THE initiative shown by the Totally Locally campaigners in Christchurch, (‘Spending a fiver could boost business by £8m’ – Daily Echo, April 24) will no doubt be picked up as an excellent idea by other ailing/ quickly becoming deserted high streets in order to try and survive.

But years ago, a bag of sugar or a box of corn flakes cost the same in every grocery shop, and then Mrs Thatcher abolished the prices and incomes board and said that competition among the shops would keep prices keen.

The tragedy that high street shops have to face is the bulk-buying and large discounts demanded by supermarket chains from their suppliers, and until the high street has the lower prices to attract the shopper back, the recession and lack of money in our pockets will prevail, as we are forced to buy the cheapest goods to try and survive.

Good luck to Christchurch and other high streets, let's hope that it works, but the internet, TV shopping and the supermarkets’ cut-price offers will no doubt prevail, and turn our high street shopping centres into ghost towns; Tesco Express, turf accountants and pawnbrokers notwithstanding, of course.

ALAN BURRIDGE, Blandford Road, Upton