• Replies 32 replies
  • Subscribers 15 subscribers
  • Views 2466 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Where have all the shops gone?

TheCatWoman

I went to Bangor earlier as I needed some stuff I can only get from there and hoped to get a few things I want/need, like new shoes, even though there's only one shoe shop there now. I found the shop where I can often find clothes to fit me closed. The shoe shop had very little in store, H&B don't do the hemp oil I wanted, despite it being on thier website. 

It's really doing my head in, it's bad enough having to go there to get spices and bits from an ethnic grocers and other stuff from the wholefood shop, but to find pretty much empty streets with such a post apocalyptic and feral feeling is really upsetting. I know I could get some stuff online, but the P&P on a lot of it is expensive and it dosen't come free with prime either. I'd like to use amazon less too. As for other stuff, I've now no idea where I will get clothes or shoes, the usual places have nothing I like or that fits, or is suitable.

Its making feel really worried, it's bad enough having to wear winter boots in summer because I can't find any shoes, will I be wearing sandals in winter, because all of a sudden suitable stuff will appear in end of season sales? I had this before, I remember walking home from town with broken shoes, crying my eyes out because there was nothing in my size in 3 or 4 different shoe shops I went into, this was a few years ago now, but it seems those times are on the way back.

So if you see someone walking about wearing a blanket with a hole cut in it for my head and a pair of wellingtom boots that leak and are falling off my feet, it will be me.

Parents

  • A lot of town centres also had policies of actively discouraging visitors by imposing parking restrictions and high parking charges, to stop them being too successful (something which is being reversed, but far too late). Then air pollution, congestion, pedestrianisation and zero emissions were more important than having people.

    Towns expanded with more house building so that more people, especially the ones with money, lived away from the centre. We created a car centric society. Retail parks with plentiful parking became more attractive. People are also more lazy and walk less.

    The high rents and rates in the centre just push shops out.

    As it becomes run down crime rises which does not encourage people. COVID policies were actively damaging, I don't think all of that was an accident.

    You could say it is intentional to allow buildings to be repurposed into accommodation, which is more lucrative, or to allow redevelopment of land which is sometimes owned the council.

    All the online stuff is driven by tax dodges on low value imports which pay no duty and a supply of cheap labour to deliver all the stuff. Driving a van around is not a great job, but costs are rising which is why delivery may not be so cheap. Also the return culture of online clothes shopping seems to be under pressure.

    It was all foreseeable, but since there is no joined up thinking no-one sees it as their problem.

  • in reply to Stuart333

    Bureaucrats dictating planning policy; which is too Centralised, anyway.

Reply Children
No Data