Popular Wellington cafe Fidel’s has been fined $600 for allowing smoking on-site… The
cafe’s smoking area at the rear of the cafe did not comply with new
smoking laws because it was not open, the Health Ministry said.
Co-owner Roger Young said the rules were difficult to interpret.”We’re living in a police state. You can’t do anything any more.”
I have a certain amount of sympathy for Mr. Young – as the owner of a small business, he is no doubt suffers under the many, many regulations, taxes and assorted rules and bylaws of the government and the city council.
But does he seriously not see the irony of complaining about our “police state” when his cafe celebrates and endorses a genuine police state, and takes its name from one of the world’s oldest tyrants?
One of the things I hate about Wellington are the myriad of cafes celebrating communist Cuba. Fidel’s of course, but also Cubita, Havana (although they have a great selection of NZ craft beers), Ernesto (featuring a shrine to that sadistic killer, Ernesto “Che” Guevara) and so on. I could also name Revolution Coffee and Pravda. No cafes celebrating Mao, Hitler or Pol Pot, of course. (update: Lance in the comments points out that there is a cafe in Palmerston North named after Mao!)
They can’t point to the original naming of Cuba Street as an excuse – the street was actually named for a sailing ship which visited Wellington a century before the Cuban revolution.
I more concerned that Young thinks that we actually live in a police state. He should try living and opening a cafe in a real one.
Alternatively, he could move to a place where government regulation is light-handed indeed. Trouble is, he would end up paying a great deal of money to the local militia, criminal cartel or corrupt police unit. Not to mention having to get by with no electricity, clean water, sewerage pipes, and put up with life threatening air pollution and illnesses.
But surely Phil, we shouldn’t have to censor ourselves just because a communist regime happens to rule Cuba? Naming your cafe ‘Havana’ doesn’t necessarily imply endorsement of Fidel Castro and his regime.
Left by strategist on December 15th, 2007