Ahhh …..the bad news thread

I bloody despise Chelsea !

 

A fish and chip shop in Greenwich has been ordered to cover up a mural of a Union Jack as it inappropriate for the area ffs! If you can’t fly the Union Jack in Great Britain where the fuke can you - we’re doomed!

 

Chris Kanizi has not been told he cannot fly the Union Jack.

To clarify this story;
Mr Kanizi has paid to have an advert painted on the wall of his chip shop.
Greenwich Council has told him the advert is not authorised in a Preservation area, and has instructed that he paint it over.
The Council made Mr Kanizi remove a 17 foot high sign above the door of his chip shop in 2018 for the same reason.
Mr Kanizi fought that decision for a year - which was his right - but lost, and removed the sign.

Both the sign removed in 2018 and the current mural on the wall show a fish, a bag of chips, and a large Union flag.
However Greenwich Council have never stated the contents of the adverts were the reason they should be removed.
The Council says it has had some omplaints regarding the current advert.
However, once again, they have not stated that the complaints regarded the content of the advert.

The Daily Mail and GB News however have led their reports on this matter by giving great prominence to the fact that the adverts show a large Union Flag.
Thus they are both heavily insinuating that Greenwich Council want the advert removed because it is showing a Union flag.
And further implying that the complaints Greenwich Council speak of were complaints about the Union flag.

Clearly, this story is being spun by the Mail and GB News into an example of an attack on 'British culture' by a woke Council and unidentified anti-British elements in the community. They do not state this explicitly, but that is the way these news organisations usually operate.
By innuendo, suggestion and implication.

It is indeed bad news.
More bad news for community relations in a time when culture wars and racial tensions are being exploited by extremist politicians of the far-left and the far-right.

 

Most shops advertise- and fish and chip shops advertise fish - this one has a Union Jack in said advertisement and it’s deemed inappropriate- I rest my case

 

The advert is inappropriate for a Preservation area.
Not the contents of the advert. The existence of the advert.

The Mail and GB News both heavily imply that it is the contents of the advert (the Union Flag) that is the reason Mr Kanizi has been instructed to remove it.
They want their readers to believe the Council wants the advert removed because it has a Union flag as part of it.
So feeding their agenda of anti-British culture wars.

If the advert had not contained a Union flag, it would still have been unauthorized in a Preservation area.
Mr Kanizi would still have been told to paint it over.
The Mail and GB News want their readers to get angry because they have been led into thinking it is the Union flag has been deemed "inappropriate" by the Council.
But it is not the flag.
It is the advert itself - regardless of its contents.

I don't see how I can make it any clearer than that.
This is a local story about a chip shop owner in dispute with the Council regarding advertising regulations.
It has been twisted by the Mail & GB News into a story about sinister anti-British elements in the Greenwich community and the Council.
In an attempt to inflame cultural tensions and mistrust between white and ethnic communities.
Absolutely typical of the methods these organisations use to push their divisive agenda.

The Mail and GB News rely on their audience to take their stories at face value and swallow the innuendo they are served up with.
This is how extremists operate. They create outrage and conflict by spin and distortion of facts.
They are indeed bad news.

 

Ok Lardy but it’s not the first time the national flag has been forced down - I can’t see any reference to preservation restrictions causing this issue - but it’s ok for other factions to deface national memorials and fly their foreign national flags and get away with it - OUR country is fuked !

 

I cannot answer those points as they are general ones.

And I would not claim that woke individuals in authority have not made anti-patriotic and perhaps even anti-British decisions from time to time in the past.
That situation has not been helped by the hijacking of the Union flag by extreme far-right organisations down the years, who fly it (and the Cross of Saint George) at their toxic rallies in the full knowledge that these flags will then be regarded (wrongly) by some of their enemies as symbols of racism wherever they are seen.

I feel sorry for Mr Kanizi.
He is proud of his chip shop, an award winning one, and naturally he wants to advertise it.
The mural is not offensive in any way. It is bright and colourful and many locals like it.
Indeed tourists have their pictures taken in front of it.
Like Big Ben or a Routemaster bus, these jolly places are what lots of tourists like to see.

Obviously this chip shop owner has had his differences with Greenwich Council more than once.
I don't know if he went to the press to improve his chances of getting the Council to change its mind. I wouldn't blame him if he did. Apparently 3,000 people have signed a petition to ask that he be allowed to keep his mural.
And I can understand why only certain newspapers saw fit to publish the story, and the spin they have put on it.
Those things are not his fault.

But in my opinion Mr Kanizi and his shop are being used as part of a political distortion of the facts by the Mail and GB News.
It may even be that God forbid his shop will be targeted by hate-mongers who take the divisive flag story at face value.
This is why whipping up cultural tensions is so despicable.
Trouble makers at both ends of the spectrum see these articles and sometimes they go viral on social media, so getting even more distorted.
If Mr Kanizi's mural were to be defaced by vandals in the near future, doubtless the Mail and GB News will be all over that as well.
When it was their insidious brand of journalism that sowed the seeds of it.

Acts of damage and violence by extremist yobs are always the fault of the morons who commit them.
Nobody can ever hide behind the lame excuse that they were encouraged to do it, or were meting out some kind of 'street justice' because of a story they read in a newspaper.
But certain news organisations shame themselves by creating the circumstances that make such criminality more likely.
Powerful media outlets should not be going out of their way to stoke up community divisions.
But it's happening more and more these days.

 

The country is shot to pieces

 

Unauthorised advert is the term being used - which makes a mockery of Leicester Square and other London hot spots - I think it’s the George cross that’s associated with the extremist not the Union Jack - I’m British and proud of it and always will be - and if pushed proud of being English as everyone should be of their heritage!

 

The Daily Mail exists by making people angry. I'm sure they sit down each evening and think "What can we make people angry about tomorrow?"

 

Probably the paper Kojak reads

 

Greenwich Council has regulations regarding 'Preservation areas' within its boundaries.
I don't know the details but I imagine preservation areas must maintain the character of the architecture. This probably affects things like cladding or pebble-dashing on house fronts, loft extensions and advertising.
A similar row was reported in Edinburgh recently because a resident painted her front door a bright colour, in an area of Georgian buildings which all had black front doors.
Or something like that.

In the case of Greenwich, it seems that large brightly coloured adverts are not in keeping with the general appearance of Preservation areas.
So the chip shop owner has been asked to remove his new mural.
In the same way he was made to remove a 17 foot high sign above his shop door six years ago. A sign which was almost the same as his new mural.
This recurring dispute between Mr Kanizi and Greenwich Council has nothing to do with the content of the mural (a Union flag)
Except in the suggestion and innuendo of the Mail newspaper and GB News reports.
Granted the Council may be behaving in a fussy, jobsworth manner, insisting that something be removed which locals quite like, simply to enforce regulations.
But the Council is not indulging in anything 'anti-British' as these right wing news reports suggest.

The Union flag and the Cross of Saint George are national emblems.
They should belong to everybody, and not be hijacked by extremist groups.
Arguments by some people that they represent Colonialism or the Crusades are ones for another occasion.
Flags of many Countries around the World have strong political or religious meanings. Indeed there are few that do not.

But in the context of this story, the flag is irrelevant.
The inclusion of a Union flag has nothing to do with Greenwich Council wanting Mr Kanizi to remove his mural.
It has been made part of the story by the Mail and GB News for their own purposes.

 

You can bet your life there won't be a correction in the Daily Mail. Instead there will be more anti-woke stuff. It's all very cynical, but their readers seem to lap it up.

 

Was also in the telegraph

 

No need technically for a correction, as neither the Mail or GB News specifically said the mural had to be removed because it had a Union flag on it.
They just strongly insinuated it in their articles.

Whatever happens next, they will doubtless continue to do so.
I very much hope no trouble comes the way of Mr Kanizi because of this story.
His chip shop is an award winner and obviously a big asset to the local community.

 

Also mentioned in the article was they had received complaints- who from or nature of complaints wasn’t mentioned but again doubt it was about the fish - just saying

 

The Telegraph used to be a very good newspaper, but is now very similar to the Daily Mail. Lardy has researched the story and shown how cynically certain facts have been omitted to tie in with the anti-woke narrative.

Just "complaints" could mean literally anything from anyone

 

Sleepwalking to anarchy

 

In a related story, a giant 'Banksy' artwork has appeared in Finsbury;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68592907

Bad news for anyone trying to steal it, the thing must be thirty feet high and just as wide.
I expect the figure at the bottom will be chopped out with an angle grinder and spirited away though.

 

I wouldn't say I'm outraged about this...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68632034

But it is a bit annoying and unnecessary.
A tasteless parody of the Cross of Saint George.
The colours of a BMW 'M' logo...
I'll complain to Greenwich Council. They'll sort it out

And why has there been so much blue anyway in recent England kits?
Designers being far too clever for their own good.