It's sad that Hitchin is to lose its Blockbuster store as the chain's liquidators try to make sense of the business.
Chains and independents alike are at risk in the current recession and will shopping locally be enough to stop the rot in Hitchin? I don't know, but it seems that it can't do any harm,
It's half term this week and the evening trains are full of families coming back from London with bags of shopping. Why are we not enticing them into our own shops?
Are there too many things that are inaccessible outside the capital? I doubt it.
Is there an excitement about shopping in London? Have you SEEN Oxford Street recently?
For the last two weeks or so, there's been a campaign to remind us how much we genuinely love local businesses. 14 Days of Love runs nationally and hundreds of people wrote testimonials in support of Hitchin businesses. So we DO love our town's shops and services, but do we do enough to keep them?
Since a car crash in November and a nasty fall in January, I've done almost no shopping outside Hitchin - all my Christmas presents came from local shops. There's a lot out there and - while we may not be able to stop another chain like Blockbuster closing - we can probably all support our local shops more often.
