Thursday, May 19, 2005

Voting with your feet

So much for the Childrens Society call to boycott the Bluewater Shopping Centre. They condemned Bluewater's ban of "hoodies" as "blatant discrimination based on stereotypes and prejudices". However, on the first weekend since banning "hoodies", visitor numbers at the Bluewater shopping centre actually rose 23% compared to the same weekend last year. That's despite an overall downturn in retailing generally across the UK. People have voted with their feet, supported Bluewater's policy and given the Childrens Society two fingers!!

The charity has achieved a remarkable thing. It has managed to ignore public fears of crime, misjudged public support for the policy and ignored the fact that as Bluewater is a private property, it should be able to determine it's own "house rules".

4 comments:

dearieme said...

I used to give money to several charities but now I'm down to just one medical charity. The cause: I am very fed up with the frequency with which charities morph into political campaigning organisations and, to make it worse, adopt the dim and dangerous side of politics.

Snafu said...

The RNLI remains happily aloof from politics as far as I'm aware.

dearieme said...

Thanks for that suggestion.

Snafu said...

...the charity has also shown itself totally unconcerned about those young people who themselves are bullied or intimidated by such gangs.

Posted by "S" on the other comments feature on this blog that I can't disable at this stage!!