London Mayor Moves Against Ministry

Ministry Of Sound faced an uncertain future this week after the South London club warned that property developers and politicians are continuing to threaten their Elephant & Castle home.

“London Mayor Boris Johnson is about to grant planning permission for luxury flats opposite Ministry of Sound,” the club warned in a statement calling for clubbers’ support.

“In 2011, Ministry of Sound fought and won the battle to Save Our Club.
In 2012, we need your help again to win the war,” they declared.

“We thought our future was secured when Southwark Council’s Planning Committee voted overwhelmingly to reject the plans,” they continued.
“Now the developer has convinced Boris Johnson to “call in” the application and hopes to overturn this democratic decision. Don’t let Boris shut us down.”

Details of the conservative Old Etonian millionaire mayor’s decision to support property developers over nightlife contradicted his personal reputation as a hard partying onetime member of notorious high society hooligan society the Bullingdon Club.

Appearing on a British comedy show Have I Got News For You he joked about using class A drugs, bizarrely quipping ‘I think I was once given cocaine, but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose’, and three years later was largely unrepentant.

“Well, that was when I was 19,” he told Janet Street Porter, “It all goes to show that sometimes it's better not to say anything,” he snorted (Guardian: http://bit.ly/yo65CB

He was equally ambivalent about binge drinking, in a newspaper column he wrote for the Daily Telegraph in 2005 in with he admitted finding it ‘rather admirable to get bladdered, leathered, rat-arsed and otherwise hogwhimpering drunk.”

"‘We drink the Russians off the balcony; we drink the Ukrainians under the table. Of our teenagers, 40 per cent have been dead drunk more than 10 times in the past 12 months, compared with a piffling 7% of French teenagers,” he chortled.

“It was as I was skimming through these statistics that I suddenly had an insight. I realised to my horror that I was reading the figures with pride," he said.

Click here to sign Ministry’s Online petition: http://bit.ly/cfnO54

Or tweet #savemosclub

Or contact Boris directly at mayor@london.gov.uk - and let him know what Ministry of Sound means to you by attaching a photo of you at the Club or recounting a favourite night.

For more informatio contact saveourclub2012@ministryofsound.com