Local business in Private Eye

There is an interesting article in this week's Private Eye, the national satirical and investigative magazine edited by Ian Hislop, featuring a local business. The article says:

Silly Sausages

Canal chiefs who did nothing about Starbucks' incursion on the canal information centre for years until local planners took action (see last Eye) were in more of a hurry to give a tiny independent butcher and grocer's shop the heave- ho from the canal bank at Lock 15 of the Audlem flight in Shropshire (sic) last month.

The Canal and River Trust, formerly British Waterways, is the landlord for both properties.

George's Pork and Poultry supplies boaters and locals alike with locally produced sausages, vegetables and eggs, from a small 19th-century brick hut which Danny George rented from the old British Waterways in 2010.

However, since the handover to the charity, the Canal and River Trust's enthusiastic legal department has taken exception to temporary structures erected next to the hut (a gazebo shade, already removed with the onset of winter, and a wooden storage shed) and wrote threatening Mr George with a month's notice on the property.

The Canal and River Trust considers the shed and gazebo a blot on the landscape, even though dozens of boating websites feature the shop as a picturesque asset. After a petition to save the shop attracted hundreds of signatures, the charity has now postponed eviction and promised to "endeavour to resolve this issue amicably". Threatening eviction on short notice is an unusual approach to being "amicable".

Audlem Online adds: The webteam must declare an interest as two of the team have a vegetable plot at Lock 15 – see foreground of top photo.

This article is from our news archive. As a result pictures or videos originally associated with it may have been removed and some of the content may no longer be accurate or relevant.