It’s great to see streets busy again
WHISPER it quietly, but there are signs to suggest Derby city centre seems to be getting back to its old vibrant self after more than two years of utter turmoil.
While some of you may baulk at this suggestion it is one I am prepared to stick by and comes from my own personal experiences of being there during the week.
The sun shining, as it has done more recently, encourages folk to step outside at lunchtime and take in the summer warmth and the shops appear to be getting busier.
I am the first to admit I am no retail analyst but I would wager – and I certainly hope – that footfall is increasing in the stores and eateries of Derby.
On top of that, during my jaunts around the city centre most lunchtimes during the week, there are definitely more smiles on people’s faces and theres is more social activity in the coffee shops and takeaways than during the past few months.
And it is a sight which is encouraging to witness.
Just this week we have reported how fashion brand Jack Wills is returning to the city to open a shop in the Derbion Centre and further afield, near Uttoxeter, JCB has announced it is taking on 200 new agency workers to bolster its already 8,000-strong workforce.
Add to this the huge news that
There are definitely more smiles on people’s faces and there is more social activity in the coffee shops and takeaways.
Dave Clowes has stepped in to hopefully save the Rams from going out of business and move forwards rather than backwards and there genuinely does appear to be a feelgood factor back in Derby.
Just this week, as I walked down East Street one lunchtime, I spotted two teenage lads, both wearing Derby County shirts and clutching bags from the club shop laughing and joking with each other.
One of my Nottingham Forestsupporting
friends (and I’m sorry for swearing there) even spoke to me in length this week about how pleased he is that his closest rivals appear to be getting at least back on an even keel after the anxious past year.
Like some Red Dogs he appears to have taken a more pragmatic approach that while wanting to finish above the Rams in whatever leagues the clubs will appear in, rather than mock and taunt about being two divisions apart this coming season, he would rather have his rivals thriving and active, as opposed to struggling and dormant.
Every day, newspapers and websites such as ours are barracked with criticisms that we “only cover bad news” and while, in my everyday job as the court reporter, I cannot sugar the pill that what I generally write is about the horrors of the criminality which take place in our county and beyond, I would argue that tarring us with that brush is more than a little unfair.
After all, if people don’t want to read about it, we wouldn’t cover it. But for every tale of a drug dealer being banged up for peddling filth on the streets, there is one about the firm creating jobs.