Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The death of east London's most radical bookshop

the-londoner.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 191 posts

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

#51

Post by wahnfrieden »

basisword wrote: post #45
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.

OP is more interested in hearing about organizations that take on ambitious investment without apparent return in the fight for unicorn status profits in the future, rather than a fight for something non-financial

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

#52

Post by wahnfrieden »

watwut wrote: post #20
rjbwork wrote: post #6

Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.

Sure fascism is getting some power, but not because of left radicalism. It got powerful because millionaire CEO sponsored them, due to them loving the idea of techno feudalism. And by being enabled by those who said "ignore them they are just trolls". And by support from Russia.

If you say "loving the idea of network states" instead of "techno fuedalism" you'll get more upvotes

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

#53

Post by overboard2 »

lostlogin wrote: post #26
mhh__ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Reform: UKIP lite. The Russian money and dog whistles remain.

How do you feel about WWI era Germans funding the Bolsheviks in Russia?

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

#54

Post by 113 »

ttctciyf wrote: post #50

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/

I also thought this would be about Freedom, the title is really a bit misleading.

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

#55

Post by strathmeyer »

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.

[dead]

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

#56

Post by clickety_clack »

basisword wrote: post #45
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.

There’s a difference between a non-profit, and not making a profit!

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

#57

Post by nenenejej »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #49
nativeit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being in hospitality is not high margin. You want people to buy a coffee and breakfast or lunch and go away fairly quickly.

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

#58

Post by bombcar »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #49
nativeit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Independent bookstores stay afloat if they own their building, usually.

At least the ones I know of that have remained open are in a building owned by the owner (so they don't have to pay rent).

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

worik wrote: post #13
rjbwork wrote: post #6

Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.

"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.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by ahartmetz »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #36
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…

>and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party. Great line. I think it's fair to say that both conservatives and labour have simply been riding on Margaret Thatchers coattails for the last 3 decades. If any of them have come up with any great original ideas of their own i haven't noticed. On the subject of democracy it has been very…

Fortunately, the status quo was bravely rescued by the Guardian's non-fact-based yet effective discovery of Corbyn's antisemitism. Gotta love such center-left newspapers.
Post reply on HN