Rip Off Britain
How is it that David Aaronovitch can be so right about Foreign Policy but so wrong about Britain? In today's Times, Mr Aaronovitch claims everything in the British garden is rosy and how wonderful life is. Has he ever been to central London restaurants where the portions are tiny, the service poor and the expense huge (probably, but on expense accounts)? It is rare that you can leave a so called decent restaurant these days and get away without paying upwards of £70 plus for two. This is simply wrong. Most restaurants these days are subsidised by big business who use them for corporate entertainment. Expense accounts means the restaurants can charge what they want and get away with it. Meanwhile a father on average income who wants to take out his wife and kids for a decent meal will probably have to fork out hundreds of pounds for the privilege.
Try getting a cup of coffee in a smart hotel and you will need almost a tenner in your pocket. How can it be justified for Claridges to charge £7 for a Cafe Latte? They do it because they get away with it and because some customers are so blasé. But is not such a cost repugnant?
But it's not just restaurants. Were Mr Aaronovitch ever to stay at one of the many fading hotels across England - where the costs are high and 4 star really means 3 star - what would he find? Recently, Watlington lodged in such an establishment in Farnham, Surrey (the Bush Hotel, Castle Street). Billed as a first class hotel, the bedroom wall paper was falling off the walls, the carpets had huge black stains and the sheets were bloodstained. At least they served Bailey's Irish Cream in chocolate cups in the hotel bar. For the privilege of this wonderful bedroom, Watlington paid £65 including breakfast (which to be fair was ok). Sadly, this kind of experience is not unusual as hotel chains try to maximise every penny by providing shoddy service.
The truth is that Britons are being ripped off as never before. And it isn't just expensive at the increasingly poorer restaurants and hotels, now you have to pay the congestion charge and the parking as well. Rip off Britain is alive and well - even outside the Islington boundary.
To read more by Watlington, see Watlington.
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My experience of English hotels on my last few visits:
They are run, almost literally, by what seem like children; from the desk personnel to the bartenders to the doormen, they look and act like they're about 22 years old. Oh, but they're fluent in several languages — none of them English.
I know we Yanks are spoiled when it comes to room size, and the rooms in older English hotels are comparable to those on the continent, but why are new hotels built with tiny rooms? Why was my 200-quid room in a recently refurbished South Kensington hotel obviously created by cutting a larger room in half to make a place you couldn't fall down in?
Why do they seem to be eliminating little extras like a newspaper delivered to your door in the morning, or charging extra for every conceivable service above the absolute minimum?
The answer, obviously, is profit. But there is short-term profit and big-picture profit. Frankly, I no longer want to spend my own money on holiday in England. Not when I can go to Italy where the hotels are run by people who care and who treat their guests as something more than just profit centres.
Posted by: Rick Darby at January 17, 2007 08:50 PM