I have an HP laptop, an iPod Nano, my speakers were made by Creative, I listen to music on Spotify and iTunes, I buy things from Amazon, play.com, HMV, all of my clothes are from high street stores, my groceries, 80% of the time, are purchased at Tesco and Asda, I love Ikea furniture.
I remember the days when supporting bands on independent labels was the thing to do, when I didn’t worry that there were only independent record stores in my town (I need to watch Empire Records right now…), when people still bought food from the green grocers, when the shop where my Mum used to get her groceries, that is now a massive Tesco, was a shopping mall full of pound stores and independent businesses and the largest store in it was a grocery shop called ‘Crazy Prices’.
The saddest part is that now the economy has fallen to pieces and all we have are corporate monsters taking over with more and more chain supermarkets and pound stores. If we hadn’t gone over to the dark side and supported the independent businesses maybe the unemployment rate wouldn’t be such a mess, because we would be sustaining ourselves without the help (which is actually a hindrance) of global companies. I don’t know about you but I don’t like pound stores; I don’t want more for less. I want less good quality products, put together by someone who actually cares, and I don’t mind paying a little more for it and also spending money less often.
A sovereign state as small as the UK, and especially within my home country, Northern Ireland, was always sort of destined to fail in this area. Once the corporations started it was going to be very hard to stop them. In a country home to only 1.8 million people the competition just became too much for the smaller, independent businesses that weren’t able to churn out the same amount of products in the same amount of time.
If anyone knows of ways to combat this, to support the few independent businesses still left, specifically in Northern Ireland and throughout the whole of the UK, please let me know.
x
Following the Northern Star 