I don’t fully understand the restaurant world of “stages” and such, but it does strike me as particularly abusive, especailly under Ramsey who by all accounts does not seem to be a nice man. But that’s irrelevant as well. I think the bigger issue I have with your comments (and the review that aims to put her in her place) is this implication that somehow this woman has bought her way to the top inappropriately - to me this is just absurd. A person can open a restaurant and call herself chef as she likes. There is no governing body that declares whether or not a person is a chef, no institution that can decide that a person is not yet qualified to open her own restaurant. In her rush to strike out on her own she may have missed some essential training that dooms her to mediocrity, but she is still a chef in her own restaurant, pursuing soemthing that she is passionate about, and for that I give her credit.
@kupfernigk; this is not my understanding of British law. As I understand it, truth is still a defense (defence) to defamation, but under UK law the burden is on the defendant not the accuser. IAAL but not a UK lawyer so I am open to being corrected.
Which is why you have the finest government Koch and Murdoch money can buy.Things just result in a shouting match.
You can say what you like in England. It’s just that there may be consequences and you have to think about them… Your freedom of speech in the US is completely illusory; try being black and talking back to a policeman, or criticising your employer. You have freedom of speech so long as what you say is of no importance. I’ve worked for US companies and British ones, and my experience is that US employees are frightened to step out of line far more than their British counterparts.
That’s true. But at least it isn’t the government with their monopoly on violence trying to censor me. I am aware that my speech is restricted by consequences I will experience with private citizens, but nobody’s allowed to silence me for my opinion, no matter how looney, and nobody’s allowed to blow me up for saying true things. That’s pretty good.
And most American citizens don’t believe that a corporation has a legitimate right to freedom of speech the way a human citizen does, but the supreme court has ruled, and we have to reform our campaign finance laws to fix the shithole of completely anonymous, unlimited campaign funding. Most of us don’t believe money = speech. But that doesn’t stop our majority conservative SCOTUS from making stupid decisions based on an inherent bias toward favoring the rich.
*as long as nobody’s bothered by it. Otherwise you’ll have to pay tons of money to fight them in court whether or not it’s true. Public participation is a privilege in the UK, not a right. That seems backwards to me. Especially when the entities most capable of and who want most to participate publicly aren’t even human beings.
Freedom of speech has never been meant to protect US citizens from public backlash, and isn’t supposed to give us a free ride to say anything without consequence. It’s meant to prevent the government from prosecuting people for thought crime, and it’s meant to enable those willing to make the sacrifice to speak out against entrenched power.
We have a disagreement of political philosophy, I suppose. Most Americans don’t think it’s the government responsibility to shield famous people from truth. And that’s important to us.
As an atheist, I know for a fact that some of the things I’ve said would have caused me to be highly discriminated against by religious government officials if they weren’t restricted from penalizing me for my views. Freedom of speech means that I can’t be thrown in jail for saying, for instance, “I believe David Miscavige is a fucking evil bastard, and the church of scientology is a scam designed to rape people out of their money, and to destroy families.”
But I can say that, and since I live in a state with decent Anti-SLAPP laws, I won’t be prosecuted for my views. And I can even go on to say true things and my opinions about David Miscavige and the church of scientology that they don’t like, without legal repercussions. How is that a bad thing?
Truth is a defence (English spelling note) to defamation IF there is a public interest. For instance, Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, had no chance of winning a libel suit when it was stated that he had run a company under a different name because he denied it and it was shown to be true; as a politician there is clearly a public interest defence in exposing a lie.
Edit - there is no such thing as British law as Scotland and Northern Ireland have distinct legal systems. I know nothing at all about their libel laws.
I’m not saying its neccisarily right, or in line with the facts. Just thats why it seems to be cheesing people off. It just probably explains why the reviewer got such a bitter response from Gordons people. Right or wrong the perception among her peers is going to be poor. And it kind of cheeses me off personally.
In terms of stage/internships being abusive, its not all that much different than any other internship in any other field. Except for the fact that they’re more frequently paid, or a run as part of a program to earn a degree, or very short term, just two weeks for typical stages in high end kitchens. I’d say that makes it less abusive than other internships. And in a system thats effectively trade school some system like that is neccisary. It does get abused however, particularly in regards to culinary students. There’s a restaraunt near me that doesn’t want to pay to hire a full kitchen staff. Rather than employing 5-10 full time, trained, cooks at a decent rate they have a head chef and 30 or so culinary students wandering through on part time internships. Most of them unpaid or very cheap, a different set of kids every couple of weeks. The food suffers as a result, and its kind of giving them a bad reputation but they keep doing it.
Edit: Oh an in terms of Gordon Ramsey. I hear he is a rather nice person, though very strict to work for. All the screaming yelling cursing shit is apparently for ratings. Though IIRC there have been some labor disputes and business wonkery with his restaraunt group, but thats absurdly common in that business. Mario Batali and his restaraunt group have been sued (and lost) for garnishing waitstaff’s tips a few times. IIRC they claimed they were doing so to shift wages towards the kitchen, though I doubt that personally.
Millions of negative stars. Since they’ve wasted all their money on lawyers, they can’t find anybody to build a website. Anyone who builds a restaurant site and stuffs the menus into PDFs needs to be beaten, REALLY REALLY HARD with a large piece of steel, wood or sturdy ceramics. And then peed on.
