Stop this slaughter of our small shops

In the stretch of shops between Ledbury Road and Chepstow Road, up to a quarter of retail spaces are all shuttered and boarded, with sad signs in the windows thanking their customers (that said, a Burberry, a Bonpoint and a Ralph Lauren are still trading in W11's Gucci Gulch).

One pale owner of a local bijou deli explained. Shopkeepers have to pay rent upfront for every quarter, rather than monthly; there is no mechanism to negotiate rents down and no appetite on the part of local government to tamp down the Rachmanesque demands of landlords.

"We spent 10 months negotiating our lease via our landlord's agent, a man determined to drive as many businesses to the wall as possible," he said. "And it still went up from £75k last year to £87k in 2009."

I know that the job losses when plasticky high street chains go under are much higher, but I can't help feeling this is wrong, and avoidable. Every time an independent little shop selling spelt hot cross buns or superfood salad goes belly-up is a dagger to my heart.

* So now to the most vexed question of the Aga. No, not whether they're eco-friendly or not. Whether it's time to switch off, or leave on, now daffodils are here. As I suspect that last week we had both our spring and our summer together, I am keeping my home fires burning.

* What's all this I read about my favourite arts programme - Newsnight Review - moving to Glasgow? Eh! Why? All the shows, exhibitions, plays, installations, happenings, blah blah, take place in the capital. And all the guests who opine in their prodigiously pretentious way live within the M25, from Tony Parsons to Julie Myerson by way of Tom Paulin. There are dark mutterings that the decision has been taken to indulge one of the presenters, the incomparable Kirsty Wark, whose TV company and family are based in Glasgow. I can't believe that. The corporation is always fighting accusations of London-centrism. So, rather than accept that this just is the capital of culture, it prefers to shell out for a weekly caravanserai of the chattering classes to travel to Glasgow and back to talk about events taking place in London. Trebles all round!