More and more department stores are acting as the shop window for a range of retailers now, using space more efficiently to recreate the feel of the local market, creating new market opportunities for the small and the niche.
If the tax loop holes that allow tax avoidance were shut down, it would go some way to sorting out our finances, would it not?
Shopping in the future can become an experience where conventional retailers can complement the success of online retailing. Government needs to work in partnership with the sector to help make this a reality.
I don't like being pigeon-holed.
My father was a black, working-class man who arrived here with no money in his pocket from Nigeria; my mum came from more of a middle-class background, whose father had prosecuted the Nazis at Nuremberg.
I spent many hours slaving away, day and night, bleary eyed, on multi-million pound takeovers, mergers and acquisitions, and the rest. It could sound glamorous (especially when it involved overseas travel) but often it wasn't partly because, as a lawyer, you were not the one calling the shots.
