| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Support Brentford traders ... for starters anyway! | |
| Posted by: | Tracie Dudley Craig | |
| Date/Time: | 15/06/25 15:45:00 |
| Right on, Simon. Both shops do indeed have their place. We dropped into Mozza’s today and it was close to deserted. There’s now a lot of tired produce in the fruit and vegetable aisle: extraordinary quantities of bananas in various states of repair. They’ve clearly done very little business in the past week. I feel beyond bad for them. I like Waitrose, but I think the notion of an opening is beyond remote. The local demographic just isn’t right for them now, although, like Lidl, it would certainly bring people to the area. We’ll just have to get on with little Chiswick and the bigger stores in Shepherd’s Bush, Richmond and Ealing. The problem with the Lidl TW8 site is that there’s nothing else there to hook people. No coffee, no little independent shops. It’s of economic benefit to Lidl itself, not Brentford as a whole. You’ve probably gathered that I’m one of those concerned about the quality of the produce we buy. It’s not that we have limitless funds (quite the reverse, we’re self-employed in an industry decimated by Brexit and unsympathetic governmental policy). It’s because we work with those involved with organic, biodynamic and regenerative farming. When you have the opportunity to witness the difference that biodiversity and the environment can make to soil health and the quality of crops and produce it can really make you think about what you consume. I’ve said before that by no means all our shopping is organic, biodynamic or a product of regenerative farming (you try finding biodynamic produce in the UK - although there are some terrific frozen chips imported from Germany available, made from biodynamic potatoes and bearing Demeter certification). We just buy what looks the freshest and most appealing. In 2025 Britain, this is a privilege. Some might deride it as a bourgeois concern and it’s absolutely their right to do so. But it shouldn’t be and it absolutely misses the point. Fresh, good-quality merchandise should be available - and affordable - to everyone. In Italy, by law, fried food cannot be served in schools. Pasta and olive oil must be organic. Children are served multi-vegetable dishes and small quantities of real meat and fish. This should be the norm here, but we find ourselves with the far greater concern that children get anything nutritious to eat at all. Remember during lockdown, when some children’s only substantial meal of the day was school lunch and was no longer available? That was - and is - a terrible state of affairs. Pensioners having to eke out tiny amounts of low-quality, nutritionally redundant food because it’s a toss-up between starving or freezing. Not right. A truly terrible wrong. So yes, there’s room for both. Plenty of room. But it’s not wrong to hope not just for MORE choice but BETTER choice. For everyone. |