Butcher closure

Sat 7 Oct 2006, 12:53

Igor: I was reinterpreting your views for comic effect. You have accused me before now on this forum of having a sense-of-humour failure and you seem to have the same affliction this morning! Maybe I am just not intelligent enough to grasp your meaning but I think that, with due allowance for artistic licence, my distorted version was not too far away from your assertion that "more and more urban-oriented families move to the countryside bringing their buying tastes and preferences with them". I just don't happen to agree with this. I moved from an urban environment (Oxford) to a rural one (Charlbury) two years ago. When I lived in Oxford I used to get almost all my meat from supermarkets. Since moving to Charlbury I have bought 80-90% of my meat from John Brain. This is because (a) the shop is less than 5 minutes walk from my house and thus convenient for me to get to and (b) I thought it was important to support local traders in order to put some money back into the local community I had become a part of. Other "incomers" I know tend to use local shops too: I know this because I see them with my own eyes. I stand by my previous contention that a town with a population of about 3000 should be able to support one butcher's shop; if it can't then I think that is more likely to be attributable to a lack of trade from the indigenous population than to a shift in the demographic caused by a relatively small influx of new arrivals. I do of course agree that the rural demographics of this country are changing and that so are food purchasing habits. That is why I said that I agreed with you regarding the fact that a move towards a "gourmet"-style butcher's in Charlbury might be a possible way forward. It is therefore wrong for you to say that I deliberately disagree with everything you post on this forum - if you go back and read my post you will see that it clearly contains the words "I am in agreement with Igor". I try to give credit where credit is due but I also reserve the right to criticize views that I disagree with. If I sometimes do that in a facetious or overly robust way that is (a) a reflection of my character and (b) because I thought this was an internet forum (i.e. a place in which lively, robust and sometimes controversial debate was encouraged) and not the correspondence columns of The Times.