Local activists set up a stall giving away donated goods, including books, clothes and other items, and some gathered together to sing songs about the wrong-doings of multinational chain Primark, whom is infamous for their use of sweatshop labour in the production of their cheap clothing, which is shipped thousands of miles across the globe in vast container ships.

It quite literally costs the the Earth to make these goods, yet this is not in any way reflected in the retail prices of the goods themselves, as they are marketed as cheap, disposable fashionware.

True Cost Economics this is not.

The opening of this store represents another shift away from supporting local businesses and smaller stores, whom used to thrive in the same area of Cambridge, formerly known as The Kite Area, now supplanted by The Grafton Centre, a rather banal, air conditioned covered shopping mall, with all the usual suspects under one roof, the same chain stores that can now be found in every English (usually red or orange brick paved) high street, regardless of where you travel, along with the same bulk-ordered street furniture outside of them.

Surprisingly, the stall was offered little or no grief by either Primark security (although their jurisdiction I suspect ends at the store's door) or the local police, whom did briefly turn up then went away again, making no issues about the positioning (or existence) of a stall, a sofa and a clothes rail in the middle of a busy street on a Saturday.

A measure of how conditioned some people have become into believing they need to spend money to aquire goods was demonstrated by one person I overheard saying it 'felt like stealing' to take free items from the Free Shop, although they did eventually inspect the clothes rail after some persuasion!

Hopefully during the course of this action, the seeds of dissent may have been planted in the minds of a few people when it comes to the presence of chainstores on our high streets, and what the true cost of all those 'cheap' goods actually is.