When a local post office closed a couple of years ago, the villagers wailed and moaned, because the accompanying shop would have to shut, too. The post office was indeed just an expensive public subsidy for a crap village shop, so when it did shut, the dismal shop swiftly followed, despite the villagers' attempts to form committees and fundraise to keep it open.
Then a family from Sri Lanka arrived. They bought the lease, reopened the shop. The (generally white and wealthy) villagers patronised them, and the Sri Lankans smiled back. The shop is thriving. It sells fresh, locally sourced meat and fish, and good bread; it offers dry-cleaning, seedlings, fruit and veg. And the family is about to open a little café outside.
It's only one shop in one village, but it is a lesson in what immigrant enterprise can do. The white people just gave up on it when their subsidy was withdrawn. This is the other side of the currently fashionable, anti-immigration bleat from some Labour leadership candidates, and from the Conservatives.
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