While they fiddle with Digital ID cards, Britain burns.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I believe that successive British governments have knowingly and consistently set out to screw small business and that has reached a modern-day apex with this government. There seems to me to be a clear belief that these businesses are inconsequential to Britain’s financial future.

Compared to financial services or whatever, perhaps they are.

But to ignore the social impact of small business is to substantially miss their point; at their best, small businesses are about warmth, conversation, passion, care, friendship and quality of life. Humanity.

We coalesce around them to build community, and community is central to our happiness. This is hard to measure, as so many qualitative things are, but a world without a good, owner-run village or corner shop (etcetera) would be a far poorer place.

I was a tiny bit worried about sending something so overtly political.

After all, we are trying to create a new, honest, luxury company, and not a political think tank. But this political concern is at the root of what we’re doing because we’re trying to change things, so I suppose I need to shout. And frankly, beyond greenwashing or whatever-washing, more companies need to be political because these things affect us in deep, important ways.

We really do have to be the change that we want.

Anyway, we had so many positive replies to that newsletter that I know we are really onto something. I wrote about supermarkets and how they screw everyone in their supply chain and in so doing, just about keep prices down and shareholder returns up. That’s one way of doing business and it’s completely fair enough, we all use supermarkets and some of them are brilliant.

But. You know, that’s not the whole picture, is it?

One reply, from one of our great supporters, said various things but I particularly enjoyed this sentence* ‘the insidious behaviour/impact of private equity on the restaurant sector cannot be underestimated’. And this is so true. So, just a gentle reminder, should you be lucky enough to be able to eat in restaurants from time to time, do occasionally avoid chains and find somewhere run by a family or whatever. It really does make a difference.

Books.

Thanks so much for all of your purchases of books in the last few weeks. We had our highest number of orders ever on the night that we launched the book and record shop, which was thrilling. As I explained, this is a genuine attempt to build community (see above), by simply recommending things that we love and believe in, even if we can barely make any profit.

Actually, with postage we often make a loss, but that genuinely doesn’t matter. It just feels great to be able to offer you a place of discovery and very few things enrich our lives more than books. So, keep on coming to us, please. We’ll add new books soon.

Fun.

We’re racing towards our first birthday. It’s been an amazing year. When we launched, we wrote a G / H manifesto, to act as a sort of lodestar. On that we wrote…

WE WILL HAVE FUN. WHEN STOPS BEING FUN, WE STOP.

And so far, it has been just that. FUN!

This is firstly because we’ve kept our expectations and ambitions modest, so stress hasn’t been a factor. This can’t be underestimated.

And secondly, creating beautiful things, meeting makers and craftspeople, working with lovely photographers, larking around in our studio; all that’s been great.

Thirdly, we all get on so well that every day is life-affirming.

That’s enough of me for today.

With all of my best wishes and thanks for reading this.

Charlie

*paraphrase