Support Your Local Post Office

It's a strange phenomenon that when local shops and services don't get used and closure is planned huge campaigns get started to keep them open as they provide a "valuable service" for the community or are the "hub" around which the community gathers. Such hypocrisy must be hard to stomach for those small business owners and others who see a steady downward trend in their sales and footfall. 

Post Offices are particularly prone to this yet much of what they have traditionally offered can now be got elsewhere. To be fair the Royal Mail have responded in their own way by offering a far wider range of products than would have been seen even five years ago (a valuable lesson to many struggling retail businesses here). Backed up by an online presence that compliments rather than competes with its physical outlets means long term stability of sorts. 

This doesn't mean that Post Offices are safe for ever more. Nothing guarantees that. So the next time you need stamps, insurance or to pay a bill, use your local Post Office. If you don't it won't be too long before it closes for good. 

Are We Seeing A Backlash Against Beef?

It seems during the last few weeks there has been a never ending avalanche of stories about horse-meat being found in various processed meals that supposedly contained beef. Initially the news was about "DNA traces" of horse-meat which sounds pretty innocuous, similar to the "may contain nuts" labels found on some foods because they are produced in the same factories that produce foods with nuts. Pretty soon though the DNA traces turned into 60-100% horse-meat and it wasn't only confined to the UK and Ireland, the whole sordid tale stretches out across Europe. 

So are people starting to turn their backs on beef? While in a supermarket the other day I noticed large piles of beef mince in the refrigerators. Noticeably, most of it was labelled as "Irish Beef" although there was British Beef there too. Maybe I had arrived just as new stock had been put out - or maybe not. Local butchers have signs up with special offers on beef which is great for shoppers but is a worrying indication on what has quickly happened to the market. 

Where am I going with this? Well, the problems that have been so widely broadcast in the media are all about meat that we can't really recognise in the foods we buy and importantly, have no control over. When we buy meat, and in this case beef, in its raw state the chances of it not being what it purports to be are negligible. Don't give up on beef - when you buy it raw it is what it's supposed to be. 

Cash Is King

With new technical ideas to be make it easy for us to spend our money without using cash we get further and further away from understanding the real value of money. Tweeting to pay for something, come on, just where is this going to end? With the world's richest countries owing trillions in debt (are they really that rich and developed if they owe so much?) it's little wonder that such an acceptance of debt as a way of life is becoming the norm for so many. But it doesn't have to be that way.

You know how much you spend on food and other items each week so just take out that amount of cash and stick to it! Once you start using cash you very quickly start to realise how much different goods really cost. And remember too that if you are starting to use your local shops more (10% of your weekly shop makes sense) using cash in those shops means the owners don't have to pay a percentage admin charge for each card transaction, keeping the real money in the local community. All this, and it doesn't cost you a penny more.

Know What You Eat - Cook From Scratch

There have been some appalling news stories these past couple of weeks about horse-meat being used in processed meals and burgers that consumers thought contained beef. Whether it's down to criminality, fraud, ineffective quality management systems or anything else it brings into sharp focus that for many of us we don't actually know what's in our food.  Processed foods are everywhere. Even when we are out and buying meals in restaurants or cafes it could well be that the meal on our plate was not prepared from individual raw ingredients. 

Maybe this is a wake up call for many of us and a reminder that if we have cooking facilities at home we really should be using them. Look at what's in your cupboards and fridge and see what's processed and what isn't. Think things through and figure out what you can make from the fresh ingredients you already buy regularly. Someone once told me that when it comes to food more than anything else 'you get what you pay for in terms of quality'. Perhaps the latest scare stories will start to hit home. 

I wrote a post a few years ago on an earlier incarnation of this blog about how to make an Easy Pasta Sauce that is worth looking at again. It can be used on its own with pasta or as part of other meals such as beef lasagne - try it out and see for yourself.

Small Shop Closures Are Progress - NOT!

Sir Terry Leahy the former boss of Tesco has described the closure of small shops and the dominance of supermarkets as 'part of progress'. No-one would deny that the continual closure of small shops who simply cannot compete with the buying power of the huge supermarket chains as a consequence, but 'part of progress', really? This comes after a month in the UK retail sector that has seen the death of Blockbuster, HMV and Jessops. Hardly small corner shops and maybe supermarkets creeping into their traditional markets wasn't entirely to blame for their demise but there will have been an element of that. After all, there is very little you cannot buy in supermarkets these days. If it isn't actually in the store itself you can probably order it on the supermarket's own website. Who's next to be killed off by the supermarkets I wonder?

The benefits of out of town supermarkets 'far outweigh the costs' was something else that Sir Terry said. Well, they do I guess if you have your own transport and don't want a High Street in your local town that resembles a High Street. Many supermarket chains have even opened their own stores back in High Streets, probably in premises they vacated 10 or 20 years ago, so they are recognising a public demand to some extent. Wouldn't it be good though if we were assured that the prices they charged in these 'local stores' were the same as in all their larger stores. Come on Tesco and others, give us a promise on price that means something.

Shop Locally or Lose Your High Street For Good

The start of the new year has seen poor sales figures in the run up to Christmas and the failure of some familiar high street names. Not good indicators of economic growth. Fortunately there hasn't been any more money created to pump into the economy, money that has to be paid for eventually but there's no guarantee that there won't be any more quantitive easing this year. The UK's AAA credit rating is clinging on by its nails.

Individuals and families can do little to make any difference to these big economic issues but they can make a real difference closer to home. Think about where you spend your weekly outgoings. For most people alot of this will go to large businesses, supermarkets being the prime example. Now no-one is denying that supermarkets don't provide employment but the profits made at your local supermarket don't stay in your area, they get sucked out to head office and end up with institutional shareholders.

We should choose to spend a proportion of our 'weekly shop' at local independent stores, after all they are part of our community and by and large offer better service and quality. Look around your own high street and see what shops are left. Without our support they will go under. Decide how much you will spend, 10% seems like a reasonable figure, and what you will buy locally - and stick to it.

Supermarkets Aren't Just Killing Off Small Shops

The fiasco that the UK Hight Street has seen in only the first two weeks of 2013 is something everyone should be concerned about. First it was Jessops, a well established photography retailer going into administration and then this week, HMV. Notwithstanding the terrible ordeal of thousands losing their jobs (and that is bad enough) it adds yet more empty store-fronts in the high streets and shopping malls of the UK. Many have been saying that out-of-town shopping malls are the way of the future yet even these are suffering as the world of retail steadily changes, or rather, we the consumer changes the way we buy things.

It is a sad fact that in most developing countries the supermarkets, many of which can only really be reached by car, have taken a huge chunk out of the food market leaving only specialists offering niche products, to survive elsewhere. Supermarkets now stock far more than just food. Go into any large one and you'll find up to half the aisles full of non-food items, again hitting at the livelihoods of not only small local specialist stores but also of national chains such as Jessops and HMV. OK, maybe supermarkets may not be entirely to blame for these two companies going bust but they have played their part, as have their online sites too. Now that supermarkets are trying to get back into our high streets by opening smaller stores (where they used to be in the first place of course) it really is difficult to see how smaller local shops will survive long-term.

Perhaps the only thing to do is to use them and shop locally - now that won't catch on, will it?

What Will Become of the High Street?

There have been so many big name retailers going to the wall over the last few years it is hard not to recognise a serious shift in the High Street. At the same time we still have large, strong brands that are dominating each and every shopping centre and mall and a handful of supermarkets that sell far more than just food. So what is happening to retail? Yes, the internet and online sales have made a huge difference particularly for goods that most of us now consider to be consumables. To a certain extent the High Street has become something of a place of leisure and a place to meet others. The proliferation of coffee shops be they small independents or large chains make it easy to arrange to meet someone 'in town' but does it really attract people in to buy other goods? Not really.

The High Street now is very different from even the turn of the century with many once familiar names now missing. What will it look like in another 5 or 10 years time? Coffee shops, charity shops and boarded up stores dominate now together with more 'gift shops' and £1 stores than can possibly be necessary. Totnes is striving to keep as many specialist independent stores as possible and that is to be welcomed yet is it really feasible for all parts of the country?

As more shopping goes online and to the really big retailers and into out-of-town shopping malls it is debatable as to whether there will even be a Hight Street in the not too distant future. Maybe they will become much smaller and become more leisure related areas and maybe some will disappear altogether and be replaced by residential areas. It's anyone's guess but at some point soon there will be a town or village that effectively looses its High Street, if it hasn't already done so.