Shops axed...so we're locals' lifeline
When the last shop in a neighbourhood shuts, the people who live there can wait for the market to come back or open one themselves. In the East End of Glasgow this autumn, they did not wait.
Most recent pieces
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Walking and cycling to school after lockdown
Lockdown has broken the school-run routine. That makes it a rare chance to change how children get to school.
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Social enterprise and wellbeing in communities
Public health reform says health is made in communities. Much of that work is already done by small local enterprises.
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Social enterprise case studies
Scotland has about 5,600 social enterprises. Most are small and local, and they come in more shapes than the word suggests. A few examples, grouped by the way they work.
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Community food enterprises
Food is one of the fastest growing fields of social enterprise in Scotland. Much of it began as a response to hunger, and the best of it is trying to become something more lasting than a food bank.
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Community bonds and share offers
A new £100,000 bond for small social enterprise loans is a good moment to set out how community finance works, and what it does not protect.
What Closemouth covers
Dated notes on community shops, food projects, co-operatives, community finance and the public decisions around them in Scotland. Each piece describes things as they stood on the date it carries.
Where most readers start
- True story of man behind The CorriesCulture and books,
- Shops axed...so we're locals' lifelineCommunity enterprise,
- The Code of Social Enterprise in ScotlandCommunity enterprise,
- The case for cuts: why the austerity argument held onPublic services and policy,
- Community food enterprisesCommunity enterprise,
Pick a subject
Ventures a place owns, runs or pays into for its own sake.
The Code of Social Enterprise in Scotland
In 2002 the UK government published a definition of social enterprise as part of a Department of Trade and Industry strategy: a business with mainly social objectives, whose surpluses are reinvested in that purpose rather than paid out to maximise returns for owners. Scotland adopted the same wording.
The shop tab, the notebook and the credit line that refills
A village shop that lets regulars run a tab until payday, in a Scottish community-owned store or in the notebook behind a Romanian village counter, lends on trust and closes the tab when it is paid. A credit line such as Avinto reopens instead, which makes its limit an offer to lend and never a balance.
Social enterprise and wellbeing in communities
Scotland’s public health reform starts from a simple observation: most of what makes people healthy or ill happens outside the NHS. The six public health priorities agreed by the Scottish Government and COSLA in June 2018 include good mental wellbeing and healthy, safe places and communities.
Council and parliament decisions that shape local services.
The Italian region where co-ops produce a third of its GDP
Emilia-Romagna, the region of northern Italy around Bologna with nearly 4.5 million people, is where co-operators elsewhere look when they want proof that co-operatives can be more than a niche. An article by John Duda in the American magazine YES!, published this month and widely shared since, makes the case at its strongest: about two in three inhabitants belong to a co-op, and co-operatives produce around 30 per cent of the region’s GDP.
The case for cuts: why the austerity argument held on
Paul Krugman, the Nobel-winning economist who writes a column for the New York Times, has published a long essay in the Guardian this week under a headline calling the case for cuts a lie. His argument is that the doctrine behind the turn to austerity in 2010 has been abandoned almost everywhere in the rich world except Britain, where both main parties are still campaigning on it.
Five Glasgow advice offices to close
Five of Glasgow’s eight Citizens Advice Bureaux are due to close on 31 March. Citizens Advice Scotland announced this week that the bureaux in Easterhouse, Bridgeton, Parkhead, Pollok and Castlemilk will shut with the loss of 42 jobs unless new funding is agreed. If they go, the service in Scotland’s largest city will be down to Glasgow Central, Drumchapel and Maryhill.
Profiles and reviews from Scottish music and writing.
Book review: Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey
Darren McGarvey grew up in Pollok, on the south-western edge of Glasgow, and became known first as a rapper under the name Loki and then as a columnist and broadcaster. Poverty Safari, out from Luath Press this week, is his first book. Its subtitle promises to explain the anger of Britain’s underclass.
True story of man behind The Corries
When Robbie Renwick won the 200 metres freestyle for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi last October, the tune played as he stood on the podium was Flower of Scotland. It was the first time a Scottish team had used it for that purpose.
About Closemouth
Closemouth is about the businesses that people in Scotland run for the good of the place they live in. That covers the village shop taken on by its customers after the owner retired, the café that trains young people behind its counter, the co-operative whose customers are also its owners, and the trust that holds a building or a patch of land for a whole town. Each piece explains how one of these works, what keeps it going and where it tends to struggle, as matters stood on the date printed at its head.
Community enterprise has the practical pieces: community shops, food projects, the voluntary code that set out what a social enterprise is, raising capital through community shares and bonds, and the tab a village shop lets regulars run until payday. Public services and policy follows the decisions made in councils and parliaments that shape this work, from funding for free advice services to the long argument over austerity. Culture and books is the shortest shelf, with a portrait of one half of The Corries and a review of a book on poverty by an author who grew up in it.
The earliest piece is from 2010, and the archive lists every one of them by date. Anyone starting or financing a social enterprise in Scotland today will find the national support bodies listed on the about page.