Scores of posters advertising a festive family event put on by independent Brighton shops have been torn down by a mystery saboteur.
The Fiveways Traders Association has organised carol singing, food, drink and gift stalls and a visit from Father Christmas this Friday from 5pm at the shopping parade in Preston Drove.
The organisers have put up about 50 posters around the area in the last week – but every single one has been torn down, with posters for other local enterprises remaining untouched.
Clair Letton of Wigwam Toys said: This is not a big commercial enterprise, this is about your local small business trying to provide a service to the community.
“We do the event because we love our area, want local small business to survive and thrive, so that in the future we have an alternative to the big supermarket the multi national chains and the online retailers. We also appreciate the support that her local customers give us and we want to give something back to the community that supports us.
“Very sadly somebody who lives within our community seems to have a problem with this. we’ve been trying to advertise by putting posters up around the local area, so far over the past week we have put up around 50 posters, nearly all of which have been taken down repeatedly. Other posters for local enterprises have been left untouched.
“We are always careful not to pin or nail them to trees, they are held on with string, the string has been cut and the posters folded up and shoved in local bins.
“It’s an event we have organised for the past three years and have never had this problem before. It’s baffling as I don’t see what anyone has to gain from it.
“The first time they were taken down we were puzzled but replaced them within a few days and didn’t think much of it. The second lot were taken down within 24 hours.
“I decided to put something on Facebook and the response from the community has been amazing, it’s really heartening. But it’s hard enough to do business in this age without people within our own community sabotaging us.”
I’d ask the council.. If they did’nt give the OK for the posters they may have been removed by the street cleaning team..