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"But simple as the tale is there is hardly better historic training for a man than to set him frankly in the streets of a quiet little town like Bury St. Edmunds, and bid him work out the history of the men who lived and died there. In the quiet, quaintly-named streets, in the town-mead and the market-place, in the Lord’s mill beside the stream, in the ruffed and future brasses of its burghers in the church, lies the real life of England and Englishmen, this life of their home and their trade, their ceaseless, sober struggle with oppression, their steady, unwearied battle for self-government. It is just in the pettiness of its details, in its common place incidents, in the want of marked features and striking events, that the real lesson of the whole story lies. For two centuries this little town of Bury St. Edmunds was winning Liberty to itself, and yet we hardly note as we pass from one little step to another little step how surely that Liberty was being won."

John Richard Green (1837-1883), grandfather of British social and cultural history.

Green, J. R., (1876), Stray studies from England and Italy, Macmillan & Co., London p.218-9

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Debenhams in 8 years rent free secret deal

Would you like to live rent free or have your mortgage paid for 8 years by someone else? Even better would you like to set up a new business in Bury St Edmunds and have your rent or mortgage paid for 8 years?

At a public Town meeting held at the Corn Exchange in December 2004, a retired local estate agent revealed that a secret clause in the development agreement between Centros Miller and Debenhams includes a sweetener of 8 years rent free use of the new super store to be constructed upon the Cattle-Market.

In the year to September 3rd 2005 Debenhams produced a profit of £239 million. It therefore seems crazy that while small locally owned business's are being pushed to the wall by the Cattle-Market development and even the Manor House museum is being closed because the Borough refuses to find enough money to maintain it, that Debenhams have to be offered such a massive subsidy.

How can such a situation be fair to other local shops? How does such a subsidy square with the concept of free market economics espoused by both Labour and Conservative Parties? How can local businesses compete equally with Debenhams in the face of such an advantage?

A Centros Miller spokesman, replying to the retired estate agent, stated that this subsidy will be paid by Centros Miller and not by the Borough of St Edmundsbury. However, given the financial details of the development agreement remain secret, even from Borough Councillors; there is no means of independently verifying the financial figures. Moreover, there is no way of independently establishing if Centros Miller's claim is true; that none of the subsidy will be met directly or indirectly by the Borough.

Part of the £80 million that is paying for the Cattle-Market development came from the sale of Borough's council housing stock. It remains unclear if any monies raised from the sale of the Borough's council housing are being used, directly or indirectly, to subsidise the Debenhams superstore. Until all the secret clauses in the cattle-market development agreement are made public, the Borough councillors and Council-Tax payers of Bury St Edmunds will remain ignorant of the financial deals that underpin the development. Without this information it is impossible to ascertain the viability of the development or properly scrutinise the use of public monies in the development process.
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