Shes on my list with that Simon Thurley prig, in her recent series “Mary Portas Queen of Charity Shops” she is given one job that as far as im concerned is not really in her range, she knows allot about making retail business’s profitable for sure, but attempting to turn charity shops into commercial shops that make more money, how little she understands that there are people who are genuinely poor who buy stuff from these shops. Theyre about finding a bargain not about turning them into fashion boutiques for the middle class, What shes doing is taking her monetarist based retail knowledge and applying it to whatever she lays her hands on without reference to what charity shops are actually about. Charity shops are a niche in themselves, trying to convert them into something else will eliminate them as a sector, this a criminal idea, for they do serve a genuine function.

Complaining about what people are prepared to donate, from the perspective of a rich middle class business tycoon perspective, who hasn’t had to scrimp and save for anything I doubt since the 1970’s, moaning about a pair of boxed brandy glasses as a donation, to me seems typical of are throwaway culture the retailers have encouraged, where almost everything is perceived as rubbish if its less than a year old. Anyway lets face it, she belongs to that same class of retail industrialists, who’ve been the ones responsible for persuading us to buy all this crap we dont need for years in the first place, filling our homes with all those retailers overpromoted consumerism gunk, and now she objects to receiving the crap shes been dishing out … back ? whens its returned on her doorstep years later.

she doesnt help herself with her arrogant pushy, know it all demeanour, and comments like :

“I laugh that theyre 80 year olds” ” god love em”

Also allot of her ego is staked in making a temporary success of her endeavours in this area so she can look good on tv before everything sinks back to its norm after the show is over.

Not that she herself isn’t an aged woman living in a delusion about her own perpetual youth, who is so desperate as to have to do programs where she attempts to boss around the decent charity working pensioners of this country, like there her own private army, to create what ? another slightly crappy high street brand to compete with al the other brands on the street, that can source new goods from china cheaper practically cheaper than they can be sold second hand in the uk charity shops ?

I think this series for all concerned the charity and her is a mistaken partnership, highlighting how rotten and cynical retail is in general, and will end up being the series that kills her career and highlights how shes losing it herself.