Pret and Brexit. It's all about attitude.

At one level, the woman on BBC Question Time who expressed concerns about who was going to make her post-Brexit coffee at Pret was rather silly. She should have realised that her comment was going to paint her as a pampered and affluent London Remoaner.

It’s an easy trap to fall into.

I remember being in the audience 25 years ago for one of those terrible daytime TV discussion shows – Kilroy or The Time The Place or similar – and we were discussing childcare. Some lady started prattling on about nannies and I had to remind her that this wasn’t actually most people’s experience of childcare arrangements.

So the message is clear: think before you open your mouth.

On the other hand, you can’t help feeling the Pret lady had a pretty valid point.

Virtually no one, as far as I can tell, who works in frontline hospitality in London comes from the UK. Many will be citizens of other EU countries and have the name badges with the flags to prove it. These are indeed the people who serve us coffees and sandwiches, wait at tables in restaurants and staff the reception desks in hotels.

So at an economic and practical level, she is right on the money. And that money is probably Euros rather than pounds sterling.

But the reaction to her comments also revealed something about the Brexit divide in the UK. It’s not just about class and age and location, although all those factors are important. It’s about attitude.

Remainers go to Pret to get their snacks and caffeine fix. Brexiters believe in packed lunches and Swiss Nescafé. And I would stress this is not necessarily because they are poorer. I mean even the wealthier, middle-class Brexiters would eschew a lot of the modern coffee shops and sandwich bars.

They would say they were too expensive and a waste of money, but they’d happily pay for membership of their local golf club or have a splurge at the DIY store at the weekend. They’d shell out hundreds a month so that they could have a better car than their neighbours.

Middle-class Brexiters have a different attitude to life. They have different priorities. If they had money, they wouldn’t spend it on exotic-sounding coffees in fashionable parts of London or care about the people who served them. They’d put the money away for that cruise they had their eye on.

Before the referendum, I remember having an argument with an older Leave supporter, who lives in an affluent middle-class London suburb. I told him that I had applied for an Irish passport to retain my right to live and work in Europe. His blank expression told me that he couldn’t understand why anyone would want such a right.

I reckon he doesn’t go to Pret.

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...

WASHED AND READY TO EAT

Search This Blog