Keep business local. I try to use local and small businesses as much as I can, as a matter of principle as well as for various other reasons. I believe that keeping things local reduces the (lorry/transportation) impact of global business, it makes for a stronger local community and quite simply the giants can cope by themselves.
The House of Commons All-Party Small Shops Group estimates that there will be no independent retailers by 2015. This equates to the loss of 50,000 small businesses. Small shops are struggling to survive because of local, regional and national government policies, together with the failure of the competition authorities to deal with the aggressive policies of supermarkets. The loss of the UK’s independent retailers has far reaching socio-economic and environmental implications for the whole community. Superstores and small independent shops should not be considered as two separate markets. An independent regulator should be created to ensure that local retail planning decisions do not have a negative effect on the interests of the local community. Unfair pricing advantages, such as below cost selling, should be prohibited. We believe that these measures would help to secure the future of small shops across the UK and safeguard the choice and competition that people expect in the market place.
2015? That’s only 7 years away. I run a small business and plan to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Mind you, mine is run from home and is online so I’m not sure you’d call it local really. But my local garage is brilliant with my car and I’d hate to lose them. The little shop on the corner if perfect for if we run out of milk or bread. The hairdressers up the road is friendly and cuts all our hair nicely. The kids have never looked so regularly neat in that department before. Then there’s the wonderful butcher in town who raises his own pigs to make into sausages, and delicious sausages they make too. However we did lose the independent, family run bookshop recently, that’s now a Cafe Nero. Oh and the man on the market where I get my fabric for soap nut bags, and every other market stall in Chesterfield, and the tiny little crystal shop too, and the cafe that I based Nutters on in The Portal Between. I’m sure there are more, but are they a dying breed? Can we afford to let that happen?
That quote is from here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/keeptradelocal/ Please, please go and sign it. It’ll only take a minute and could well save your local plumber/garage/corner shop and many more.
