Golden opportunity

In response to Scott Preston A local shop is for life; SN 28/11/14:

I praise your reply Scott and have personally supported local shops in Shetland for almost 40 years. However depending on your location and place of work there are many folk who just cannot get everything they need in a local shop.

The evidence for this is that owners of local shops are regularly seen in the Co-op or Tesco, either buying things for their shop due to the price being lower than at their wholesaler, or are fed up with their evening meal choice due simply by the restrictions on the range, retail space and customer base in their small shop.

I am not disagreeing with anything Scott says but in the real world there are many folk who have no local shop, have no transport and have very low incomes necessitating everything cheap and in one place.

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Local produce sold in local outlets is of immense importance and we ignore this at our peril because the supermarket’s global distribution model will totally fail when the cost of fuel prevents green beans being flown into the UK by jumbo jet from Kenya and supermarket shelves become bare.

My point is that – like them or not – ‘supermarkets’ here in Shetland and elsewhere are in serious trouble and it’s a golden opportunity for local producers, shops, farmers markets etc to step up to the opportunity their failings present.

Vic Thomas
Clousta