Joan Brady, a previous winner of the Whitbread literary prize, writes:
Costa Coffee should keep out of book prizes – and town centres
In 1993 I became the first woman to win the Whitbread Prize, and it changed my life. Money! One winner blew it all on a swimming pool for the family’s French villa. Not me. Mine paid off my debts: there are few joys in life to beat clearing the slate.
I suppose I should have given some thought to where the money came from. I didn’t. The shortlist was awarded at the Whitbread brewery –which meant I could hardly avoid knowing it had something to do with beer – but how was I to know that Whitbread saw the whole excitement as just an advertising gimmick?
I liked the comment by scepticalhawkeye:
Most of us would have thought that the executives of a brewery at heart saw their life’s work as promoting English Literature.
Joan Brady appears upset that Whitbread has taken over the Costa Coffee chain, so instead of authors being given dosh by noble brewers they are getting it from effete caffeine-fiends. For a moment the flame of hope flickered within me that Ms Brady might be emulating the staunch heroes of of God Emperor of Didcot, in which mighty vows are made that never more shall the arm of the honest tea drinker be made limp by the latte of foreign oppressors! Alas, she just has a thing against Costa:
Costa is strong-arming its multinational way into small towns and villages all over Britain and plonking down its identical coffee shops even though local people in overwhelming numbers – from Southwold in East Anglia to Cottingham in Yorkshire to Totnes in Devon – make it clear they aren’t wanted.
I lived in Totnes for 30 years, and Totnes outdid itself. Three quarters of its population protested against Costa: Totnes already has more than 40 independent coffee shops. That many people agreeing on anything approaches a miracle, a landslide of public opinion. Costa isn’t bothered. It hasn’t bothered with the populations of other protesting towns either. But isn’t this supposed to be a democracy? Here’s a corporate giant flouting the fully expressed will of local people. And for what? To boost a profit margin that’ll go to build more coffee shops in Russia and Egypt – Costa’s largest is in Dubai – at the expense of UK shopkeepers.
As every second comment says, if local people in overwhelming numbers do not want Costa Coffee then Ms Brady’s problem will not persist long. Local people in overwhelming numbers won’t go there, and Costa will cut their losses and go.
In fact there is an issue worth discussing here. I cannot help wondering what Ms Brady would say if local people in overwhelming numbers expressed the view that they did not want immigrants of a different race, Egyptians for instance, setting up shop in their town and making a profit “at the expense of” UK shopkeepers. Would opposition to incomers on those grounds still count as the “fully expressed will of the people” and if not, why not? Isn’t this supposed to be a democracy? Perhaps if she reads the many pointed comments, the CiF crowd being on the right side for once, Ms Brady will be prompted to question the limits of majoritarianism.
Perhaps she will also be prompted to do as so many of the commenters suggest and send Whitbread / Costa back their money. Given that she thinks that only the involuntary contributions of taxpayers are pure enough to fund a literary prize, that would be the principled course of action.
It’s all about status.
I loved the Nozick thesis the first time I read it, as it was beautifully judged to get up the noses of left wing intellectuals. And there may be large elements of truth in it.
In the case of Ms Brady however I think there is a simpler, tiresomely prosaic, explanation, which I will call Nobel Prize Syndrome. Why are book prize winners exclusively or overwhelmingly left wing ? Why are Nobel Prize winning economists overwhelmingly left wing ? And so on.
Because the committees who hand out the prizes are (a) left wing and (b) happy to use their position to promote their views. A spectacularly clever and influential right wing economist like Milton Friedman can win the Nobel economics prize once in a blue moon (or at least he could when he won it) but a fairly good one can’t. Whereas you only have to be fairly good to win if you’re a lefty. If you’re Obama you can win the Peace prize just for being Obama. Not having the slightest interest in book prizes I have no idea whether a right wing author has ever won the Whitbread, but I’d be mildly surprised if one had.
Nozick is, of course, wise and correct, but as to Ms Brady there is indeed a simpler explanation: she is a profoundly stupid woman.
Lee, the Nobel award committees are documented quite openly if one cares to look. Most of the awards are decided by committees of people in that particular field. Thus the scientific awards are usually fairly understandable, as are the economic ones if one groks to any degree how horribly broken the academic economics institution is.
However, since there is no “peace” field (fluff degrees such as “peace studies” notwithstanding), the commitee members must be drawn from elsewhere. Where? Politicians, of course. Perhaps the profession most antithetical to peace one could possibly pick.
If one digs up the list of committee members which decided on Obama for the peace prize (I have posted it here before), the titles of the politicians involved read like a veritable dictionary of leftist buzzwords. Green this, justice that. I believe there may have been one “Conservative” in there but I think that was paired with a weasel word which doubtless translated to mean that curious brand of European conservatism that means “one step to the right of three steps left of Stalin”.
Even then, it seems that the prize was given, not so much to Obama as to “not Bush”
Laird has it. I was thinking about what adjectives to use, and stupid pretty much covers it.
For some reason she has decided she does not like Costa. The protesting locals are just a convenience. If they wanted something Brady did not she would ignore them.
Costa is great, by the way. Above average, not excellent coffee. Lots of space for the pram. Plenty of tables so you can sit there for an hour or two reading your Costa prize winning novel. I like independent local coffee shops too but they are usually cramped and impractical.
I prefer Caffe Nero myself. Better coffee (IMAO) and lower prices. Also, they make coffee in a small size that is actually a small size. On the other hand, I don’t come with a pram, so I am possibly not Costa’s target market.
Seriously, though, do these people remember how bad British coffee was before we had these chains?
Michael: does anybody actually drink coffee out of a 5-oz. cup? My home coffee maker has the water reservoir in 5-oz. increments, with lines for one cup, two cups, up to five cups, but my coffee cups are all at least 8 oz.
I first noticed this in a hotel almost 20 years ago, with the free in-room coffeemaker having room for the princely amount of two five-oz. cups. I find it irritating to be honest, since trying to figure out the right amount to make for two 8-oz cups plus what the grounds soak up is a pain.
I’m a cheapskate who doesn’t go to coffeehouses to drink a latte espresso capuccino whatever. Why pay $5 for a cup of coffee when you can make a perfectly satisfying cup of straight black coffee for much less than that?
(I should have added that if people want to go to coffee houses, good for them, and people like Brady need to mind their own [word that would run afoul of the smitebot] business.)
Michael, I am old enough that the first time I recall seeing a coffee maker was during a trip to America (Canada as a matter of fact) and the people we were staying with explaining it to my parents who brought one back (and the huge 240 to 120 converter my Dad borrowed from work to power it). It burned out after a few uses unfortunately but made a great teleporting station for my Star Wars figures.
There was also a “Good life” episode where Margo decried the option of a cup of instant though so they must have been around. Possibly we were the lone party in the company of tea drinkers. The history of the bigger picture of coffee’s invasion of England would doubtless be interesting and heavily involve WWI, rationing and American servicemen.
Ted, a cup of straight black coffee is usually cheaper than that. Though round here, there’s usually cheaper places to go for straight black coffee than coffee houses anyway and many places where it’s supplied free (though of variable quality).
Ted: 150ml (5.3oz) and 200ml (7.0oz) are common enough sizes in Europe (especially the southern European places that invented espresso) and Australia. You Americans have gone bigger than us on this. I am honestly not sure what the exact size of that Caffe Nero small cup that I praised is – I will have to check next time I have one.
Personally, I like espresso. I have an automatic espresso maker at home. You put unground coffee beans in the top, press a button, it grinds and whirs, and espresso comes out the bottom. There is then a little effort to froth the milk for a latte or cappuccino, but it’s worth the effort. The machine was the best $500 I ever spent. (You make that up very fast compared to $5 cups of coffee in cafes).
The history of the bigger picture of coffee’s invasion of England would doubtless be interesting and heavily involve WWI, rationing and American servicemen.
And of course, before Britain drank tea, it drank coffee. The financial industry of the City of London was founded in seventeenth century coffee houses, as far as I can tell.
I could write about coffee and various methods of its preparation all day.
But slightly more on topic: people aren’t going to coffee shops *just* for the coffee, which explains why they don’t stay at home and make it themselves for less money. A coffee shop is a place to sit down and read the newspaper or the iPad, or to do people watching, or to socialise. These new chains make better coffee than we were used to 30 years ago, but I suspect more importantly they have fallen upon a successful formula for the sort of place people want to sit down and have a rest for half an hour.
Another point about chains vs. independents is that you know what you are getting in a chain, which is very important when you just want to sit down and have a rest for half an hour.