Guardian Reader

Bearded ****s were selling bowls of cereal for £4 in an area with high poverty...

The beards are irrelevant, if the business was not a good one it would fold all by itself regardless. I've worked for a wage and now work for myself (as does my wife). One is far more precarious than the other. My spare cash allows me to contribute to the local economy (markets, artisans, tradesmen etc).

None of the poor are forced to pay for cereal, the business model is to release money from those who can pay. By the way, adults eat cereal too, I love it, but no added sugar please.

Being a Londoner, and knowing that part of town quite well, it seems very odd that the protesters targeted a small independent business, rather than the big chains or the huge numbers of estate agents which have done far more to damage the fabric of the area.

The Cereal Killer Café is definitely a symbol of Shoreditch ****tery, caters for hipster ****s, and is run by bearded ****s, but it's pretty harmless. And of course nobody has to go there, and there's no excuse for frightening innocent punters.

Better a slightly pretentious indie business than another bloody estate agent. Where I live in South London, it's absolutely overrun with these wretched leeches and their poxy branded Minis.

Gentrification is definitely a double-edged sword - it improves rundown areas (Spitalfields/Hoxton/Shoreditch was a dump 15-20 years ago) but prices long-term residents out and sometimes destroys communities. It's a complex issue which is not solved by smashing things up and terrorising people.

Class War have made a serious blunder here - had they protested against greedy developers, BTL landlords and the awful Boris Johnson (whose egregious reign of error as Mayor cannot end soon enough), they might have gained some sympathy. This just seems like bullying.

You are right Hafler - the Graun has plenty of form in that regard, and is no better than the Mail.

I thought you'd written Plaistow, had to do a double-take!

The piece - which is not very convincing - appeared in the "Comment is free" section of the paper.

Perhaps you should take that into account, eh?

Not really, clickbait is clickbait, whether it appears as an opinion piece or not.

Some people - not you, I'm sure... - seem to have a bee in their bonnets when it comes to the Guardian. Why do they bother to read it??? I never read the Mail, or the Sun, except when I want to have a laugh. In France, I read Le Monde, which does publish views and comments by people I totally disagree with. That's what freedom of opinion is about.

I'm not quite sure what point you're making.

As a journalist, I am always interested in what happens in journalism. I read as many papers as I can, as often as I can.

The Graun's decline over the past five or six years is quite distressing to behold. It is now full of clickbait (just look at today's home page) and long ago abandoned any pretence of being a liberal voice with its fawning apologias for Islam and other repellent ideologies.

Tp pretend that it is any better than the Mail or the red-tops is laughable. The Telegraph has suffered a similar fall in standards over the past few years.

Interesting perspective from a professional. It goes some way to explain why as someone who is mostly to the left of Corbyn I deserted the Grauniad about 7 years ago.

On the rare occasions I buy a newspaper I choose the Telegraph or the Times; partly because they read like they are written by grown ups, and partly because i find it interesting and stimulating to encounter opposing views to those I tend to hold.

The Guardian still has the best crosswords.

But fortunately - they are free on the website!!!