John Fisher, of Beverley Gardens, Ashburton, chairman of Ashburton Chamber of Trade and Commerce, writes:

I refer to the letter by Michael Eales, of Torquay, MDA November 18, in which he argues that unless small towns such as Bovey Tracey and Ashburton embrace the supermarket model, they will die.

I would go further. When they do adopt that model, they are systematically killed by the onward rush for market share and growth.

Supermarkets force small shops and businesses out of business overnight, even though they have served their communities down the years.

For there to be a thriving and vibrant community their needs to be a thriving business community. This is and has been the model that has given us our villages, towns and cities, and with it our sense of community.

Supermarkets do not subscribe to that model. they look to take trade out of a town, where they can be unfettered by those constraints, like pavements, small shops and traffic, placed upon traditional business. They are not interested in community, they are only interested in profit, market share and shareholder dividends, and those profits are taken out of the town and in all probability out of the country.

Up and down the length of our land there are virtual ghost towns, brought about by the voracious appetite of the retail marketing phenomenon to devour not only a slice, but the whole cake.

If you value your community, support your town. If you do not, you will have no town, with its quaint shops and cafés, where you can escape the endless rush, where people speak to and know one another, and where once was a great community and community spirit. but now all that is left is a memory of how life once used to be.

And we as a society shall be the poorer.MORE LETTERS IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION