possibly because the country is in a recession caused by leaving the largest trade block on earth and attempting to sell food and only food to the worlds largest food producers
Why would I drive 20 miles, spend time trying to find a space, pay ££ for that space. Stand in queues then have to humph my packages back to the car before driving home? If I can’t buy it online I’m not buying it. Only shop I go to is the forecourt and even then I use pay at pump
For as long as it costs more to shop in person it will keep happening.
The town I live in has fuck all in the way of shops I will actually use. So it’s 8 quid on the train to the next city. Usually double or triple as the Mrs or bairn will likely tag along.
So we’ve got a 24 quid head start for online. Then there’s the convenience of shopping online from my sofa. I’ll know if what I want is in stock in my size.
Then there’s the time thing. I can spend all day walking round shops hoping to find what I need, wait on trains, travel on trains etc. Or I can spend 30 mins online and use the money I saved from not getting the train to get faster shipping.
Town centres are at serious risk of being a desolate wasteland of bookies and our national sausage roll vendor.
Massive energy price increases, no government support, massive inflation, recession, people with less money. Hardly surprising.
Good
This is a change that’s going to happen, we are best served embracing it and repurposing this prime land for alternative uses while the markets for such goods shift to online services
Town centres have long been in decline – since at least the financial services crash – and at this point there is little hope of saving them.
After years of Tory austerity local councils barely have the skills and resources to help (though the ones I’ve interacted with have been fairly clueless) and are themselves dependent on absurd parking fees to top up their own income.
Covid has sped up the move to online, just like it has with other experiences. The government ’plans’ to introduce an online sales tax on big retailers such as Amazon with questionable business practices and complex tax avoidance methods never materialised, meanwhile many commercial landlords keep rents up under the delusion that it’s still the 1990’s. Business Rates have long been in need of reform and frankly are no longer fit for purpose. The Tories forever keep pushing for relaxation of planning laws to make it easier to convert commercial buildings into flats, so there is little incentive for landlords to revalue their portfolios.
The only thing that is going to save town centres now is a switch to experiences – a mix of shopping and dining with a scattering of big retailers mixed with local independent shops and other experience based activities (escape rooms, galleries etc.) Sensible rents achieved on by existing commercial properties being publicly owned or by community based charities, reduced parking fees and scrapping of the current Business Rates.
If covid didn’t kill your business then these price hikes will.
If we’re talking clothes shopping, I haven’t done it in years because nowhere carries my size. They’d started putting the Tall, Plus, Maternity, Petite stuff online only years ago so this makes no difference to me.
Bras – couldn’t buy one locally before my reduction and it was 65 miles to the nearest bricks and mortar to try one on. Just ended up buying the same model over and over in different colours. Brastop or Curvy Kate for me
Clothes – can’t buy extra-long stuff in store any more. Dorothy Perkins Tall, Topshop Tall, Long Tall Sally etc all went bust and are online only brands now. Can’t try them on any more so no brand loyalty
Shoes – actually, I can still buy shoes. But my other half can’t because he needs the top size, which is usually online only or you have to order it into the store.
So between the pair of us we pretty much only buy work shoes and underwear in the shops. Everything else is online because the stores have been pushing it that way for so long.
This is what people have voted for. Tories and Brexit, this is what people wanted. 2nd unelected Tory PM in a row, no mandate, and no plan.
It is covid or Putin, it is this rabble in government. Truss pissed away £70b in a month, and what? Nothing, no repercussion. Rishi thinks keeping his head down will absolve them come the next GE.
If Starmer wasn’t as weak as piss Rishi probably wouldn’t get away with it. But Rishi will and we’ll have another 4 years of getting fucked by them.
Nothing will change until the opposition party says what we all now know is needed to fix it, that is to get on our knees and rejoin the single market. Not even the EU proper, just actual free trade and movement of people. That will boost us out of recession and hopefully level off inflation.
In the mean time my local high street is looking more and more like an apocalyptic hell scape. Every other shop is now closed. Out of the 50% left, 20% of those are charity shops. Bookies and chain coffee shops will be all that is left my Easter.
Sitting at home watching TV, playing video games and working remotely waiting for endless packages to be delivered is a redditors wet dream.
Recession, and the boe deciding the best way to combat fuel inflation is to put up interest rates
What is most disappointing is that no other country in the world is suffering any affects of closing their economies down for 2 years because of a kneejerk reaction to a virus, or the energy price rises caused by Europe depending on Russian gas and the subsequent changes in global prices when they decide that they have to quickly source it from elsewhere. Brexum
And its a good job that the taxpayer is here to fund the BBC to highlight that
Brexit; Recession; Increased council fees, energy fees, salary levels etc. To keep up the citizen’s high level expectation, expense of civic amenities goes up, and someone has to pay or fold up. I have seen many shops closing down just during the last quarter of last year.
The town centre where I live has been declining for years now. It’s not a massive area, the town centre, but we used to have a variety of shops. Toy shops, shoe shops, clothes shops, electrical and repair shops, an award-winning traditional bakery, two affordable supermarkets, and more.
These shops have gradually disappeared over the years, only to be replaced with charity shops and coffee shops. Some places have closed down, had their spaces boarded up, then been left to rot because there’s nothing to replace them with.
We have one main supermarket now, but the prices are so expensive and the quality is questionable. They don’t care, though, because there’s no competition, nowhere else for the local people to go.
Honestly, you’re lucky now if you can find a brand new pair of knickers.
And we’re gonna see many more because there’s no point spending your money anymore since it’s constantly tanking every week, just better to hold onto it at this point than go for a night out when everything has doubled
To quote a great poet from Coventry.
“This town, is coming like a ghost town”
Further consolidates the market wealth out of Britain to US global corps like Amazon. All proceeding according to plan.
The council: “we need to make the town centre as inconvenient and unpleasant as possible by banning cars, removing parking spaces, concreting over public spaces, replacing streets of small local shops with a gigantic mall of national brands, making it inconvenient to throw rubbish away and killing off all the local pubs with restrictive licensing!”
Also the council: “why is our town centre a barren wasteland of bookies and Greggs, peopled only by druggies, beggars, and the few unlucky souls who need to go to a physical bank branch!? Nobody could ever have predicted this!”
After Covid expected.
Rentals need to drop or steady., as inflation has soared
Er, yeah, duh?
But also, online shopping and going out to the shops both suck in terms of ‘enjoyable experiences’. One involves creepy men coming to your door, and the other involves more stress and pressure from sales assistants and whiney kids 🙂
Local councils overcharge for parking and charge extortionate business rates, and so the town centre dies.
Central government forces us out of the EU without a second thought of the costs and so now we can’t afford anything.
Costs me £5 to get to Birmingham city centre to buy things I can get cheaper online and brought to my door.
It used to be that retail stores were filled with experts (think electricals) which made it worth the trip but now it’s minimum wage workers on commission instead.
Capitalism complains far too much when the free market does what it’s designed to do. People don’t want to buy things in retail stores, so they’re closing. It’s not a surprise.
I can definitely attest to that. Alot of the shops here on my local high street in the South West have been changing hands constantly
Nothing to worry about. This is an acceleration of the transfer to online shopping from bricks and mortar outlets . The transition may well be painful for many retailers. This is the future whether we like it or not. If you buy everything from Amazon what else do you expect?
Everything’s overpriced in ‘local’ shops anyway. Almost all the produce is available online and usually cheaper. I don’t need to leave the house! Got a book store in my town and one book was £4 more than Amazon, why buy local what am I getting that’s extra?
Another example of how were being robbed blind by inflation.
What?! You mean people don’t want to spend ~30 minutes driving through the traffic to get into town, then pay £5 to park, £6 for a coffee and £150 for a couple of bits of shopping? Shocker!
Wonder if closing down the economy for a year has anything to do with the big jump……
A sad, sad byproduct of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Right?!
Oh well what a fucking surprise nobody saw that coming after all the lockdowns
Town center shop:
Pays local rates
Pays electricity
Pays for heating
Pays for a website
Pays staff above min wage
Pays tax
Staff pay for parking in town
Customers pay for parking in town
Amazon
Pays for website
Pays min wage or even contracts to warehouse workers and delivery drivers
Pays the absolute minimum for lighting and heating for warehouse
Pays almost no tax
Pays almost no local rates
Pays almost nothing for the land
It’s hard to imagine how a normal shop that plays by the rules or is ethical at all is going to compete with this business model.
I may be wrong with some of these details but each one of them is a significant advantage that shouldn’t be afforded to Amazon and we could repeat this with a number of other companies.
Not been to the town centre for over a year at this point. There’s nothing worth going for.
Actually, this reminds me of the local paper putting out an article about the high street not existing by 2050. I replied saying “don’t care, I’ll be dead by then”. My comment was in the paper next day >:(
Costs going up but wages not going up (for years in the UK public sector not just post Brexit or pandemic) means finally have less money to spend in general. Don’t want to give normal people more money? Don’t complain when everything closes.
If only they taxed the corporations and super wealthy.
I love in Newport, South Wales, the third city in a line within 70 miles and only a bridge away from Bristol, the closest English city so things already weren’t great here as all money goes to the capitol, Cardiff.
Well our “city” has almost nothing in it now, there is an Iceland at the bottom of the hill from my house and we go in there now and again, Greggs, weather spoons a dead market. That’s literally it. Most shop fronts are empty. Oh we do have a JD sports and many, many estate agents and kebab shops.
Why would I bother to go there when all I get is drunks, druggies and the other 300 rejects hassling me for money, some of them even have stories but they all seem to revolve around getting enough money for a bus home.
Because its much much easier to order online.
Who wants the hassle of going into town or whatever paying finding somewhere to park wandering around ect….
When I can just sit back watch YouTube and shop to my hearts content
37 comments
possibly because the country is in a recession caused by leaving the largest trade block on earth and attempting to sell food and only food to the worlds largest food producers
Why would I drive 20 miles, spend time trying to find a space, pay ££ for that space. Stand in queues then have to humph my packages back to the car before driving home? If I can’t buy it online I’m not buying it. Only shop I go to is the forecourt and even then I use pay at pump
For as long as it costs more to shop in person it will keep happening.
The town I live in has fuck all in the way of shops I will actually use. So it’s 8 quid on the train to the next city. Usually double or triple as the Mrs or bairn will likely tag along.
So we’ve got a 24 quid head start for online. Then there’s the convenience of shopping online from my sofa. I’ll know if what I want is in stock in my size.
Then there’s the time thing. I can spend all day walking round shops hoping to find what I need, wait on trains, travel on trains etc. Or I can spend 30 mins online and use the money I saved from not getting the train to get faster shipping.
Town centres are at serious risk of being a desolate wasteland of bookies and our national sausage roll vendor.
Massive energy price increases, no government support, massive inflation, recession, people with less money. Hardly surprising.
Good
This is a change that’s going to happen, we are best served embracing it and repurposing this prime land for alternative uses while the markets for such goods shift to online services
Town centres have long been in decline – since at least the financial services crash – and at this point there is little hope of saving them.
After years of Tory austerity local councils barely have the skills and resources to help (though the ones I’ve interacted with have been fairly clueless) and are themselves dependent on absurd parking fees to top up their own income.
Covid has sped up the move to online, just like it has with other experiences. The government ’plans’ to introduce an online sales tax on big retailers such as Amazon with questionable business practices and complex tax avoidance methods never materialised, meanwhile many commercial landlords keep rents up under the delusion that it’s still the 1990’s. Business Rates have long been in need of reform and frankly are no longer fit for purpose. The Tories forever keep pushing for relaxation of planning laws to make it easier to convert commercial buildings into flats, so there is little incentive for landlords to revalue their portfolios.
The only thing that is going to save town centres now is a switch to experiences – a mix of shopping and dining with a scattering of big retailers mixed with local independent shops and other experience based activities (escape rooms, galleries etc.) Sensible rents achieved on by existing commercial properties being publicly owned or by community based charities, reduced parking fees and scrapping of the current Business Rates.
If covid didn’t kill your business then these price hikes will.
If we’re talking clothes shopping, I haven’t done it in years because nowhere carries my size. They’d started putting the Tall, Plus, Maternity, Petite stuff online only years ago so this makes no difference to me.
Bras – couldn’t buy one locally before my reduction and it was 65 miles to the nearest bricks and mortar to try one on. Just ended up buying the same model over and over in different colours. Brastop or Curvy Kate for me
Clothes – can’t buy extra-long stuff in store any more. Dorothy Perkins Tall, Topshop Tall, Long Tall Sally etc all went bust and are online only brands now. Can’t try them on any more so no brand loyalty
Shoes – actually, I can still buy shoes. But my other half can’t because he needs the top size, which is usually online only or you have to order it into the store.
So between the pair of us we pretty much only buy work shoes and underwear in the shops. Everything else is online because the stores have been pushing it that way for so long.
This is what people have voted for. Tories and Brexit, this is what people wanted. 2nd unelected Tory PM in a row, no mandate, and no plan.
It is covid or Putin, it is this rabble in government. Truss pissed away £70b in a month, and what? Nothing, no repercussion. Rishi thinks keeping his head down will absolve them come the next GE.
If Starmer wasn’t as weak as piss Rishi probably wouldn’t get away with it. But Rishi will and we’ll have another 4 years of getting fucked by them.
Nothing will change until the opposition party says what we all now know is needed to fix it, that is to get on our knees and rejoin the single market. Not even the EU proper, just actual free trade and movement of people. That will boost us out of recession and hopefully level off inflation.
In the mean time my local high street is looking more and more like an apocalyptic hell scape. Every other shop is now closed. Out of the 50% left, 20% of those are charity shops. Bookies and chain coffee shops will be all that is left my Easter.
Sitting at home watching TV, playing video games and working remotely waiting for endless packages to be delivered is a redditors wet dream.
Recession, and the boe deciding the best way to combat fuel inflation is to put up interest rates
Tip of the iceberg isn’t it? https://www.consultancy.uk/news/amp/32713/zombie-companies-threaten-to-cause-new-financial-meltdown
What is most disappointing is that no other country in the world is suffering any affects of closing their economies down for 2 years because of a kneejerk reaction to a virus, or the energy price rises caused by Europe depending on Russian gas and the subsequent changes in global prices when they decide that they have to quickly source it from elsewhere. Brexum
And its a good job that the taxpayer is here to fund the BBC to highlight that
Brexit; Recession; Increased council fees, energy fees, salary levels etc. To keep up the citizen’s high level expectation, expense of civic amenities goes up, and someone has to pay or fold up. I have seen many shops closing down just during the last quarter of last year.
The town centre where I live has been declining for years now. It’s not a massive area, the town centre, but we used to have a variety of shops. Toy shops, shoe shops, clothes shops, electrical and repair shops, an award-winning traditional bakery, two affordable supermarkets, and more.
These shops have gradually disappeared over the years, only to be replaced with charity shops and coffee shops. Some places have closed down, had their spaces boarded up, then been left to rot because there’s nothing to replace them with.
We have one main supermarket now, but the prices are so expensive and the quality is questionable. They don’t care, though, because there’s no competition, nowhere else for the local people to go.
Honestly, you’re lucky now if you can find a brand new pair of knickers.
And we’re gonna see many more because there’s no point spending your money anymore since it’s constantly tanking every week, just better to hold onto it at this point than go for a night out when everything has doubled
To quote a great poet from Coventry.
“This town, is coming like a ghost town”
Further consolidates the market wealth out of Britain to US global corps like Amazon. All proceeding according to plan.
The council: “we need to make the town centre as inconvenient and unpleasant as possible by banning cars, removing parking spaces, concreting over public spaces, replacing streets of small local shops with a gigantic mall of national brands, making it inconvenient to throw rubbish away and killing off all the local pubs with restrictive licensing!”
Also the council: “why is our town centre a barren wasteland of bookies and Greggs, peopled only by druggies, beggars, and the few unlucky souls who need to go to a physical bank branch!? Nobody could ever have predicted this!”
After Covid expected.
Rentals need to drop or steady., as inflation has soared
Er, yeah, duh?
But also, online shopping and going out to the shops both suck in terms of ‘enjoyable experiences’. One involves creepy men coming to your door, and the other involves more stress and pressure from sales assistants and whiney kids 🙂
Local councils overcharge for parking and charge extortionate business rates, and so the town centre dies.
Central government forces us out of the EU without a second thought of the costs and so now we can’t afford anything.
Costs me £5 to get to Birmingham city centre to buy things I can get cheaper online and brought to my door.
It used to be that retail stores were filled with experts (think electricals) which made it worth the trip but now it’s minimum wage workers on commission instead.
Capitalism complains far too much when the free market does what it’s designed to do. People don’t want to buy things in retail stores, so they’re closing. It’s not a surprise.
I can definitely attest to that. Alot of the shops here on my local high street in the South West have been changing hands constantly
Nothing to worry about. This is an acceleration of the transfer to online shopping from bricks and mortar outlets . The transition may well be painful for many retailers. This is the future whether we like it or not. If you buy everything from Amazon what else do you expect?
Everything’s overpriced in ‘local’ shops anyway. Almost all the produce is available online and usually cheaper. I don’t need to leave the house! Got a book store in my town and one book was £4 more than Amazon, why buy local what am I getting that’s extra?
Another example of how were being robbed blind by inflation.
What?! You mean people don’t want to spend ~30 minutes driving through the traffic to get into town, then pay £5 to park, £6 for a coffee and £150 for a couple of bits of shopping? Shocker!
Wonder if closing down the economy for a year has anything to do with the big jump……
A sad, sad byproduct of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Right?!
Oh well what a fucking surprise nobody saw that coming after all the lockdowns
Town center shop:
Pays local rates
Pays electricity
Pays for heating
Pays for a website
Pays staff above min wage
Pays tax
Staff pay for parking in town
Customers pay for parking in town
Amazon
Pays for website
Pays min wage or even contracts to warehouse workers and delivery drivers
Pays the absolute minimum for lighting and heating for warehouse
Pays almost no tax
Pays almost no local rates
Pays almost nothing for the land
It’s hard to imagine how a normal shop that plays by the rules or is ethical at all is going to compete with this business model.
I may be wrong with some of these details but each one of them is a significant advantage that shouldn’t be afforded to Amazon and we could repeat this with a number of other companies.
Not been to the town centre for over a year at this point. There’s nothing worth going for.
Actually, this reminds me of the local paper putting out an article about the high street not existing by 2050. I replied saying “don’t care, I’ll be dead by then”. My comment was in the paper next day >:(
Costs going up but wages not going up (for years in the UK public sector not just post Brexit or pandemic) means finally have less money to spend in general. Don’t want to give normal people more money? Don’t complain when everything closes.
If only they taxed the corporations and super wealthy.
I love in Newport, South Wales, the third city in a line within 70 miles and only a bridge away from Bristol, the closest English city so things already weren’t great here as all money goes to the capitol, Cardiff.
Well our “city” has almost nothing in it now, there is an Iceland at the bottom of the hill from my house and we go in there now and again, Greggs, weather spoons a dead market. That’s literally it. Most shop fronts are empty. Oh we do have a JD sports and many, many estate agents and kebab shops.
Why would I bother to go there when all I get is drunks, druggies and the other 300 rejects hassling me for money, some of them even have stories but they all seem to revolve around getting enough money for a bus home.
Because its much much easier to order online.
Who wants the hassle of going into town or whatever paying finding somewhere to park wandering around ect….
When I can just sit back watch YouTube and shop to my hearts content