Free Market Economics – Credit Crunch Style
For sometime people have been bemoaning the fact that Sutton High Street struggles to compete with the size of Croydon and the more upmarket Kingston and Epsom for shopping. With little direction for so many years, major retailers saw little benefit in coming to Sutton.
Before Christmas, I thought that it was a sign of the times that a Pound shop could be undercut by a “99p” shop. The pictures opposite show the two stores proudly sitting as bookends at the top and bottom of the High Street respectively.
Now, however, a Pound shop in Poole has closed down due to the competition from a 99p store that recently opened opposite. There are plenty of vacant shops in Sutton. Anyone fancy opening a lucrative 98p store? I’ll nip down to the bank and get a few bags of 2p pieces for change.
Roadside Spam
How many near-misses must there have been along the roads of London over the last month or two with the advent of these roadside billboards?
It screams out the bait as if Brian Blessed had been the copywriter but the product that it is marketing is hidden in the lurid colours and the sheer size of the provocative text of the question.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, they have been removed voluntarily by the firm behind the advertising campaign after the Advertising Standards Authority dithered following a string of complaints. I don’t consider myself prudish but the posters that were on Beddington Lane and Carshalton Road were ugly and just daft, playing on a base schoolboy sense of titillation. As do most people, I get enough spam in my inbox about sex, viagra and plenty of other things, I really don’t need it while I’m away from my emails for a while relaxing in the traffic on the red route. I could say that it gets up my nose, but since this product is a nasal spray that it is claimed cures impotency, I’ll rely on a judgemental shake of the head.
Anyway, the people who I feel sorry for are those who live opposite the posters who must have to look out of their bedroom windows everyday before they go to bed and when they get up to have the same question being posed of them. I’m not sure if Brian Blessed has considered retraining as an Agony Aunt.
Sterling Reaches Parity With Another Currency
I looked at the money that my daughter received for a Christmas present and wondered how long it would be before my pay packet looked the same.
Gordon Brown’s announcement that he is to create 100,000 new jobs looks suspiciously like another measure to be seen to be doing something rather than one that will have any meaningful or lasting effect.
2009 is going to be a tough year for the economy. Locally, we need to work closely with Sutton businesses and large employers to see what more we can do as an authority rather than just wringing our hands. Pushing through measures that help large national companies who provide many of the Council’s services won’t help local businesses. We need to ensure that we are fully aware of what local residents and local businesses want from us before acting. Giving them a greater voice to speak to councillors and question exisiting policies will be a good start.
Communications Contract
We called in to debate at Full Council, the decision to increase spending on communications by another 50% hidden away in the small print of the new contract for Westminster Council to provide our service. Because this is now a shared service between two local authorities, normal rules for tendering do not apply.
Westminster are acknowledged as the best at what they do. We know that it is vital for any Council to inform residents and to hear back from them. However, this does not mean that contracts can be given out, unchecked by politicians. This was due to be agreed by a mechanism called a Delegated Decision Notice (DDN) which is usually reserved for smaller decisions that have to be made in a hurry. THe DDN is circulated to councillors and if no-one calls it in, an officer can give the go-ahead.
£600,000 per year is not an amount that we believe should be just waved through. Cllr Brett Young, the lead councillor for communication showed disdain and irritation for having to come before the Council to explain what he has been doing over the last year, explaining that he was puzzled why we would possibly want to discuss this.
Parents who are going to be affected by the restrictions on school transport for SEN children had left by this point, so they did not see how eager the lead councillor was to crow about where this extra money was going. He is also the lead councillor for Children, Young People and Learning Services who pushed through the cuts for children with learning difficulties earlier in the evening.
It never ceases to amaze me how this administration is visibly running out of steam. Once the public gallery empties, they resort to cheap points scoring without addressing the specific points that are up for discussion. I can handle a bit of political argy-bargy but find it extraordinary that they appear hurt and personally wounded when their policies are criticised, but think nothing of finding novel ways of blaming Maggie Thatcher, Boris Johnson for their woes and wondering why the opposition are not implementing any of their own policies, forgetting that we are not in power. Oh well, politically it suits me if they carry on in this vacuous way. As a resident who gets the bill once a year, I’m not so chuffed.
Update: Background music removed from video by popular request.