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   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 24-Oct-2025 00:25:55 JST HebrideanHecate

   https://thecritic.co.uk/no-longer-a-nation-of-shopkeepers/

   Working for Neal’s Yard in the 1990s, she became interested in how to help small, more specialist local suppliers whose products were not being stocked, regarded as too expensive by the supermarkets. She has focused on supplying the best quality of food which she sources direct from the farmers themselves or from specialist suppliers, such as the bakery E5, whose founder, Ben Mackinnon, she helped with advice when it was first established, and Charlie Macintosh who runs a small brewery in Hammersmith.

   Now Tower Hamlets is destroying the business and all the other traders in the street by employing a third party, Exigen, to raise the rent to what it regards as the market level.

   This is a morality tale as to how Britain, once a nation of shopkeepers, allows local authorities to support rack-renting landlords and drive specialist shops and small traders out of business.

   • KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.
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     KeepTakingTheSoma (keeptakingthesoma@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 24-Oct-2025 00:33:29 JST KeepTakingTheSoma

     in reply to
     @HebrideanHecate The *landlords* are companies like Blackrock. They donate to political parties. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
     When politicians can mandate what can be bought and sold, the first things to be bought and sold are politicians.