So, not content with standing to utterly defecate on the hard work of Bowland Bar staff who have worked hard to bring us a popular food outlet, not satisfied by the prospect of being yet another arrogant and unfeeling goliath to stomp upon campus’s far more reputable and friendly little Davids, too greedy to settle on giving people reason to refer to themselves as ‘sandwich artists’; a title which implies a degree of independent thought absent from the job itself, it seems that the incoming branch of Subway has found another part of Lancaster’s throat to stomp on.
A small notice has been up in Bowland College for the past few days. It tells us that Subway wants to facilitate the Fresh Eating from 7am right through to 4am, seven days a week. It invites us to send our objections to these opening hours to the council by the 28th of April. It has been there since the 28th of March.
"There are students who will be living above the new Subway. They are more than likely to be disturbed by the multi-decibel merriment being contained directly beneath their living quarters after a night out, not to mention by morning deliveries."
Oh my God, how scandalous! A notice welcoming opposition has spent most of its time up while the students are away, and can’t see it or oppose. In reality, most students will have five days to see it and maybe formulate a response! How convenient! Are your gums dripping with rage at yet another example of ‘qualified’ consultation from those fat cats in city hall? Of course you’re not. You’re probably so bored of it that you’ve defeatedly resigned yourself to a lifetime of bootprints being left all over the worth of your opinion. Lord knows I am. So it is with a great desire to do anything other than this, however soul crushing, that I tell you what’s happened this time.
There are students who will be living above the new Subway. They are more than likely to be disturbed by the multi-decibel merriment being contained directly beneath their living quarters after a night out, not to mention by morning deliveries. While the thought that it will only stay open until 4am on nights where there is a demand has crossed many peoples’ minds, we must not forget that the thought is rendered indisputably nonsensical if we look at the consistency of Sultan and Pizzetta’s long hours, as well as the importance of recognising that even one needlessly sleepless night is one too many.
We may also look to the latest in a long line of counter-productive Facebook polls, which indicates that most students have no problem at all with the opening hours. This could well be representative of a large consensus, but we must remember that ‘most students’ won’t be living directly above the new outlet, nor will they have to put up with the smell that Bowland students and the Sociology department will have to endure. We’re all glad to have a Sugarhouse (apparently), but none of us would like to live above it.
A word of advice: Facebook polls are not only an arena for one-click thinking, which isn’t the kind of thinking you want to be listening to, they can also serve to make it difficult for anybody who wants to represent a small, affected minority of people when you’ve given off the impression that everyone’s opinion on this is relevant. It just makes a lot of people feel ignored, and as though they have wasted their valuable seconds voting on the poll.
Now, for all readers who might somehow miss the absolutely enormous and totally visible notice, which I might add has, for some reason, been TAKEN DOWN(!!) – I’m not going to tell people how to respond to this news, but if I was, I’d say that you should send your objections (to the opening hours or to the Subway’s very existence on campus if you so choose) to licensing@lancaster.gov.uk. Don’t forget that Subway needs a license from City Council to begin trading on campus; noise, litter and cooking smells constitute a ‘nuisance’, and it is the legal right of affected residents to make their concerns known.
