High noon on the high street
Gordon Brown probably doesn’t do much shopping. If he did wander unaccompanied round almost any town centre in the country, he’d discover the real impact of his policies.
They are rapidly becoming ghost towns. In many places, half the shops are closed down and boarded up.
The only boom industry is charity shops – but nowhere can survive long with just a series of places selling second-hand junk and tat even if it is staffed by volunteers and all for a good cause.
There are small modern developments of mini-malls where one or two survivors struggle on.
But with the likes of Woolworth closed down and Marks & Spencer pulling out, they are attracting fewer and fewer customers.
The lunchtime office workers, who keep many shopping centres alive, are disappearing. Office blocks stand empty as companies consolidate or close. Even sandwich shops are feeling the squeeze.
Pretty soon the last remnants of the Blair-Brown boom will shut up shop and the windswept malls will be left to the drunks and the homeless.
As for the main streets of our towns, there is less and less reason to visit them.
It’s often difficult – and expensive – to park. The surviving shops are all the same wherever you go, so if you want something different or unusual you’ve come to the wrong place.
And the atmosphere is sometimes fairly hostile – so many regular shoppers have already gone elsewhere the streets are left to people you would not want to bump into on a dark night.
Markets are in such decline that Sandwell is thinking of offering stalls rent-free. Empty shops in Wolverhampton could become art galleries to stop the city looking run-down. Even Bingo halls are closing.
These days we prefer to shop “out of town” at purpose-built retail parks like Merry Hill. It’s so much easier because everything is accessible, we can park and walk and the places feel safer and more friendly.
Alternatively, we go on-line where the choice is infinite and the prices are often much more competitive.
I felt very guilty the other day when I decided not to buy a couple of CDs (neither of them by Michael Jackson) in a privately-run shop because they were £13 each. I knew they were available on Amazon for just £7.25.
What was I to do – support what is almost certainly a struggling small business by paying £26 for the CDs or get them both for £14.50?
Guiltily, I ordered them via the internet which, of course, means I have to wait for our glorious Royal Mail to complete the difficult task of delivering them.
But more and more people seem to rely on the internet for their shopping.
At the moment, about 17 per cent of all retail sales take place on-line. In May, internet sales increased by “only” 8.7 per cent.
This is apparently the slowest rate of growth in the nine years people have been measuring sales over the world wide web.
But in this terrible recession most people would mortgage their grannies for an 8.7 per cent sales increase.
We’re stuck with the internet, despite its many faults. That’s why the experts reckon that in five years’ time, between a third and a half of all our shopping will be carried out on-line.
Good news for the Royal Mail, maybe, but desperate for small town centres, which will be increasingly abandoned by the best-known names – gone to the retail parks – and the small businesses – gone on-line or bankrupt.
Banks, building societies and Post Offices are closing, estate agents have taken a hammering, pubs are shutting every day, pretty soon there won’t be any shoppers left to buy coffee at Starbucks.
It’s not all Gordon Brown’s fault but the economic collapse he helped to engineer has almost certainly speeded up the decline of the traditional town centre.
In the long run, this may lead to a new era for small towns. Rents will collapse which, in turn, may tempt some people to open up new shops.
In some towns, shops may even get converted back into houses which would create demand for the kind of small stores which once existed simply to service the locals.
But that will take years. In the meantime money is draining away from our towns, destroying local businesses and creating wastelands of what was once the heart of the community.
The Federation of Small Businesses claims 2,000 local shops are closing each year. Since 1990, 40 per cent of bank branches have gone and 50 pubs a month are throwing in the towel.
People like browsing through shops that are different and interesting but who would be mug enough to open one of them today? The Commons all-party Small Shops Group believes there will be no independent retailers left by 2015.
It wants Mr Brown to protect small shops and town centres to make sure there is still some competition and shoppers have some choice other than the big chain stores.
He could cut business rates and, axe car park charges for a start. But even that might only delay the inevitable.
They are rapidly becoming ghost towns. In many places, half the shops are closed down and boarded up.
The only boom industry is charity shops – but nowhere can survive long with just a series of places selling second-hand junk and tat even if it is staffed by volunteers and all for a good cause.
There are small modern developments of mini-malls where one or two survivors struggle on.
But with the likes of Woolworth closed down and Marks & Spencer pulling out, they are attracting fewer and fewer customers.
The lunchtime office workers, who keep many shopping centres alive, are disappearing. Office blocks stand empty as companies consolidate or close. Even sandwich shops are feeling the squeeze.
Pretty soon the last remnants of the Blair-Brown boom will shut up shop and the windswept malls will be left to the drunks and the homeless.
As for the main streets of our towns, there is less and less reason to visit them.
It’s often difficult – and expensive – to park. The surviving shops are all the same wherever you go, so if you want something different or unusual you’ve come to the wrong place.
And the atmosphere is sometimes fairly hostile – so many regular shoppers have already gone elsewhere the streets are left to people you would not want to bump into on a dark night.
Markets are in such decline that Sandwell is thinking of offering stalls rent-free. Empty shops in Wolverhampton could become art galleries to stop the city looking run-down. Even Bingo halls are closing.
These days we prefer to shop “out of town” at purpose-built retail parks like Merry Hill. It’s so much easier because everything is accessible, we can park and walk and the places feel safer and more friendly.
Alternatively, we go on-line where the choice is infinite and the prices are often much more competitive.
I felt very guilty the other day when I decided not to buy a couple of CDs (neither of them by Michael Jackson) in a privately-run shop because they were £13 each. I knew they were available on Amazon for just £7.25.
What was I to do – support what is almost certainly a struggling small business by paying £26 for the CDs or get them both for £14.50?
Guiltily, I ordered them via the internet which, of course, means I have to wait for our glorious Royal Mail to complete the difficult task of delivering them.
But more and more people seem to rely on the internet for their shopping.
At the moment, about 17 per cent of all retail sales take place on-line. In May, internet sales increased by “only” 8.7 per cent.
This is apparently the slowest rate of growth in the nine years people have been measuring sales over the world wide web.
But in this terrible recession most people would mortgage their grannies for an 8.7 per cent sales increase.
We’re stuck with the internet, despite its many faults. That’s why the experts reckon that in five years’ time, between a third and a half of all our shopping will be carried out on-line.
Good news for the Royal Mail, maybe, but desperate for small town centres, which will be increasingly abandoned by the best-known names – gone to the retail parks – and the small businesses – gone on-line or bankrupt.
Banks, building societies and Post Offices are closing, estate agents have taken a hammering, pubs are shutting every day, pretty soon there won’t be any shoppers left to buy coffee at Starbucks.
It’s not all Gordon Brown’s fault but the economic collapse he helped to engineer has almost certainly speeded up the decline of the traditional town centre.
In the long run, this may lead to a new era for small towns. Rents will collapse which, in turn, may tempt some people to open up new shops.
In some towns, shops may even get converted back into houses which would create demand for the kind of small stores which once existed simply to service the locals.
But that will take years. In the meantime money is draining away from our towns, destroying local businesses and creating wastelands of what was once the heart of the community.
The Federation of Small Businesses claims 2,000 local shops are closing each year. Since 1990, 40 per cent of bank branches have gone and 50 pubs a month are throwing in the towel.
People like browsing through shops that are different and interesting but who would be mug enough to open one of them today? The Commons all-party Small Shops Group believes there will be no independent retailers left by 2015.
It wants Mr Brown to protect small shops and town centres to make sure there is still some competition and shoppers have some choice other than the big chain stores.
He could cut business rates and, axe car park charges for a start. But even that might only delay the inevitable.

