Why local should still be lekker

A few weeks back, Himself and I went into town – Dublin – for the first time since lockdown began.

The shops deemed non-essential were allowed to reopen – bookshops, record stores and the like – and we wanted to show our support.

He won’t admit it, but my bloke is a bit of a shopaholic, and lockdown meant he’d been buying online a lot more. I know because delivery men kept arriving.

I, meanwhile, ordered some (essential!) eyeliner, just not from Amazon – only from Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world.

Still, that Amazon smile-tick logo came through the door several times. I gritted my teeth. I longed for real shops; I longed to put our money back in the pockets of real people.

Wandering through the book store that day I lost track of my fella, but later I saw him talking to someone, presumably a bookseller.

I went over with my potential purchases and nodded hello. “This is Jennie,” said Himself.

“We thought we’d come into town, spend a bit of money, support local businesses, you know…” We exchanged a few niceties, and then left.

Over coffee, I learned I’d been chatting to the Irish minister for finance, Paschal Donohoe, also out book browsing.

Thank God I didn’t hand him my books to ring up! I thought about this again this week – about money, where we spend it – when the boss of Amazon, Bezos, became the equivalent of the 53rd biggest economy in the world – adding some $13 billion (about R216 billion) to his personal wealth in just one day.

He’s now worth $189 billion, bigger than the GDPs of Costa Rica, Croatia and the Ivory Coast – combined! He’s bigger than Nike; bigger than McDonald’s.

He’s richer than any church or any charitable foundation.  He’s richer than any education institute. He could buy Elon Musk four times over, and still have change.

Jeff is $71-billion dollars richer than second-placed Bill Gates. That’s the GDP of Luxembourg.

However, Bill has given $50 billion to charity. Jeff has given two.

For lockdown, Jeff donated $100 million to US food banks – about 0.05% of his moolah. Yet, thanks to lockdown, Bezos has pocketed $74-billion this year alone.

This then is why Donohoe and his global counterparts must demand a pandemic windfall tax.

This is why, more than ever, we must support local shops.

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