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The death of east London's most radical bookshop

the-londoner.co.uk

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Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#41

Post by FridayoLeary »

mhh__ wrote: post #24
pessimizer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labour has been "Blairite" ("centrist pro-capital," or just say neoliberal) since the SDP sabotage and the endless, worthless reign of Kinnock. This happened at the same time the New Democrats were stomping the Rainbow Coalition into the ground to finalize the transformation of the US Democrats into the exact same thing. UK Labour has been a "centrist, pro-capital party" for probably your entire life (or at least mos…

The last time Labour wasn't like this we had waiting lists to get a telephone!

To be fair that wasn't because it was so long ago, just all the telephone operators were on strike:)

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#42

Post by austinjp »

While I very much appreciate the story, I wish it was written in a more straightforward style. The cross-paragraph callbacks from a Google employee to someone living in a basement... well, that's fine for fiction (although I'd still find it tiring) but for this I found it needlessly difficult to follow.

But maybe that's just me. I appreciate this is a stylistic complaint, so I doubt everyone will agree. Still, for a factual piece that I expected to read more like reportage, I found this article fiddly to process.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#43

Post by pimlottc »

krisoft wrote: post #33
pimlottc wrote: post #31

It seems that this business was incorporated as a community interest company (CIC) [0]. The Wikipedia article for CIC [1] talks about more the concept of "asset lock": > The articles of a CIC must also provide that its assets cannot be used except for the benefit of the community. This is known as the asset lock. It sounds like this is why the employees believed they had a right to the books. But it seems hard to say…

> But it seems hard to say without knowing what the specific articles for this company. The Articles of Association seems to be available under your first link. (From filling history / Incorporation / View PDF) I assume the employees either wanted to form an other asset locked entity or that hoped 3.2 b applied in their case.

Ah, I missed that link, thanks!

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#45

Post by basisword »

tbrownaw wrote: post #27

> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.

Non-profit's exist. And if we're judging whether or not something is a business based on how much profit it's making that would make Silicon Valley the global centre of performance art.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#46

Post by more_corn »

tbrownaw wrote: post #27

> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.

Lot of drama for not much of a business.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#47

Post by basisword »

tolerance wrote: post #12

> To Parker’s mind, for a project started with the aim of platforming sex workers [...] to have reached such a point was mortifying. How had things gotten so bad? I’m intentionally omitting all the objectives that actually make sense for a book store to have, in order to highlight what apparently was the main one... This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together un…

>> This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together under ostensibly noble causes

I think this is the issue - they didn't band together. They all shared the noble cause but one was employing the others. Wrong business structure if the aim is to 'band together' and all equalling share in the hurt of running the business.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#48

Post by worik »

mhh__ wrote: post #23
worik wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Performative radicalism" is a problem left and right Look at UKIP, blaming the cluster fuck of the Brittish economy on immigrants, who are weak, other and easy to blame for damage caused by making taxpayers pay for banker's misfortune and Brexit I am in New Zealand and we have the same problems, on the left and the right.

Given that UKIP don't really exist anymore as a major party may I gently contend that it may be slightly more complicated than you imagine

Pedant

Quite obvious what I mean

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#49

Post by alexey-salmin »

nativeit wrote: post #30
tbrownaw wrote: post #27

> Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”. Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.

That’s probably true of most book stores at this point.

Not really, margins on coffee are extremely high and a library-like environment can attract paying customers if you play it right.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#50

Post by ttctciyf »

Thought it was going to be about Freedom Bookshop in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, but thankfully that seems to be alive and well[0]!

Being "the oldest and largest specialist anarchist bookshop in Britain" without succumbing to internecine bickering and factionalisation is pretty darn radical, I would have thought.

0: https://freedompress.org.uk/about-freedom/

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