If the answer is ‘shop local’, why are we in the EU?

[Schuhart]

I saw this item about Carrick-On-Shannon Chamber of Commerce trying to respond to the economic downturn.

The initiative is fair enough so far as it goes. But there seemed to be a break between the call to train and upskill, and that relating to folk actually spending. I mean, is the real problem for retailers not simply prices being too high. What training do they think is going to make up for that?

The other little aspect to it is the call to ‘shop local’ which many towns have come out with at present. Again, I don’t see how this helps in any substantial way. I mean, if shopping local could power our national economy, why did we join the EU?

Is the key to our immediate problem not simply ‘cut prices’? And, to help that along, should shoppers not ignore the incestuous call to shop local, which can only serve to give a trickle of business to local retailers that might delude them into thinking they don’t need to cut prices.

I mean, all this ‘shop local’ stuff reminds me of the blockage in the property market at present. The main reason for a downturn in demand is just that prices are too high. People will buy houses, groceries and clothes to beat the band once they’re cheap. And retailers won’t need to band together with embarrassing calls to ‘shop local’, as if the only way they could see of keeping their prices at present levels was to rob their neighbours.

[Big Bobo]

Calling for people to shop local is a barrier to free trade. It is completely contradictory for any chamber of commerce members or right wing/pro EU politician to call for people to shop local.

[forest]

the shop local is about supporting local small business and other shops its to stop people driving to larger cities and buying stuff and in particular its to stop people traveling to the UK to buy stuff

The EU is about larger trade

[Big Bobo]

the shop local is about supporting local small business and other shops its to stop people driving to larger cities and buying stuff and in particular its to stop people traveling to the UK to buy stuff

The EU is about larger trade

Pardon me comrade but are are talking out of your arse.

[20000miles]

Shopping locally means you are throwing away any comparative advantage one region has over another.

[drkpower]

Pardon me comrade but are are talking out of your arse.

thats says it all

[PhoenixIreland]

Pardon me comrade but are are talking out of your arse.

Indeed he is, one of the basic principles of the EU is free trade, odd really since the EU as a whole engages in rampent protectionism of the most destructive kind then has the nerve to b1tch to the USA about the "buy American" provisions in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

If one of the major market countries for our goods suddenly had it's govt calling for people to "buy (insert country here)" we'd be going nuts.

This is just like the low CT and the globalization debate, were fine with it as long as it's working for us but we get all shocked and stroppy when the negative competition works as it's supposed to at someone plays us at our own game.

[Horace Horse]

I saw this item about Carrick-On-Shannon Chamber of Commerce trying to respond to the economic downturn.

The initiative is fair enough so far as it goes. But there seemed to be a break between the call to train and upskill, and that relating to folk actually spending. I mean, is the real problem for retailers not simply prices being too high. What training do they think is going to make up for that?

The other little aspect to it is the call to ‘shop local’ which many towns have come out with at present. Again, I don’t see how this helps in any substantial way. I mean, if shopping local could power our national economy, why did we join the EU?

Is the key to our immediate problem not simply ‘cut prices’? And, to help that along, should shoppers not ignore the incestuous call to shop local, which can only serve to give a trickle of business to local retailers that might delude them into thinking they don’t need to cut prices.

I mean, all this ‘shop local’ stuff reminds me of the blockage in the property market at present. The main reason for a downturn in demand is just that prices are too high. People will buy houses, groceries and clothes to beat the band once they’re cheap. And retailers won’t need to band together with embarrassing calls to ‘shop local’, as if the only way they could see of keeping their prices at present levels was to rob their neighbours.

They're damn hypocrites, like all the Irish employers. They'll whine "Shop Local" but they don't "Employ Local".

[Schuhart]

This is just like the low CT and the globalization debate, were fine with it as long as it's working for us but we get all shocked and stroppy when the negative competition works as it's supposed to at someone plays us at our own game.

This is pretty much what I was feeling, and I’m glad of the assurance that my view of the situation is not completely insane or, if it is, that at least I’m not alone.

I mean, as I recounted elsewhere recently, I nearly fell off my chair when RTE broadcast without any critical comment a motor dealer somewhere like Cavan complaining that the tax differential meant that people were buying cars in the North. He was demanding European tax harmonisation as a priority. And here was our national broadcaster lapping it up, apparently forgetting all that stuff about the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base. In case we forget, Ireland

has been the most vehement member state against a CCCTB. The government and many businesses fear the common tax base is a forerunner to a harmonised corporate tax rate throughout the EU that would be higher than Ireland's 12.5% charge. They argue that Ireland would lose substantial tax revenues because many Irish-based subsidiaries would leave if they had to pay more tax.

I mean, if we had tax harmonisation, what exactly does that motor dealer think we would be exporting to pay for the cars he imports to sell? And who would be left with money to buy them?

Shop local? Do we know enough to come in out of the rain?

[Schuhart]

They're damn hypocrites, like all the Irish employers. They'll whine "Shop Local" but they don't "Employ Local".

I'd expect its a one-way street, alright, which I'd guess is why people are happy to go to Enniskillen.