bigbadwolf wrote:
I don't doubt for one second that volunteers take enormous personal satisfaction from sacrificing their free time to help towards a cause they feel justifies the volunteer help it requests. I just think, in this instance, that there's more deserving recipients of volunteer work than a commercial enterprise. Not to mention one that includes (by location, if not association) a multi-billion pound conglomorate that will stand to financially gain from this volunteer work.
I was tempted to respond to this with some parody of Marxist language, because the Wolf here has indeed put his claw on what some will see as a problem, that the main long-run financial gainers from improving an area in this way will be the freeholders of the properties, and there's not much we can do about it short of expropriating the rentier class. (Sorry - I lapsed.) However, these long run winners are not the people who are running businesses from these premises - although when a business does own its own freehold, there will be an over lap. (BTW, this does not mean the Tesco Express, which is a franchise operation - in principle I'd be as happy to help the franchisee here develop his business, knowing it would enrich all those people whose pensions are invested in Tesco plc, as I would help any other business whose freeholder was some property company, anonymous but for the possibility of searching Companies House records.)
So when the Wolf writes that he's not trying to be objectionable, let's take him at face value, and recognise that in looking to clarify grey areas here he is, in his peculiarly charming way, making the sort of impure altruistic contribution to society that others might by helping these businesses as Jotbot is hoping for.
