SMALL PEOPLE 1 – BIG BUSINESS 0

Nothing to do with football, but a pleasant win for “us”. Very rarely do I comment on business, especially at a very local level. But in this case, please allow me to make an exception.

I happen to live in an “Area of Outstanding National Beauty” and as is often the case in smaller communities, we have a (perhaps) exaggerated feeling of the need to preserve all that is good. We don’t have a MacDonalds (neither do we want one); we don’t have night-clubs (nor do we want them); we have traditional food shops, coffee shops in a style normally associated with “olde England” – and that is something we DO like! Some time ago, a large chain of coffee shops wished to open a new branch. Planning permission was granted by the local council – and then the s**t hit the fan. We are very independent-minded (a nice way of saying that if we disagree with something, we will shout about it), and this independence stems in part from the type of society we have built up over hundreds of year. We have artists, writers, therapists of every persuasion, musicians and herbalists to name a few. In other words, we are a very mixed ‘bag of fruit’ and will stand up for our rights!

So it is not surprising that local people started a petition to get the local council to change its mind. They collected 5,000 signatures and presented their petition… and it worked.

The council have now withdrawn their consent and the coffee shop chain has now issued a statement in which they say, “respecting the wishes of the town, we have decided not to press ahead with the opening of a new outlet”.

Ergo, SMALL PEOPLE 1 – BIG BUSINESS 0

HOW IS YOUR COMMUNITY SPIRIT?

Until next time (and one of the 5,000),

Peripatetic Scribe