Thursday 2 August 2012

How to Kill a Market Pt2 - A glimmer of hope?

Firstly a big thank you to all the messages of support over the past few days following my last entry, it's really appreciated! I now find out I'm not alone as being affected by the olympics, and many small artisans businesses are struggling when we were told that we would be thriving.

However I've got a small glimmer of hope this morning as some of the press, (such as greenwich-traders-win-concession-over-their-great-barrier-grief ), are reporting that LOCOG are backing down and are going to remove 'some' barriers. I've just seen a tweet from the official Greenwich Market feed 'Shop Greenwich' that the barriers are being taken down. Phew, but I'm still crossing my fingers as it may not help with some of the over-zealous officals and wardens. It's going to be 'seeing is believing' for me when I'm back this Saturday.

I think this is both thanks to the managers and staff at the market, who were passionate in harrasing LOCOG to save the market from disaster, as well as all the people who've been tweeting, blogging, phoning, complaining and generally making pests of themselves to embarress LOCOG into action. It's incrediably sad that it was necessary to do this in the first place, and that they didn't go ahead with their original plan to make the shops and stalls of Greenwich a vital part of their plan to help everything run smoothly. I notice in other reports complaints about long queues at the venues for food and drink, (doubtless overpriced) and how so much of the official merchandise is imported. not-made-in-britain-how-the-olympics-got-outsourced-overseas Last week at the market I had a choice, with no queuing, of Chicken Katsu curry, or Portuguase cod, black olive and potato stew, and even roast beef dinner with yorkshire pud, before chatting with neighbouring stalls who makes their own leather belts, a silversmith, dress designer, potter.... shall I go on? And they all make it in the UK.

1 comment:

  1. *fingers crossed*

    I'm sorry your first wekend turned out to be so grim - here's hoping they can find a better balance.

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