HEY! DOMINO PIZZA PEOPLE, what was your objection to the thread MNHQ have just pulled? Was it that your founder funded an anti-abortion group that bullied women having late-term medical terminations?

[AitchTwoToTangOh]

... was it Greeny saying that your pizza bases are made of pastry?

or something else?

You mean it's never the proles but the bourgeoisie?

I get neck-tie lynchings from SA circa Winnie Mandela's revolutionary good causes.

Nestle is surely a successful middle class boycott?

and shouldn't you be addressing that to LadyMidnight, in any case? she's the one who's anticipating that hundreds of people will be on their uppers by christmas because i'm pointing out that Dominos are such total control freaks that they can't handle people criticising them on the internet. that's reason enough for me not to buy their pizzas, tbh.

will this be the first food thread to kick off?

Papa John's pizza is the dog's...

ASK take away pizza is excellent if you have one near you!

i think i said 'most', though, didn't i? so not never, no. although yer castro, yer lenin, yer che guevara, all middle class, educated men. yer martin luther king, educated and in the terms available to him, a middle class man and son of a clergyman.

so what exactly does neck-tie lynching mean?

is nestle successful, though? does it actually affect the company? (not that this is an argument for not bothering.)

i mean, i suppose it does depend on someguy's definition of successful. if its popular, one that is widely known-of by the public etc, then maybe it is.

Someguy - on the subject of boycotts, an acquaintance who works in a fair trade clothing lobbying organisation told me that Gap improved the working practices in their factories hugely after all the bad publicity they got in the 1990s. To the point that it was one of the places she bought her clothes.

So that was successful in as much as it affected the company's business practices.

oh yes, gap, that's got to be middle class, true.

I don't think you would be able to boycott a company successfully (in terms of the company really noticing) without the help of national media, who don't/won't participate as these companies typically have a large advertising spend. I guess? Sustained interest of the media in these types of things doesn't tend to happen that much that I have seen.

I think awareness and people knowing the reasons behind it is probably a successful boycott. Ultimately people need to be in a position to afford to boycott and then agree with the reasoning and care enough to do something about it, it's fairly hard to inspire action on these things imo.

true about the media, although i think jamie oliver is good at these sorts of things, actually. i've not eaten europork since that tv programme he did. another middle class issue that, of course, because like you say you have to be able to afford to buy the alternative.

likewise food miles etc. another broadly middle class concern at the moment that will expand outwards.

Well successful is something that results in change that was desired by the boycotters. So for example if you objected to the Tesco that was built in Gerrard's Cross (one of the poshest towns in the country, no shops open on Sunday), not going there after it opened, and having close down through lack of custom.

I'm not sure if the Nestlé boycott has been successful in the sense that they have changed at all.

But things like Gap can work as they sell to a middle class customer base - though I wonder if their changes were a response to an actual boycott (fall in sales) or more as a damage limitation exercise to stop the bad publicity.

Consumer behaviour has brought about change in respect of things like battery eggs, and there's definitely far more 'freedom food', 'free range', etc. meat on the shelves.

Food marketing worked for decades but I think these days people now realise that what Bernard Matthews sells is shite, though I'm not sure that Danish bacon has been seen through yet.

I think The Sun's sales are still suffering in Liverpool.

surely the general mass boycotting of "frankenstein foods" would qualify? The first time out, anyway - GM foods were thrown on their uppers by the furore (much of it meeja-fuelled, of course) and superstores took note.

I believe, although it is an apocryphal story(I love the irony and hope it's true), that the staff canteen at Monsanto in Slough displayed a sign saying that all foods served in the canteen were free from GM ingredients...

It does appear to be true: www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/1222mons.html

Though I think nearly all soya is GM now.

It is still possible to get non-GM soya - but I agree, an awful lot of it is GM, particularly that grown for animal feed in the Americas.

I have no problem whatsoever with GM soya.

I also go out of my way to by Jaffa and other Israeli products - reparations for previous stupidity

I've seen herbs in Sainsburys that come from the Golan Heights.

Which I personally find rather dubious.

lol

I've never seen that. I usually just plump for 'produce of Israel'

It was the best thread I have seen for a long time... And the post about someone eating a Domino's pizza from an AEG fridge was almost poetic.

You made some great points, Aitch.

oh, did the thread get deleted?