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Permalink Reply by Natalia Griffiths on February 24, 2012 at 12:58

It's a shame that more and more betting shops are moving in because there are some fantastic local shops on the stretch of Green Lanes between the North Circular and Myddleton Road. Sirwan for the veg, the Green Lanes Fisheries for amazing fresh fish (and banter!) as well as Meatland for good quality meat that is so much better than that sold at the Tesco Local. We do try to make an effort to shop locally as much as we can. The Old Country Bakery is great too. It would really be a shame if this bit of Green Lanes ended up being all empty shops and bookies' outlets.

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Permalink Reply by Alan Sitkin on February 25, 2012 at 0:05

Hi Richard!

Listen, the Bowes Labour councillors have been terribly concerned for a very long time about our high street, but David Burrowes is being awfully phony (or economically illiterate?) in attributing growing problems to anything other than the money taken out of shoppers' pockets by the regressive decision taken by his Tory government to hike VAT. The OBR calculates that this costs more than £200 per annum in lost purchasing power for every man, woman and child in the country, analysed more accurately as about £500 in lost purchasing power for every shopping household, which therefore has a lot less money to spend in shops. Next to that, the parking charges - which the Tories themselves specifically rejected in a 7 October 2009 Cabinet meeting, without Burrowes saying one peep - are tiny. Moreover, residents remember when they used to have free parking, people would leave their car all day and it would be worse than now. The Council is trying to help and has rolled out X small business relief packages (and many more in the wake of the riots) - with Enfield's previous regime having rolled out precisely none between 2002-2010, including during the banking crisis. Above all, there needs to be a cluster of complementary shops but that's hard to plan given the lack of powers in council hands. The law allowing betting shops to crowd in is still made at the national level, and if the MP wants to actually do something instead of creating phony political wars, that's the area he should be concentrating on. But we're concerned because we don't want stores with shutters pulled down everywhere like the last time under John Major. 

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