Blue Murder (From Daily Echo)

Blue Murder

5:38pm Saturday 21st January 2012

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I’m getting nervous. Shops are closing down all over Winchester. In the last few weeks, we’ve seen the death of Hawkin’s Bazaar (in The Brooks Centre, like us), Past Times (an eclectic mix of products, like us) and now The Beanstalk (a small independent, like us). If this was an Agatha Christie book, I’d be worried Your Life Your Style was next.

Fortunately it doesn’t need Poirot to reveal to an assembled group of suspects that the murderer is the Economy. Big chains are going under because they can’t maintain their debt to the bank, small shopkeepers give up because retailing has stopped being fun.

People have said to me that I should stop moaning about how hard it is to be a shopkeeper these days. In others words, ‘You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.’ I understand why you might think that but please understand that when I opened my shop, the economy was still looking good. Admittedly you have to be an optimist to be in business but even so, most of us didn’t expect an economic collapse on the scale we’ve witnessed.

I imagined, naively perhaps, that our then government would save some of the proceeds of the boom years for a rainy day or that they might be exercising some control over the reckless investment strategies of the banks we were so reliant upon.

After the collapse, I thought, again with a triumph of hope over experience, that the new government might nurture our damaged economy rather than deliver the killer blow. Spending in shops was already stalling, so it did come as a shock when retailing, which is responsible for 8% of our GDP, was poleaxed by a rise in VAT.

This made no more sense to me than George Osborne’s claim that private enterprise would fill the employment gap created by cuts in public services. Only a career politician more influenced by political dogma than the realities of life wouldn't know that in a mixed economy like ours large numbers of private firms rely on work generated by the public sector and nearly all the rest need the 6 million public sector employees to buy from them.

I doubt I'm the first to point out that in times of economic trouble, we get nostalgic for that golden era when the country was run by aristocrats with no experience in anything as common as ‘trade’. So we watch Downton Abbey on TV and install George Osborne as Chancellor Of The Exchequer.

You might think we retailers should simply hunker down until the green shoots of recovery sprout. But the point of going into business is to grow your company, not stand still. So far, Winchester has been less affected by the government’s austerity policy than most parts of the country. Last year our shop even saw a slightly above inflation rise in turnover. However it remains to be seen whether the Winchester bubble will burst as the full impact of the public sector cuts is felt on the large number of jobs concentrated in the city.

Looking at the national picture, retailing is expected to increase its sales a little but that’s thanks to the internet (our online business was up 50% last year). Britain’s high streets remain in desperate need of some stimulus from Mr Osborne. Still, when the last shop closes its doors, at least the country can save on street lighting.

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