Greetings Rockhoppers. I’m going to keep it short and sweet tonight, as I’m just a little bit narked, and as it’s apparently “Blue Monday” I don’t want to feed into the collective grump any more than I have to. So here goes…
Just when you thought the high street couldn’t get any more bleak, you find that something rather dubiously called a “Pound Stretcher” is going to open in a massive retail unit just down the road from you. (In this case, the Friary Retail Park in Plymouth). This has irked me for several reasons, which I will try to summarise as follows…
Firstly, whilst I accept these places have to exist (otherwise where would we get our £1 bottles of Herbal Essences with the old branding from?), the place for these units is surely somewhere discrete and out of sight, perhaps sandwiched between a Bon Marche and a pop-up calendar shop. The place is not on a highly visible retail park, with neighbours such as Dunelm, Smyths, Hoobbycraft and Pets at Home. (OK, so hardly Westfield, but surely, Plymouth City Council, we can do better than this?!).
Secondly, the sheer size of it. It’s going to be HUGE. I like my pound shops small and harmless, not the size of a small hanger, with rows upon rows of discounted nonsense. Seriously. There’s only so many £1 items anyone needs…
Thirdly, and probably predictably, I’m not a big fan of mass produced, cheap… stuff. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of everything we believe in at Rockpool; but that’s OK, it doesn’t mean we can’t co-exist. But I do object to it being in such a large unit in such a prominent location in the South West’s largest city, mainly because… and here’s my fourth and final gripe…
The message it sends. It says, in gigantic cheap, yellow letters… this country’s had some pretty rubbish financial times recently, things are hard for a lot of people and you can’t afford anything a). nice, b). not made of plastic and c). costing much more than a £1. That’s not to say that millions of people (many of whom live in the Westcountry) haven’t had an incredibly hard few years, but that’s not the whole picture! For goodness sake, give us some confidence, give us some hope, give us… oh I don’t know, something that doesn’t just hammer home the point: “Times are tough – so stretch that pound for all it’s worth”.
Plymouth deserves better Plymouth City Council. And I think anything, literally, ANYTHING would have been better than this. Times may be hard, but as important as it is to be frugal and live within our means, it is also important to not lose sight of the big picture: things will change, things will get better, and when it does, we’ll be wishing we picked up the phone to Mamas and Papas…