A nasty piece of propaganda from the ‘shopping mall’ industry was printed in today’s Lincs Free Press and cannot go unchallenged. Having penned a letter criticising the newspaper for printing it, I thought I’d hedge my bets by repeating it here.

Dear sir,

I write to express my disappointment that you should print propaganda from the commercial property industry, that has nothing good to say about our town – Property page 17 July, ‘High Streets…can’t cope’.

The mix of fact and totally biased opinion, was unremitting negative and suggested every high street was destined to be annihilated by the shopping centres Mr Nick Round makes his living from promoting.

This was neither freedom of speech, nor simple advertising, although I’m sure Mr Round’s company was more than pleased to get the free advertising. Neither, given its position in the newspaper, was it personal opinion and it certainly wasn’t news. I would not be surprised to see almost the same article repeated in every local newspaper across the country, with just the statistics and the name of the town being undermined, changed to suit.