picking up their organic, free-range, faitrade, ethically sourced, soil-association approved veggie products they’ve had flown in from Bolivia then? That one?

They have a weird ban on sugar that they could only have come up with after a huge session with a bong…Now they’ll sell you honey and maple syrup…but not sugar, because Sugar is bad for you, d’you see?

I get it. Little Tarquin and Tabatha both get absolutely hyper when they have sugar, and then we can’t calm them down as we don’t impose any restrictions on their behavior as that would essentially be oppression and would stifle their creativity in later life.

Middle-class people complaining about other middle-class people. Perfect STW material.

Hows life on the working class barricades, comrade?

Will you spare any of us, come the glorious revolution? Or is backs against the wall or off to the gulag for ‘re-education’

Any one wearing glasses or clutching a copy of guardian…off to the quarry

There’ll be no more discussion of Yotam Ottolenghi mushroom and herb polenta recipes when you’re turning big rocks into little rocks, you bourgeois scum

Hows life on the working class barricades, comrade?

It’s pretty tough. We’ve had at least five minutes since a crayon-botherer told us which kind of quinoa we should be eating.

A glasses wearing guardian reading crayon-botherer. Give him a lump hammer.

Yep, you do get precious types in those places (8th day is another one) with very loud and insistent kids called Flora and Fauna (and the coffee is crap). But has anyone got another example of workers being pretty well treated?

a rather large Manchester based cooperative certainly didnt lay off a load of staff this year….they outsources the roles and let them do the dirty, its hands were clean but the end result was the same. a load of people still ended up looking for new jobs.

That’s what happens. With the best will in the world market conditions prevail so these little co-ops are no panacea, they behave in the same way.

Yes I also can’t stand it when people attempt to eat healthier, more ethically produced food with less waste/packaging – absolute bastards.

(TBF Unicorn is pretty ****!)

. But has anyone got another example of workers being pretty well treated?

Timpson.

The Unicorn food shop in Chorlton

It’s not. I know the people who set it up and a lot of my mates work there or have done in the past. They operate a two-tier system where coop members get lots of benefits, and temporary workers on zero hours contracts are worked to the bone doing the donkey work. A good friend of mine applied to join after working there for a year as a zero hours temp and was denied in favour of someone else with no explanation, and then was summarily fired because he’d worked there too long as they were worried about rules around temp workers being declared perrmanent. A lot of the old timers have left because it’s been taken over by people who have lost the original vision, and equitable treatment of workers is one of them.

And as for quinoa-gate, I could tell a story about the long and protracted debate they had about stocking Palestinian olive oil 🙂

Now they’ll sell you honey and maple syrup…but not sugar, because Sugar is bad for you, d’you see?

There was a massive debate about honey 🙂 The original founders had a strict vegan policy and honey and sugar were rejected on those grounds. Honey was later allowed as long as it was from ‘organic’ farms which were ‘friendly’ to bees. Sugar supposedly still uses animal products in the manufacturing process so was denied.

You know that people only go there to get the hessian bags, because failure to carry one at all times in Chorlton can result in you being denied access to any of the Raki massage centres or baby yoga classes?

You know that people only go there to get the hessian bags

Got loads of them, in different colourrs and sizes 🙂  I like taking mine to tescos to stick it to the man.

Its not up the with the JC thread yet, but its great value…..keep it going! 🙂

 because failure to carry one at all times in Chorlton can result in you being denied access to any of the Raki massage centres

They’re amazing things, apparently if you’re carrying one, it allows you to step into the paths on oncoming cyclists, secure in the knowledge that it is a recognized signal that you’re entilted….to step out onto the road without looking.

Many of you will be sad to know that Unicorn came within weeks of closing. At the height of the Chorlton property boom the landlord was going to kick them out so he could sell the land to developers. The story I heard (which may be wrong) was that they were struggling to raise the money to buy the site themselves and then one day a few weeks before the deadline a customer walked in, asked them how much they needed and wrote them a cheque for something like 300k.

Bless the Hippy Elite.

I’m sure I read somewhere Unicorn is going for a big expansion. I can imagine they approach a merchant bank for a loan and the bank comes back with stipulations to guarantee their loan so they end up with employment practices that are commensurate with maximum profitability and are no different to any other supermarket.
Blimey, the dock labour scheme got rid of casualisation in the 60s and in the 70s they got rid of the lump on the building sites, now we’re returning massively to that. It doesn’t have to be like this.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Last time I asked one of my mates who are members of Unicorn they said the justification for using temp workers on zero hours contracts was that many of them were students. They at least pay above mininum wage, something like £10/hour last time I heard (which was quiite a few years ago), but they really need to sort out their processes on who qualifies for membership as the perception is that it’s an exclusive club.

To be fair to them also, they do a lot of good things. The members get paid something like 25k per year irregardless of how much money they make (and they turn over millions per year), and profits are given to local charities or invested other businesses which share the sustainable, organic and vegan approaches to food production.

I can imagine they approach a merchant bank for a loan and the bank comes back with stipulations to guarantee their loan so they end up with employment practices that are commensurate with maximum profitability and are no different to any other supermarket.

By the sounds of Daz’s story, you’d be considerably better off going working for Tesco. I don’t think being a vegan and a right bastard are mutually exclusive

I once saw Daz give a particularly withering stare to a duck

A member of my family worked there for a bit and she was happy as larry, I don’t suppose they made her a partner.

All the cous cous she could eat?

Nice one Keir. Just when you’re on the back foot why not open yourself up to accusations of rigging the candidate selection process for the mayoralty of one of the most solid labour supporting cities in the country when you don’t like the candidate they’ve selected.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/23/labour-scraps-all-female-shortlist-for-liverpool-mayor

Meh, Ill bet you a plate of my mum-in-laws scouse that whatever Labour candidate will win

& ditching anyone associated with Anderson is the right & smart move, tho Rothery seems to have been less associated than the other 2 candidates

A new broom candidate would be wise.

So it’s nothing to do with distancing themselves from a stale, dodgy regime, when it’s pretty common knowledge that theres all sorts of shit about to come out about dodgy backhanders from property developers for dubious planning permissions. Considering it’s a supposedly left wing council, that’s all a bit…

But let’s take the positives, the Corbynite left will literally be pissing their nickers with joy, sat there in their tinfoil helmets in their bedrooms, with something to go mental about on Twitter to fuel their deep-seated persecution complexes and moral indigence.

Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory, eh?

Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory, eh?

Irrespective of the pros and cons of Rothery or other candidates, at a time when the media narrative is that Starmer isn’t being very effective, all this does is support the view that he’s more interested in fighting his party than he is Johnson.

I know that there’s a certain type of person obsessed with the internal power struggles within the labour party, real or imagined, but this won’t register with anyone outside those who subscribe to the Twitter feed of The Canary.

all this does is support the view that he’s more interested in fighting his party than he is Johnson.

That would be the view from the metaphorical bunker of Corbynism and its tinfoil-helmetted paranoics, whoever was leader and whatever they was they were doing. Everything is a conspiracy. Everything is a campaign against them. Boo hoo. Poor us.

Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares. Normal people are going to look at whats going on and rather than seeing some sort of conspiracy, seeing it for what it is: the stench of some dodgy property deals.

This kind of dodginess has all got a rather familiar ring to it in Liverpool, hasn’t it?

I can’t imagine why anyone at the top of the party would think that a business which conjures up memories of this bloke (who, lest we forget, was welcomed back into the party by comrade Jeremy) would make for a bad look. Can you?

‘Nobody’s listening. Nobody cares.’
Quite right. Then why are you banging on about it?

Yep, Timpsons, have had a car key of mine for months and no reply to an email. But generally they do seem pretty good in recruiting some vulnerable people and Travelodge I believe has a policy of employing ex-cons.

Nobody’s listening.

To Starmer? We know that.

Alright, I listened to this bit:

The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 4, 2020

Good find.

Still think they need a clean break from the past mayor. I presume the “interviews” were very much “what did you know, why didn’t you know”.

I know that there’s a certain type of person obsessed with the internal power struggles within the labour party, real or imagined, but this won’t register with anyone outside those who subscribe to the Twitter feed of The Canary.

Yep, never did Corbyn any harm.

I know that there’s a certain type of person obsessed with the internal power struggles within the labour party,

Says the man who never misses an opportunity to post a picture of Derek Hatton. Is he your screensaver? You have an unhealthy obsession with him 🙂

If you’ve always been precariously employed, probably never a member of a union or been on strike and not a habitual reader then you would be susceptible to all the right wing crap attacking the left.

David Cameron saying all the things Keir Starmer should be. You couldn’t make it up. 😂

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/24/be-muscular-and-drive-green-recovery-cameron-tells-johnson

If David Cameron had any self-awareness he’d stay in his ****ing shepherds hut and STFU!

I note he’s recommending all the things he could have done while in power, but didn’t