A nation of shopkeepers?

I was up at the crack of a freezing dawn this morning in order to travel over to Accrington for a meeting.

I'd never been there before and it turned out to be a very pleasant journey through many of the market and mill towns of Lancashire with a sprinkling of snow to be glimpsed across the tops of the Pennines.

I managed to sneak out for 20 minutes during the lunch break to take some photos and found many striking buildings in the town centre - some lovely terraced houses, churches, a beautiful library, Mechanics' Institute, Town Hall and a particularly fine Market Hall. Not to mention some fantastic mills and a frozen lake.

So what did I choose to blip? Yes, it's another picture of a bloke walking down a street... which could have been taken almost anywhere in the country.

But I suppose that's one of the reasons I chose this shot - the other reason was that I just really liked it!

Napoleon famously opined that "L'Angleterre est une nation de boutiquiers" but it was apparently Adam Smith who first coined the phrase in his book 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776).

"To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers."

These days we're increasingly a nation of boarded-up town centre shops and out-of-town supermarkets and retail parks. Arguably, our government is still influenced by 'shopkeepers' if we class multinational corporations as 'shops'.

At least the property managers responsible for marketing this shop are making an effort!

By the way, I don't think the guy in the picture thought I was a paparazzo, I'm pretty sure he had no idea I was there - he was probably just wiping his nose on his sleeve!