreation of the twice-daily commute, enjoying their two hours of planned hedonism before the work/sleep cycle grinds back into gear.

Expect gritty, urban aesthetics. Railway sleepers grouped around fire pits, scuffed tables and chairs reclaimed from the last generation’s secondary schools and hastily erected toilets with clattering wooden doors and graffitied mixed sex washrooms. Notice the lack of anything meaningful. Anything with politics or soul.

Now I may be wrong here but the 'authentic' working class wouldn't ever have gone to these sort of places. The pubs and clubs they went to were smartly turned out places with neat upholstery, tidy copper-topped tables and well-polished bars. They had a juke-box, a one-armed bandit and a snug - the customers saw gritty urban aesthetics every day at work and really didn't want exposed girders or plain brickwork on a night out.

For me one difference between the middle and working classes - a practical one but real nonetheless - was shown when I lived in a bedsit in York. One of my fellow residents was a bin-man - every morning he crawled out from bed slung on work overalls and cleared up other people's trash while I (slightly later) headed off to an office all suited and booted. And when I was going out of an evening, I took off that suit to put on something more casual and comfortable. The bloke who emptied bins, on the other hand, bathed, groomed and dressed in the best clothes he owned to go out.

Anyway, to return to our middle-class whinge-bucket who thinks opening a bar with cheap decoration and expensive drinks is appropriating working class culture. The real problem isn't this at all - that some ever-so-hipster folk start food stalls in a traditional London street market helps sustain those places and reminds us they're places for everyone not just one or other class. And there are still plenty of greengrocers selling bowls of veg for a quid - at least in most London markets I've ever visited. The problem is that we disapprove of working class cultural choices.

Take drinks, for example. We're pretty cool about charging £8 for half-a-pint of over-hopped craft beer but when some lads buy a six pack of cheap lager to drink while having a kickabout in the park then it dreadful 'binge drinking' and the middle-classes cry for laws - minimum pricing - that price them out of drinking altogether. Rather like Titus Salt banning boozers in his 'perfect' village while serving fine wines to guests at his mansion, today's middle class fussbucket believes the working classes can't be trusted with drinking especially when that drink is lager, cider or cheap vodka.

Look again at that list of working class pursuits above - those same middle-class worrywarts think greyhound racing is cruel, fishing is barbaric and betting shops are filled with devices that are impossible for punters to resist (working class punters of course, they're too dumb to understand). All the pubs or at least the sort of pubs those working class blokes used to frequent, have gone - you occasionally see an older bloke in one of these trendy over-priced hipster bars looking like a bewildered alien visiting from another better planet. And, as well as those pubs, the smoking ban has decimated the bingo halls and working men's clubs - every community used to have at least one of each but now they're gone or else counting the sad days before brewery loans can't be covered by the handful of customers.

Even something like vaping, which should be a public health bonanza, is sneered at by these middle-class do gooders. Just like the cheap lager, these do gooders see the electronic cigarette as something naff used mostly by fat, unattractive working-class people. And we - the middle class public sector managers, councillors, MPs and MEPs who decide these things using crappy research from our middle class friends with sociology doctorates - know better. The working classes mustn't be allowed to make their own choices - mistaken or otherwise. And if we can't actually ban aspects of working class culture then we'll 'denormalise' it, turn it into something so marginalised that those who indulge can be safely treated as pariahs.

Drinking, smoking, vaping, one-armed bandits, betting shops, burgers, fried chicken, over the top Christmas lights, paved front gardens, outdoor drinking, fizzy drinks, chocolate treats in the kids' lunch boxes, sugar pourers on the cafe table, salt, cheap chicken, bacon sarnies, cream, best butter, standing outside for a fag...there seems to be no end to the disapproval - nearly always of working class things - from the nannying fussbuckets, greeny-greeny nutters and know-all 'experts'.

So no dear writers, it's not appropriation or gentrification that's the problem for working class culture it's bans, controls, taxes and an endless nannying chorus of disapproval. It is demonisation, denormalisation, temperance and prohibition that's the threat to working class culture not a load of well-paid Londoners getting ripped off at some craft bar in a railway arch.

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So what do we have instead...?

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Our local paper in on one of those periodic crusades - this time against the "betting blight" as their headline proclaims:

The campaign calls for gambling premises to be required to apply for a special licence or be subject to a special planning category that would give local authorities the power to refuse them if it would be detrimental to the local shopping environment. 

That's fine so far as it goes. By all means give local councils more powers to stop " rules that allow betting shops to take over building society premises and banks without planning permission." But before you do that, stop and think about what we'll get in place of these shops.

If I travel elsewhere - to one of the few town centres that are actually thriving - I won't find so many betting shops. There will be some - there are three in Ilkley by way of example - but they won't seem so prominent let alone dominant.

The problem in places like Bradford is that, if we don't have the betting shop (or the pawnbroker, or the pound shop, or the takeaway, or the charity shop) we're not likely to have anything at all. And before people think I'm having a dig at Bradford, the same goes for plenty of other places too - town centres without empty shops, places where the town centre race to the bottom, are the exception not the rule.

And those betting shops are not without benefit to the town. Each shop has a staff - a half dozen or so people who are paid to work there - and those shops wouldn't set up if there wasn't a market for what they offer. I don't get it myself but can't see why I should make some sort of moral judgement about the betting industry.

As ever with these proposals - just like the ones intended to removed permitted development rights on pubs - we need to be very careful what we wish for. Is it really better for the town to have empty shops rather than betting shops or takeaways? I'm not sure it is and I'm absolutely sure it's not in the interests of those who hold the leases on these shops.

And for once, I'm in full agreement with Dave Green, Bradford Council's leader (a man who likes a flutter):

...the Council was looking at ways to intervene directly in the development of the district’s high streets rather than simply relying on planning to ensure a greater retail mix. 

The active use of the space under control of the Council for events, markets and all the things of leisure and pleasure that make a town centre these days would be a more positive and, I believe, more effective way to promote town centres that a further set of planning regulations that merely add costs and destroy jobs.

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The Mafia would like to thank health campaigners and social activists for making them even richer!

Those who advocate prohibition, ‘denormalisation’ and the state punishment of selected lifestyle sins continue their campaigns:

• MPs are recommending two “drink free days”, minimum pricing and allowing licences to be removed on “health grounds”
• The BMA are urging the banning of smoking in cars and restrictions on smoking in the home
• Stella Creasy continues with her campaign to cap the APR that lenders can charge on loans
• Other ‘campaigners’ are calling for a ‘fat tax’ such as that introduced in Denmark
• And gambling is in their sights as another ‘lifestyle sin’

Setting aside whether a liberal society should indulge in these bans, controls and zealous regulation, there is a massive downside to such actions. A downside that ‘campaigners’ never mention. And it looks like this:

According to a new report by Italian anti-crime group SOS Impresa, as reported by Reuters, "Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday."

The Italian Mafia has over 65 billion Euro in liquid assets.

You don’t get the connection with the nannying fussbuckets who want to dictate how you live your life? Let me explain – starting with:

The high tax-induced price of tobacco products in the UK has led to many smokers seeking alternative cheaper sources of cigarettes and handrolling tobacco (HRT), both legal (duty-free and crossborder shopping) and illegal (smuggling and bootlegging). The TMA estimates that in 2009 this non-UK duty paid consumption (NUKDP) accounted for 21% of the cigarettes and 58% of the HRT smoked in the UK.

And:

Seizures of contraband alcohol smuggled from France have surged to around three times their normal levels this summer, say officials. French customs officers in the Channel ports of Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer confiscated 82,000 litres of illegal spirits in the past month.

Plus:

The use of loan sharks is increasing and going to "get worse", according to experts in the South West. The Bristol-based Illegal Money Lending Team claims it is already a serious problem across the region. Spokesman Alan Evans said they were "really concerned" and that with harder times ahead "this problem will get worse". Since its launch three years ago the team has recorded a 700% increase in referrals which are still growing.

I’m sure the picture is becoming clearer – the Mafia (or for that matter any other organised crime group) gets its money from a willingness to trade in things we’ve banned, to smuggle so as to avoid taxes and to fill gaps in the market created when honest providers are forced out by legal changes.

Organised crime is the biggest beneficiary from high tobacco taxes, from strict controls on drink and from restrictions on gambling or lending. And criminals, unlike legitimate businesses, don’t care if you get hurt – so we’ll get dangerous fake cigarettes, poisonous vodka and loan repayments enforced with a baseball bat rather than a court order.

So next time you think a ban or a new tax is a good thing, consider the Mafia. Ask yourself how much money criminals will make from your proposal.

And then don’t do it.

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All retail is equal but some is less equal that others...

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Planners, urged on by local councillors, are keen to control the use of retail premises. It clearly isn't sufficient for these people that they require shop premises to be used for retail purposes - now, it seems we're to make judgments about the specific retail uses. Moral judgements.

Burger bars in Birmingham...

According to the council, in larger shopping areas at least 55 per cent of buildings in the area would be required to retain a retail use, down to 50 per cent in smaller shopping areas, while no more than 10 per cent of units in any area should be takeaways.

The council said that the rules and limits would apply to all new planning applications in the 73 specified areas, but would not be retrospectively applied to existing businesses.

And betting shops...

Giving evidence to the culture, sport and media select committee’s review of the 2005 Gambling Act, the LGA warned that large numbers of bookmakers – as well as other prolific uses such as takeaway shops, strip clubs and late-night bars – are having a negative impact on high streets.

The LGA claimed that local authorities have raised concerns that betting shops in particular are increasing poverty in communities, citing the comparatively disadvantaged London Borough of Hackney, where there are eight betting shops on one street alone.

Doubtless the planners will be looking at pound shops, pawnbrokers, second-hand shops and other undesirable retail uses.

The result will be empty, boarded-up shops not the shiny shopping areas that these planners expect - the reason the betting shops and pizza parlours are springing up is because other retailers aren't remotely interested in these locations.

Perhaps Councils, planners and the LGA should consider why secondary retail locations have declined rather than seek to ban the only uses that can (just about) make a living from these locations.

I live in hope. But this is planning...

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Legalising gambling would help stop corruption in sport.

The revelations regarding the Pakistan cricket team are at the same time a tragedy for the game (indeed for sport in general) and also the inevitable consequence of prohibition. Assuming that the allegations have some substance, it seems that the corrupt hand of Asia’s “gambling syndicates” has infected the great game of cricket – and not for the first time. Why is this?

The main reason is that throughout Asia – and in too many other places – gambling is illegal. And – given that people will gamble whether it’s illegal or not – that means the punting business is run by criminals. Which of course in nothing new – ask ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson!

If you ban something that people want to do, you hand it over to criminals for them to run. And, given that those criminals are (ipso facto) unregulated, the result is the fix – the criminals set up the system to increase their advantage. Forget about the bank having advantage – this is the bank ensuring it wins.

For the sake of sport – and for the liberty of snails climbing up walls or droplets running down windows – we need gambling to be legalised. Only then can we have any chance of controlling the corruption of sport by the bookies and the sharks.