When did brown sauce and Union Jack knickers become racist?
THE owner of a novelty gift shop called ‘Really British’ says he has been smeared as a RAY-CIST! by a bunch of bigoted, brain-dead Guardianistas. Chris Ostwald claims to be the target of an online campaign aimed at forcing him to change the shop’s name.
He’s accused of being ‘pro-Brexit’, as if that’s on a par with paedophilia, and has been hit with a boycott.
The store only opened at the end of november, but Chris has already lost one member of staff who resigned after her first day because she was fed up with the abuse. And she’s Spanish.
People have been walking in to the shop, on Muswell Hill Broadway, in north London, simply to complain about its alleged ‘racism’. He’s been warned that the place will be picketed to deter potential customers.
From the furious reaction on anti-social media, you’d think Chris was selling national Front T-shirts, BNP baseball caps and signs reading ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’.
All he’s doing is flogging quintessentially British nick-nacks and souvenirs, such as brown sauce, London underground teatowels, union Jack knickers, Prince Charles’s favourite socks and models of the Queen.
Mind you, the mere sight of our national flag is enough to give these Left-wing mentalists an attack of the screaming ab-dabs. Chris says he was forced to take down two union flags for fear of reprisals. How long before some self-appointed social justice warrior decides to lob a brick through the window? A Facebook page called Muswell Hill and Friends provides a forum for this confected ‘anti-racist’ rubbish. Some of the protests are hilarious.
One nutter wrote: ‘Like many people I live in London because of its international nature, and for me having a big sign saying “Really British” makes me feel you’re implying that other businesses in the area are therefore somehow “not really British”.
‘Some will no doubt say I’m oversensitive but I can’t help thinking that given the recent divisive referendum and the current political climate you might have chosen a more inclusive name in 2016.’ Nurse! OK, so this could be a publicity stunt designed to get some free advertising for Chris’s new venture. He certainly seems to be enjoying the attention. But I have no doubt the rabid reaction he describes is genuine.
We lived down the hill from the Broadway for 12 years, so I’m familiar with the area. It’s where the Davies brothers — Ray and Dave — mainstays of the Kinks, that most english and proudly working class of pop groups, grew up. Chris even sells Muswell Hillbillies mugs, after the band’s 1971 album of the same name.
Muswell Hill has always had pretensions, though. It’s one of the posher parts of the London Borough of Haringey, which voted 75 per cent to Remain in June.
Like its near neighbour Crouch end, it’s home to people who can’t afford to live in super-affluent, artsy-fartsy Hampstead and Highgate. Consequently, house prices have gone through the roof. A bog-standard semi will set you back over £1 million.
These days it’s been colonised by Guardian-reading middle-class professionals, who can afford the mortgage payments. And they are precisely the kind of folk who find any hint of patriotism not only ‘racist’ but borderline nazi.
I just wish they were a little more inventive with their invective. Their knee-jerk inclination is to scream ‘RAY-CIST!’ at anyone who offends their sensibilities. It’s the all-purpose insult intended to silence those who disagree with their political agenda. You voted Leave? RAY-CIST! Think immigration is too high? RAY-CIST! Don’t believe in climate change? er, RAY-CIST! The whole ‘racism’ slur is so tiresome and predictable that it has become utterly meaningless.
BUT it’s not difficult to imagine them going out of their tiny Chinese minds — to borrow an expression from the late Denis Healey — over a shop called Really British in the heart of Remain country. It’s a daily reminder, as they trek to the health food cafe for their quinoa-infused soya wheatgrass wossnames, that they LOST. Boo-hoo. How on earth, otherwise, can anyone get outraged about a suburban novelty shop, six miles from the centre of our capital city, selling British bric-a-brac, memorabilia and models of the Queen and flying the union flag? It’s deranged.
In the normal course of events, I wouldn’t take much notice of ‘social media storms’. But this one is directed at defaming a small businessman and destroying his livelihood unless he falls into line and changes the name of his shop.
And it is also an illustration of the post-Brexit vote pantomime in microcosm. The Remoaners don’t really have any convincing reasons to stay in the sclerotic, corrupt and currently imploding european union.
In fact, the noisy attempts to derail Brexit have almost nothing to do with the benefits or otherwise of being a member of the eu. no, it’s all about them. Ranting and raving about Leave voters being racist, ignorant and gullible scum of the earth is simply another way of reinforcing their own inflated opinion of themselves as morally superior beings. It’s why Chris Ostwald’s shop has been singled out for self-righteous abuse, too.
By smearing him as a RAY-CIST! these potty, po-faced protesters are burnishing their right-on credentials. They may be Muswell Hillbillies but — unlike those ghastly Little englanders who wave the union flag and voted for Brexit — they want everyone to know that first and foremost they are caring, compassionate ‘citizens of the world’.
To adapt Ray Davies, from the title track of that 1971 Kinks album: I’m a Muswell Hillbilly boy, But my heart lies in old West Somalia. Makes you proud to be British.