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OBSERVER: Another bookies? Let’s have more local independents...
Your letters, emails and opinions - Boston Standard, Lincolnshire: bostonstandard.co.uk, on Twitter @standardboston
I see one of the empty shops in the Market Place is to be another betting shop.
While welcoming the fact it is one fewer to think what to do with, it does seem a shame that Boston seems to be getting more than its fair share of this type of business.
It’s not so many years ago that we were promised a big new shopping centre in West Street because ‘so many national stores want to come here’. It does now seem providential that that particular scheme got nowhere otherwise we might be looking at even more empty shops.
Going back some 50 or 60 years Boston still had its fair share of local, family-owned shops but gradually they were taken over by other (outside) firms and it then didn’t take long for the national chains to come into town and now we are like any other ‘market’ town you visit in the country.
Gone has that local feel; all towns now appear the same with little to distinguish them from any other and this is to be regretted.
No matter where you go you see the same national retailers, their shops looking exactly the same as the one in your own town.
We are now suffering in the same way as all those other similar ‘market’ towns, losing the national shops which for one reason or another – and I don’t think it can all be blamed on the internet – find themselves struggling financially. Once one goes they all seem to follow suit. Banks and bankers appear to have a lot to answer for.
It seems wrong that the only shops which towns can attract these days are either charity shops, mobile phone shops or betting shops; at least in this respect Boston is keeping up!
Who knows?
Perhaps there will come a time when we actually find ourselves back in the old days if all these national companies keep going to the wall; they will have to be replaced by something and I can only hope that people – not just in Boston, but all over the country – might actually welcome back – local shops which are run by local people.
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Weather for Boston, Lincolnshire
Sunday 26 May 2013
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 6 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: South west
