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Restaurant lands Boris Johnson with £90k bill for Olympic losses
The boss of a London restaurant has hand-delivered a bill for £90,000 to Mayor of London Boris Johnson to protest against alleged losses of trade during the Olympics.
Neleen Strauss of the High Timber restaurant near St Paul’s Cathedral said turnover is down 80% in the last fortnight as workers stay out of the city during the Olympics.
In an article in the City A.M. newspaper Strauss called on Johnson to personally pick up the tab.
“This is – give or take a few hundred pounds – what the Olympic Games have cost me in turnover since they began. And I have asked Boris Johnson to pay the bill personally, not from the seemingly limitless coffers that supported London 2012,” she wrote.
“I squarely blame Johnson for my lack of customers because, time and again, he warned Londoners to leave room for the millions of visitors he said would come to the capital.
“It’s been a travesty of miscalculation and scaremongering.”
Strauss, who opened the High Timber restaurant three years ago, concluded, “I have included the ludicrous 20% VAT imposed on my diners. And I can assure Johnson I will continue to promptly pay the £106,000 business rates collected every year.”
Her full article can be read here.