Amazon (and other online businesses) is one of the causes of the decline of our high streets but not the entire story. In the 1980s, the advent of out of town shopping and retail parks with convenient and free parking started the rot. A combination of high business rates/rents, traffic restrictions, parking charges and generally bad local authority policies have only contributed to the problem ever since.
there is nowhere to park on the average high street or it's £4 for 30 mins, what can you do in 30 mins..Councils are partly to blame as well for making high streets no go areas if you want flexibility and convenience.
not just the highstreet but all businesses , Amazons systems Claim credit for the sales (even though amazons whole Business base is ran by small businesses User profiles) amazons business practices go Much much deeper than just the Decline of the highstreet. I wouldn't buy anything via amazon even if its sold by a business thats not amazon , the business still pays amazon for its warehouse Fees etc FBA etc by Using amazon itself , is funding it. Buy direct always.
One friend of mine before Christmas needed some extra cash so he went to work for amazon for couple of weeks! He worked as a picker and described his experience of working there as degrading and basically modern slavery! He couldn't stand still longer than 30 sec because sensors would pick it up and start sounding some sort of alarm! Madness!
I'm disabled and can't walk now after working there at the one visited for 6 months, Walking 30+ miles a day 4 days a week, it is slavery, and the back stabbing that goes on is insane. You are told off if walk past someone and even say hi, not allowed to talk... Human Robots!!
In the United States, they got rid of the High Street a long time ago, particularly around the major cities. These were turned into the big shopping mall. However, particularly in the southern states, which I believe are the better states, they missed that human interaction and that community spirit. So in places is like (Greenville) in South Carolina, they have now rebuilt the High Street with shops there, but also entertainment places, they have made them into beautiful places, so it’s somewhere for the family to go, hang out, buy stuff, and also enjoy themselves in the various different places
So interesting you mention Greenville. As a Brit who is considering moving to the States, I concluded that Greenville, SC, would be the place to go to. Beautiful surrounding countryside and I'm glad to hear that the centre is still vibrant. I also agree with you that in the UK, we need to convert our town centres rather than bow to large retailers. We could have more cafes, theatres, entertainment centres for kids, sports centres. At least that would be a start.
It's funny that you quite rightly point out that we don't want to wait for something to arrive. The in-store experience is such that we have the item IN OUR HANDS instantly, even BEFORE we've paid for it. But such is the laziness of life now, we don't want to move past our own front door.
And the store is unlikely to have what you want in addition. I very much prefer to get goods in person since I don't have to wait or rely on delivery companies, but there's just such little choice in physical stores now that I'm forced to buy online.
Nah it’s not even laziness. No high street shop is going to be able to complete with the prices of websites like Shein. Shein and temu are even cheaper then b&m. I mean you can’t get everything off those sites but you can an awful lot.
It's really quite sad because all these transactions are ultimately funneling money to a very select few, already rich people. Those same people who are avoiding taxes that normal businesses are crippled by. You don't have to be an economist to realize this is a very unsustainable practice.
There are certain RU-vidrs - and they are a minority - whose sheer enthusiasm, wonder, knowledge and/or curiosity - just sweep you along. Simon Roper is one. Bald and Bankrupt as well. Wandering Turnip, you are definitively another of these rare breeds. Dry stone walls, mill chimneys, faceless warehouses on industrial estates: this uncanny ability to make the mundane absolutely fascinating is a gift, my man. Thanks!
Thank you so much mate! I never thought people would enjoy me looking at dry stone walls and chimneys as much as they do 😂 but I’m buzzing people are still watching I really appreciate this nice comment 👍👍👍
If you are "swept up" with male Westerners looking for a cheap and easy lay with the local natives or providing phony travel vlogs, then Bald and Bankrupt is your man.
The Amazon Basics range you mention at the end is the most insidious of their practices for me. They rip off existing products and designs and undercut the original. They have done it to big companies like Logitech and they’ve done it with very small businesses like one I know. Amazon’s problem is they seem to want all the money, they don’t want to leave some for anyone else.
High streets can survive. They just need to change. Either be small shops doing niche stuff or provide services. Or they could become destinations in their own right and be touristy and made pedestrian areas. It just requires some imagination. Not something that you'll find in councils or government. They just need to stand back, provide carrots in the form of no business rates and other benefits and wait for businesses to take advantage of the opportunities.
Agreed. I'm not mourning the loss of the endless chain stores, selling imported goods made for the lowest price and staffed by people on minimum wage on zero-hours contracts. I'm actually quite happy with amazon and their ilk clearing them out to create some space - if we can get back some of the original independent shops back that the chains priced off the high st. Hopefully landlords are starting to realize that they're never going to get the rents they used to - and as you say, need to sort out business rates (or level the playing field with online in some way). Commodity goods can efficiently be delivered by amazon and shops can return to being places I can browse and ask for advice in.
As much as I like shopping on line I realise that it has killed the high street. The jobs created are thankless and do little for face to face communication. As people say we are all trying to feed off of the same carcass and there is not a lot of meat on the bone. Good techy guys and girls must be in demand but it would not surprise me if a lot of this work is outsourced to places overseas. Great video, very down to earth and informative.
It's the fact that Amazon don't have to pay business rates, and register their sales through Dublin or Luxembourg while the physical shops have to pay business rates and pay tax in the UK. The rumoured online sales tax to be imposed on Amazon was dropped when America started crying at the UK about it. France ignored American demands and imposed an online sales tax on Amazon. The high street just want a level playing field.
There was a documentary a few years ago, BBC?? They got a group of independent businesses together in a small town (Shepton Mallet perhaps 🤔) and they went about setting up an offshore tax scheme just like the big name tax avoiders. The businesses agreed not to actually use it in the end as they wanted to be the good guys.
Surely they pay business rates on their warehouses. If you know for a fact they don't could you point me towards a reference about that as I am really interested in learning more.
Another terrific video mate. You're definitely correct that we need to reimagine what the high street is. There are old things that will continue to prosper like haircuts but the shopping genie is not going back in the bottle is it.
I use Amazon, it is very convenient, but I am increasingly aware the impact of this monster killing the high street. This is changing my online shopping habits to do my bit. This is something that should be encouraged.
Amazon has made an impact on towns ...but as I have stated previously that is not the main reason the high street is in decline ...it's a combination of high business rates high parking charges and many stores have moved out of town ...where I live there is 4 big out of town sites ..towns and cities just need to adapt ..
I’m in the same school of thought. Yes e commerce has played a huge part. But I put most of the blame of the decline with local councils. The experience for both consumers and businesses owners is not a pleasant one and the internet gives a great alternative.
I agree, in my town the main buildings on the high street are owned by large companies as hedge funds. Premium rent and premium rates rather than Amazon.
There you go! Blame the victims, like a boss. Cities and towns "adapting" would actually entail kicking out these businesses and stop sequestering the wealth out of the country with tax cuts. Things need to be paid for. And if a business cant survive and adapt then it deserves to die. Your story is actually completely inversed. You can either subsidize a foreign oligarch, which effectively makes it a state enterprise but worse becasue it's subtracting value from the economy while adding it to foreign economies; or you can subsidize small businesses and society and actually improve things into positive growth; or once again, bankrupt the population and the state. Maybe it's too late to fix that though. Everyone in UK will be living in the decrepit streets within walking distance from an Amazon fulfillment center, and the mayor of Broketon can supervise the robots. Cheers.
The councils played a considerable part in the demise of town centres by pedestrianising the areas on the edge of the towns where many independent shops were, stopping you from parking outside and making a quick purchase. Also, charging for car parking and having to mess around with apps or entering registration numbers drove many to out of town retail parks. And finally, as you pointed out, poor stock availability in many shops prevents a purchase without a repeat visit making it easier to order online. Just to prove the point, I work in a large village and we have about 12 shops including a Co op, a Tesco express, a butchers, bakery, pie shop, fish & chip shop, takeaway,hair dressers, barbers, newsagent, estate agent, chemist and doctors. No vacant units and free off-road parking along the shops and more nearby. The local town is about 3 miles away and it’s on its knees.
Most of the car parks I see in large towns and cities are operated by private parking companies nowadays. I'd guess a lot of "car parking" land has been bought when councils chose to sell off capital assets to try and offset the effects of year-on-year reduction in their funding from central government. Conservative "small state" ideology; public services starved to the point of decimation and private companies profiteering instead - to the detriment of local residents.
Thanks old pal...keep up the good work! I never use Amazon ..for many of the reasons that you mentioned in the vid. The worst of it is that my mother in law does.....and she lives downstairs & many times i have to accept delivery ~ sometimes at 9.30pm..purely because someone has pressed the trigger that is inherent in humans from childhood on = I WANT IT NOW!
It's so sad and true everywhere. We have the same thing in the states. I'm from Rochester New York, and our downtown used to be like NYC, tho we were just a mid-sized city. Three huge department stores, many many restaurants and many retail places, most of them mom and pop. I worked at many of the restaurants and supper clubs in the 1970s and 1980s. Downtown Rochester is a ghost town now of beautiful old buildings that are mostly empty or used as offices. At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I mostly hate cell phones and the internet. They have destroyed our main streets. Going downtown used to be a fabulous all day experience. I wish cell phones and social media and online shopping were never invented. Of course I'm online and on a cell phone right now LOL. But we would never miss what we never had, and because of social media cell phones etc, human interaction has changed drastically and not for the better. Now get off of my lawn! LOL.
That "C" thing Really has finished off so many businesses as well as ways of life, also SO Many people have easily slotted into this new way of living cash free. I recall saying a few years ago "The well off will be getting richer while the Poor will get poorer"! Cool video cheers!
You should come to Milton Keynes where the start of the move away from the high street began (a whole town now a city) imagined without a traditional high street just a covered shopping centre and now that is struggling against the competition from the likes of Amazon and the other online fulfilment centres dotted around its outskirts... You can also see the traditional town's high streets of Bletchley, Newport Pagnell, Wolverton and Stony Stratford that Milton Keynes was built around. A city destined to be bigger in population than Cardiff by 2050 one of the most productive places in the UK and yet missing a high street just plagued by retail parks... Perhaps a vision of the post-high street future for everywhere.
For anyone concerned about the state of their local high street, out of town retail parks and online shopping - Amazon in particular - these videos are a must watch. Well done Wandering Turnip. A better balance has somehow to be found in order for high streets to survive.
@ alyswilliams, the high street is over, technological progress they call it. The WEF and globalist puppets want you to shut up, own nothing and be happy. Convid bought the agenda much closer to fulfilment, jobs, small businesses, manufacturing, etc, all destroyed by the Anti British communist Government. Thank God his plans are far far greater for those that believe his promises and trust in his only begotten Son, Jesus and who paid for every man’s sins in full on the cross, died, was buried and rose again the third day, simply believing Christ alone for your Salvation means you are promised to be saved for all eternity
industrial sprawl and these big ugly sheet metal blocks infact are objectively bad urban planning wise, enviroment wise, architectural preservation wise, and health wise.
I agree. Parking prices don't help either. I took my son to a nearby town for an eye test and to get new glasses about a month ago and said to him we could have a wander in the town afterwards. I didn't know how long we were going to be in the opticians so I thought I'd pay for 3 - 4 hours. Went to the machine (which was card only 😡 ) and found out that just for 2 hours was £5. I reluctantly paid this and because choosing his glasses took so long we didn't have time to explore and buy things. Had it been cheaper, we would have stayed longer and spent more money on local shops 🤷
'Killed' implies this being the biggest factor and i respectfully disagree as there are so many other factors that are likely to have been more impactful
@PotatoPirate123 Thank you for respectfully disagreeing. It's pleasant to meet a civilised person here in the RU-vid comment section - it's a pretty rare event.
@@merasmussen82 I think the problem sometimes is that it's hard to separate personal grievances and issues from the root cause of issues. This is why people often blame, for example, specific elements of the benefits system rather than more deep-rooted causative problems. I believe that by far the main reason high street shops struggle is that people simply don't feel like they *need* to go to those high street stores anymore. You get less rights for refunds and returns as a high street buyer, you could show up and the item isn't in stock (and waste a journey), you can find better prices online without getting off your backside, it's less stressful as you can do it in the comfort of your own home or on a lunch break.... But I think the absolute biggest reason online stores are killing off the high street is that they simply can't compete with laziness. A lot of people don't even *care* if something costs more money; they like being able to see their item on a map, they like to get things through the letterbox and feel like it's Christmas, they like the complete lack of physical effort. If ever there was a prime example of this, it's Uber Eats - their prices are absurd - far more than actually visiting the takeaway or shop itself, but that doesn't matter - people just want to click a button and get what they want. The cost of living crisis apparently doesn't affect a lot of people at all, and high street stores simply don't stand a chance of competing against that.
@@vinnyvtec8722 So that few quid parking saved you from spending even more money on stuff you didn't need because if you needed it, you would've stayed.
Well documented, WT! We have one of these huge, dystopian-looking business parks with a massive Amazon distribution centre, here in the south. I use Amazon less and less these days, I find, and when I do I always use the Market Place Sellers. I try to use the high street shops as often as I can, and buy with cash, the use of which has been increasing recently!
Excellent video! Third party sellers "fulfilled" by Amazon are paying 30-40% commission to Amazon. Apart from Amazon's admittedly amazing efficiency one reason high streets in the UK are dead is because town centres ceased being social hubs years ago. If you go to any mediterranean town or city you'll see huge numbers of people meeting friends and family in cafes, bars and pleasant town squares and centres, which the UK now lacks as they are replaced by ghastly malls and offices, and high rates and rents have forced out modest bespoke businesses that would have lent character to any town. Most UK centres are ghost towns by 5pm and many are dangerous. Compare that with the average Spanish or Italian town. Chalk and cheese.
As an aside, it would be an interesting comedy to adjust your video, with another version, whereby, there are scenes from secret UFO disassembly areas, and that the surface warehouse is just the tip of the iceberg. The complex actually extends two miles underground, and scenes from Forbidden Planet (Krell reactors) can be inserted :)
you're limiting your thoughts about who works for amazon. people making $300k a year writing code for them are enjoying their jobs very much, it's the people making $30k in the warehouses who aren't.
I laughed so much by your quote"I'm not sure if robots are classified as workers". Never change - you are a natural at bringing smiles to people faces. Keep it up - I always look forward to your videos, because I know you'll brighten-up my day. Thank you.
Watching this I am glad i was teenager in the 70's, great shopping towns,great local shops and produce and great family owned businesses. Our town had one coffee shop ,no fast food for my girls thank god, they 42 and 38 now, a cake was a treat in town and that was it ! Sad tomorrows children will not experience it. This was like watching a sci-fi movie inside Amazon 👽 ty for sharing, great vlog🎉
I used to use Amazon a lot. Because they had a German division as well, it was easy to buy German CDs and DVDs I'd have struggled to get over here. But then Amazon had to get me to validate my account by clicking on a link sent to a smartphone. And I'd got rid of my smartphone, so it was bye bye Amazon. I don't miss it, it's horrible. Come to think of it, 'The Fulfilment Centre' sounds like a building we might find after a UFO invasion.
You mention lockdown...My poster business went from £100 a week orders to £10k a month. Truly the best 18 months of my life. For every lockdown loser, a winner was on the other side of it.
Personally I'm trying to avoid Amazon now, but it's quite tricky some of the books I've bought recently were only on amazon. All other things, I don't need and I'm more than happy to actually go to a shop to find it. This comfortable armchair life we have been lulled into thanks to the pandemic has to end, but it's only going to end if people choose to once again go outside and become active again away from pelletons and screens. Great video as usual :)
Guy is getting rich with people watching the downfall of the country. Genuinely respect him. He's found a positive in a negative. Great video. All the best.
The thing nobody talks about is the role and power of distribution networks. The larger the distribution network the greater access to cheap, raw materials.
I worked for the Amazon in Dunfermline in Scotland. The security is for the staff because the turnover is so high Amazon practically employ anyone meaning that they need. So they have massive security for people stealing iPhones and even then the electronics like iPhones are kept in a separate section for more trustworthy experienced employees.
Absolutely top notch continuation of the conversation. Well done on braving the halls of Amazon, who knew you could tour such a place? Do they charge for the tour?
I worked as labourer on the construction team in an Amazon warehouse. We were testing the lines capacity for moving the boxes around the warehouse. They only cared about efficiency. On our last day we saw the new Amazon starters smiles on their faces. But I know the warehouse has a high turnaround of staff. Also due to the size of the warehouse you do 20,000 steps a day. Can’t imagine trying to fit your break in when the cafe is the other side of the warehouse.
We did this. Voted for with every pound spent. Profit margins enjoyed by your mam and pap stores, DIY shops (where you didn't have to buy a box of screws to get the 3 you needed) Have been arbitraged away to Jeff and his buddies for our convenience at a low price. Love you stuff fella!
Went for a walk up the canal last week from Mills Hill to Rochdale that pubs been shut for well over 12 months, was looking at trying to get in but it is shut up tight! Further down you have tin town. House made of tin they are bloody awful!
Another reason for the decline in our high streets is the motorist is no longer welcomed in city centres there’s no parking spaces and too many bicycle lanes too many bus lanes with cameras it’s just not worth going into the city centre to shop
What Amazon did was give shoppers the freedom to choose. It's killing the High Street because the High Street's business model is so anachronistic. High Street stores have too many overheads like staff salaries, rents set by greedy landlords, utility bills etc which they expect customers to subsidise by penalising them with prices much higher than Amazons. Plus the High Street has lackadaisical customer service skills. I couldn't care less when shops close for good. It's like an old format being replaced with a new format.
Online shopping is like some types of insurance is a necessary evil. Especially if there's a specific sizes of clothing that aren't normally stocked in shops.
I think your videos are great. A really unique watchable style. Your personality reminds me of Geowizard - very natural and unpatronising. Keep up the hard work, I reckon your channel has a big future
Hey All, just incase you guys were wondering about "THG" (it's a really boring company, no idea how it's still in business) THG plc, formerly The Hut Group, is a British e-commerce retail company headquartered at Manchester Airport, England. It sells own-brand and third-party cosmetics, dietary supplements and luxury goods online
I really like your videos, "The Burnip" ! Seeing all of these warehouses is very interesting, as well as your serie about the death of the high street.
I do use Amazon but am now on the brink of stopping although like you say there are certain things that you can’t find on the high street. Also if you put in an internet search for something the last place they give you is a physical shop, a lot of the time when you place an order the shop won’t have the item in stock. I went to order a ladder from B&Q as I had a voucher, but I can only use the voucher in store…….where they have nothing in stock of what I actually want 😂😂
Amazon and other online retailers haven't helped town centres, but the death of the high street shop started long before the advent of internet shopping. The rise of US-style shopping malls was what started the rot. I'm old enough to remember the warnings from local retail associations about them and then watched the decline of the high street as their warnings came true. Central government and local authorities did little or nothing to help. It's easy to blame the likes of Amazon, but the truth is that the high street shop was already on its last legs when Amazon and others became a thing.
One factor i have to highlight is the behaviour of some shop assistant(s) that could not be bothered to really help. One day during the week, i was looking for some item in a frozen food store and ask the assistant where the items were. Too no avail she didn't even know herself. No wonder some shollers just walk out of the store and purchase online. Too many businesses are lazy to check their stock regular, lazy rude staff s, not willing to go the extra mile, no wonder the high street is dying.
I completely agree. I’ve been into Manchester once to buy something very specific, and the assistant was so useless I actually didn’t want to give them my money 😂
One issue in favour of Amazon relates to returns. Here in the States, items shipped by Amazon may be returned FREE OF CHARGE to any of Amazon's agents ... that's several grocery stores and any UPS location. You don't even have to re-box the item in its shipping box. Some of these small Amazon vendors make returns inconvenient/a hassle and ... YOU pay for shipping. With branded goods where you know what you are buying, returns are not an issue, unless it breaks. However, custom goods (that you may not have actually seen in a store or elsewhere, you are taking a chance on quality, sizing, etc.
Businesses have to adapt & if they dont then they dont survive. Argos has always been quick to adapt really. To combat Amazon, they introduced same day Delivery. During Covid this helped them alot & they just didnt bother opening some of the stores back again. They moved their stock into Sainsbury's (Same Group) & introduced an Argos Counter. So they gave people the option to pick up straight away but its now in your nearest big Sainsbury's or U can have it delivered same Day for around £4 which is cheaper than Amazon Next day if you dont have Prime. Stores have to adopt a Click & Collect option to survive or provide service.
It's worth pointing out that for many items on Amazon there are buying options. Often there are smaller sellers selling the same item for pretty much the same price as those sold and fulfilled by Amazon.
To Wandering Turnip since you came to Barrow a handful of new shops have opened and the big empty shop in the picture is now a Greg's and 3 more are under offer slowly we are picking up.Love your vids.
Excellent video i stopped buying online 6 years ago,i live in a small town 12k people in spain you do have amazon vans driving about but the town Still has a lot of independent shops and none are boarded up reminds me of the uk in the 70s and Saturday morning a veg market where you can buy fresh from the farmers,im in my 60s so remember the high streets when they were in full bloom
This is true, however sadly nowadays, even when you trail round the shops we have left, you still can't find what you want. Or you have to compromise. In a world that promises choices, you actually have very few.
This is the price of progress and in truth we must not put up barriers for this i view as natural development good or bad. However i live in a regular sized town in Sussex and our High street is buzzing and looking at what's on offer is probably the best suit. We have cut price food and general retail stores, and naturally loads of charity shops ( i have no problem with that) but most of all we have coffee shops and pleasant cafe's and eateries so people can relax and parking is not overly shabby. Nature states we must adapt to survive and there are going to be winners and losers.
we cannot stop the development of online commerce. It's just that the government needs to decide how to develop the downtown buildings. For me, one of the options is to turn the downtown buildings into apartment buildings.
I was watching a documentary on RU-vid about the death of the hight Street the rise of the shopping mall and the death of that was the rise of on line shopping just like the death of TV was due to vhs to cd to downloading what you wanted to watch when you wanted to watch it also killed off the dvd stores and blockbusters all finished the reason for that is the power of the Internet and having it delivered to your door thay dont want you to leave your home just glued to the screen
Dunstable has a whole industrial estate devoted to Amazon (former Bedford trucks). If the rent in the high streets we're cheaper, local businesses could still survive.
I worked in an Amazon warehouse for 2 night, I couldn't hack it more than that. 12 hour shifts and 2 x 15 minute breaks, 10 minutes of which was walking to and from the rest area !!!). And the mailing staff are all thieves ! All they need to do, is put their own sticky address label on a package in the mail area, and it goes to them !
Your videos are so interesting, I feel you are doing a brilliant job in raising awareness of the decline of our once great country. I also found the one in Stoke interesting as I am currently living next door in Newcastle under Lyme. Keep going mate I love your videos
Amazon warehouses are so dystopian. Someone from senior management at Amazon met with Scottish uni senior management and SNP MSPs just before pandemic in Glasgow. The meeting was about Amazon showing uni senior management how to run universities like Amazon. Uni bosses loathe their staff.
While I agree that Amazon have devastated city/town high streets in my opinion they didn’t do the most damage. The real culprits are the massive supermarkets that emerged in the 90s/00s I was born in the late 70s and so most of my first experience of shopping was in the late 80s early 90s this was a time of early closing on a Wednesday no Sunday shopping and Saturdays were about as busy as Bank Holidays are now. Then the supermarkets lobbied the govt to open on Sundays and when the government refuse they just did it anyway (except Marks and Spencer’s) once the government backed down shopping changed completely and the next stop was massive expansion all off a sudden supermarkets stated with their own butchers and delis then they stopped using a little off licence attached to their store and just put beer wines and spirits on the shelves. Then they moved out of town to massive sights and in a lot of cases moved off the high streets but nobody needed to use the butcher, the greengrocer or the baker as the super market was easy to get to in the car on the way home from work. That in my opinion is was the real cause in the decline of the high street
Hi, Colchester is my home town (actually City now). I don't think that shop you mention 'Fun & Games' has a physical presence in Colchester anymore, it disappeared a few years ago so probably just online now. Another great video, thank you 😊
Don't blame Amazon. Blame the people who use it, like me. Why go to a high street shop, find and pay for parking to buy a product when I can buy exactly the same thing cheaper and have it delivered? No brainer. The High Street shops never tried to find their unique advantage, but sat back and wondered why no-one came to their store.
One of the thibgs the high st or physical shops has going for it is you can sometimes actually get something and tske it home. Ublike whete I live await couriers that necer arrive. I orferd a desk 3 times from different companies online and they all faoled to supply a desk. Got one in an Argos in the end. 🤷🏻♀️
A lot of people in the comments saying how Amazon is great if you live in the middle of nowhere. I live in a very isolated village in the UK and for many years didn't drive, so I get it. But we can easily boycott Amazon by buying direct from these suppliers and cutting Amazon out. Only takes a few seconds to do this.
@@human_no847 people love online shopping for its convey and choice. Especially younger people. No one wants to spend time and effort wandering around in shops anymore. Internet has changed shopping forever.
The Kingsway first closed down before the retail park was there, briefly reopened then was finally dust after the green hornet (brewers fair) opened opposite, couldn't compete with cheap beer and food. Talking of boarded up have you see the hare and hounds in tod has been unboarded!!!!
This is a good example why 15minute cities will and should fail. The fact is these large tech companies end up removing local shops that simply cannot compete. What this means is most people wont have the resources they need near them
Yes I think your video is correct, Its the same in blackpool, We have out of town shopping at the airport and at the retail park near the M55 , And online shopping, These are the core problems of the decline of the high Street. Love your video keep the great work up mate 👍. Ed from blackpool
its tempting to think Amazon is responsible for this - but i don think this is correct. Belgium has Amazon, and no boarded up streets. France, too, has amazon, as does Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and all have vibrant retail streets. New York, Boston both have Amazon, as well as smaller cities - Portland OR, Duluth, Columbus. I think Britains problem is just poor quality retail. Even when a street is vibrant, its simply the same 8 or nine names repested - always a Boots, a Sainsburys, an M&S etc etc.
Greedy councils added to it . Not being able to park . High rates and rents of shops. Outlet centres with free parking and food outlets, supermarkets and big name shops are extremely busy. I love a Sunday out at the outlet centres
I’d hate to work there. The whole point of automation is to free up people to do work machines can’t. I hope in the future we have universal basic income so people can work for less pay in jobs that benefit humanity, caring professions, education, art, culture and peoples true interests and skills. All the jobs I’ve done where I felt like a cog rather than a person… Anyway, funny Turnip 😂 working for Amazon for free 😅 It was really interesting but must admit my fave part was the abandoned hotel.
@@wanderingturnip I’m trying to get you on Novara media, to talk about empty homes/death of the high street. I think your content would go down well with their audience.
@@BeccaAl yes, Novara media, literal communists whose answer to surplus humanity is to genocide them, like Novara Media heroes like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot
The problem with any business that uses Amazon is that they take a very significant cut, upwards of 45 oercent. This is just as bad as food delivery services like UberEats. No matter how you spin it shopping at Amazon, like Walmart, is the major cause of the death spiral of local businesses. Maybe what we need to do chuck one's need for instant gratification and go back to how we shopped in the past, in which your local business would order for you that out of stock product, but it would mean you would have to wait (oh, the horrors!) a couple of days or even a week or two to get it. With this in mind, we might think twice about buying that throwaway trinket in the first place and reap the reward of less junk in our homes and in our landfills.
You should do Congleton where the biggest shop in the middle of the town center has been bought by the local big pharma marketing company, its disgusting
