Chuka Umunna
: Ed's Google Speech and What It Means for Responsible Capitalism
Mehdi Hasan
: Woolwich Attack: Demonising Muslims Won't Help
Jamie Bartlett
: The Woolwich Attacks Are Not New
Martin Newman
: People of Woolwich Will Defy the Far-Right and Come Together Over Killing of a Soldier Son
B.J. Epstein
: Down With the Matriarchy? What Matriarchy?
As any team competing in the Euro 2012 championships knows, having the right support behind you can make all the difference. But sometimes supporters can be a liability: they make headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The town teams that have emerged from the Portas Review of the high street have had plenty of stadium-style support: there's no shortage of people rooting for them, from celebrities to local punters. But what kind of backing will turn their efforts into lasting change?
As with a good football team, the coaching makes the difference. A good manager helps the team understand what they up against, deploys the right strategy and tactics for the occasion, and makes sure all the players know their roles and play to their strengths.
Will the Portas pilots have the right strategy and tactics? Only if they understand the opposition.
What's been missing in the government's response to the Portas Review and in the support now offered by property and retail professionals is any clarity about what the town teams are up against and how they need to think about the challenge.
There are three big challenges any town team will need to face. First is the changing nature of retail: online and 'multi-channel' shopping will only increase, and will reduce the need for town centre shops.
Second is the reconfiguration of town centre property, with half of all high street and shopping centre leases due for renewal in the next three years. That will hasten the divide between prime retail centres populated by the national chains and the rest.
But third, and most important, is the continuing economic slump which will reduce ordinary people's spending power inexorably as wages fail to keep up with rising living costs. The longer that goes on, the longer any real recovery - the one you and I can feel in our pockets - will take.
That means high streets and town centres have to be ready for a very different reality that is starting to unfold. Will the support on offer help them do the hard thinking they need to?
Let's have a look. The bigwigs of the shopping centre and property industries are offering some free mentoring, and there'll be an opportunity to go to the British Council of Shopping Centres' annual shindig. More importantly, there's access to research from BCSC and the Local Data Company.
In other words, what the Portas pilots will get is an open door to the inner circles of the retail and property industries. This seems to be based on the premise that what they really need is advice on how to do retail and property better: it suggests the crisis facing many of our high streets is one of local expertise rather than structural change.
I'd like to think that the people who are lining up to offer support are people with a track record of bringing life and economic activity back to our high streets. I'd like to think they were people who were in the business of putting money back in local people's pockets and shifting the balance of power between the haves and have-nots.
But the evidence so far suggests the Portas pilots are being gently ushered into the inner sanctums of those whose thinking has helped bring us to the state we're now in. It might be the best way of neutering a new generation of high street activists. But will it stimulate the critical thinking we really need?
Follow Julian Dobson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/juliandobson
What is The High Street? What Do British People Mean When They ...
Shoppers return to high streets in May - FT.com
Mary Portas: high streets destined to 'disappear forever' - Telegraph
The British high street is dead – let's celebrate | Wayne Hemingway ...
Councils in the 1960s an 70s were anti-car and drove people to alter their shopping habits, mainly to out of town supermarkets with free parking! These supermarkets saw the opportunity and expanded to sell white goods, clothing and household goods etc!
Other large multiples followed by creating retail parks and massive covered shopping malls, again, all with free parking! It's obvious that there there was not the affordable space or the parking facilities available within the towns!
Julian is also right about TV Shopping channels and the internet! 80% of my purchase now come from these sources!
Where I live, in West Yorkshire there are dozens of unused mills and other commercial buildings with in easy walking distance of the town centre, that are in an appalling state of repair! These could be levelled and turned in to car parks!
Town centres could be revitalised as social centres, with small independent shops, cafe's and bars, under covered walkways!
But councils would have to change their thinking, reduce business rates and rents. but you have to speculate to accumulate!
Our local town is full of charity shops, pile-em-high shops full of tat and gaping empty spaces where the likes of our local haberdashers, T.J. Hughes, Army and Navy stores and Past Times used to be. Looks like we could be losing Early Learning Centre and Mothercare soon. Local shops are all but extinct because the rents are so high.
I don't think turning some empty shops into art galleries is going to make it all better.
It's very obvious that shoppers will go where there's no charge, to the supermarkets.
At a recent meeting for our parish and community planning process we learned from the council that after all our efforts, what we come up with from the consultation process to which we've volunteered so much time, we be reviewed by them and action determined top down.
The Portas experiment may well have some sound ideas but why time after time is policy being led by some appointed business celebrity.
Our own experience in trying to leverage microenterprise development, something we'd done successfully overseas, is to be elbowed out of the way by those with the right connections and no experience.