On Sunday evening a group proclaiming themselves ‘Class War!!!!’ (my exclamation marks, but warranted, I feel, to represent aggression and attitude. Without them its just ‘class war’, a wet and wooly phrase from a bygone era) chose to attack a cafe in Brick Lane, East London. The cafe was full of people, lots of kids, and the mob, carrying flaming torches, threw paint bombs and rocks and by all accounts it was pretty scary. Very classy.

The store was called Cereal Killer and it sells cereals. Like cornflakes but better. Cereals from all over the world. 120 different kinds served with 30 different milk options. All those fabulously bright-coloured things that American kids love; your kids can overdose on artificial colourings too in Cereal Killer. But its a great idea and its very successful.

No-one is ever forced to go there. People choose to do so. If and when they want to. That’s the general idea anyway.

But Class War (with or without !!!!!) decided that Cereal Killer represents the worst kind of ‘gentrification’ of a ‘poor area’ in which the poor and hungry are being priced out. Because a bowl of Tiger Flakes will cost you £3.20 with chocolate flavoured almond and soya goat extract.

Personally, I wouldn’t pay a quid for a bowl of cereals anywhere. If it wasn’t mooing, bleating, swimming or barking (ooooh) yesterday, I don’t want to eat it today. That’s my motto. I make exception for embryos. Only cos I love eggs. But I appreciate cereals are popular. Even in the evening?

It is true that Shoreditch has become very popular, very up-market, very ‘gentrified’. If you can call hipsters ‘gentry’. But that’s what happens in a free market economy. Supply and demand. The more people demanding something the more expensive its likely to be. Like housing. Same is happening (has happened already really) in Brixton. Rents are on the up there too and the peasants are revolting.

There’s social housing. There used to be council homes but we don’t build them any longer. Not enough anyway. But there are still plenty in Brick Lane. And in Brixton. Therefore we’re not talking about the ‘poor’ and ‘starving’, mainly because if anyone starves in England its because they’re stupid, they want to be a supermodel, or both. If people can’t live precisely where they want because rents are too high, then welcome to the world and go live somewhere else.

I have every sympathy with left wing views. Always have had. Not in a practical sense but I like a fair world. But the radical left (like the radical right or the radical anything) are fucking arseholes. And attacking a shop run by two working class brothers from Belfast (where random explosive violence is all too familiar), a shop filled with children, is simply imbecilic and unlikely to further any cause except the ‘stiffer penalties for being an arsehole in public’ one.

Unfortunately Jeremy Corbyn has given a mandate to tossers like Class War!!! to dust off their placards, dry-clean their balaclavas and get the red flags flying high.

Even though he can’t even use his own speech at the Labour conference, instead using a recycled one from 1974.

England are doing well in the Champions League though, so that’s a good thing for national pride.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx