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. 

It's Down To Us To Turn The Economy Round

We all want our economies to improve around the world but we all know equally well that politicians can only be trusted to look after themselves and the over-inflated egos. They make sure that their post political careers are well sorted by keeping banks and big corporates sweet while talking hard words that never get transferred into actions. 

So if we want our economies to improve it's down to us to do something about it, regardless of the prevailing environment. If we all do the following 3 things regularly then maybe we can start to turn things round together:

1. Support local businesses as opposed to large multi-nationals and online faceless giants. It may cost a little more and take a little longer to track down what you want but the money will be kept on your local community rather than being siphoned off to some far off tax haven. 
2. Think very carefully about where the items and food you buy comes from. While there are ethical and transport costs that you might want to think about which are more of an environmental issue buying food in season and locally produced rather than being shipped half way round the world means it will be fresher and better for you and, as above, keeps the money in your local economy. The same goes for all other non-food items but globalisation means you will have to set your own boundaries for what you consider 'local' on a case by case basis. 
3. Set up your own business selling what you are good at. We all have things that we excel at and that means that others will be prepared to pay for it - goods or services. Start small, don't risk your home on it and see how it goes. We all have an entrepreneur inside us itching to get out. If things don't work out, learn from it and try something else - that's what all successful business people do. 

Don't blame others for the state of the economy, they won't listen or change their insipid habits. 

Let's make a change together and get ourselves sorted out. 

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.

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.