Retail
This morning dear readers, I am not even going to go into the reasons behind how I came to be reading a copy of Retail Week, suffice to say that it was one of ‘those’ days. Anyway, on the back page of the edition was a piece penned by Jonathan Elvidge, founder of Red5 which went along the well worn lines of supermarkets are a poor substitute for
passion fuelled, service-driven, knowledgeable, quality focused, speciality retailers
Eh? & would you like fries with that?
Indeed, if I end up reading yet another piece about the
loss of vibrant town centres
I am afraid that that the already blood stained axe is just going to have to get another airing. Politicians & town planners don’t seem to be able to get it into their thick heads that the reason that people don’t want to shop in town centres is that they cant parking their cars & even if they can, while driving into town, the man from the Council has been firing infra-red beams into your car to check that you don’t have a dog sitting on the passenger seat (see this mornings earlier post).
Once your arrive in town & if you can find a parking space you run the litter strewn gauntlet of feral hoodies trying to nick your mobile phone, the man from the Council having irradiated you as you drove in is now trying to clamp your vehicle (in the interests of errrrrrrrrrrrr revenue generation) for what – a fifty yard dash down the High Street trying to avoid the dog on a string beggars attempting to sell you copies of the Big Issue.
As for passion fuelled, service-driven, knowledgeable, quality focused, speciality retailers … they only three syllable work that most of their staff can copy with is ham-berg-er.
People don’t want to shop in town centres because they no provide what the customer wants. Therefore & not unreasonably in my most humble opinion, custom migrate to out-of-town locations. That doesn’t mean that the attempts by all & sundry to limit your freedom of choice are going to end any time soon.
Comments
You're forgetting that the people like the author of the tripe you quoted happen to live in town centre apartments and would love to be able to pop down the stairs, out of the CCTV monitored, locked steel reinforced door and wander down the street a few meters to the grocer to pick up their lentils and celery, then pop next door for their TradeAid herbal teas rather than have to ride the tube with the great unwashed to the big supermarket and mall outside the CBD/swank-apartment planning zone.
The needs/wants/rights of those with the sense to own a car, eat meat, drink booze and live where one can sit on the back doorstep and ventilate targets with a fullbore rifle don't even appear in their little minds when drawing up future zones and planning permissions.
Posted by: Rhys | February 26, 2008 7:52 AM
Not all towns are like Swindon.
(Which you describe perfectly!)There are still places with proper shops although they are getting thinner on the ground.
Posted by: EX_STAB | February 26, 2008 8:17 AM
Not all towns are like Swindon.
For which we should regularly get on our knees and thank whichever deity is on duty. Right after the bit we ask for a thunderbolt of righteous vengeance to land on Downing Street/Palace of Westminster/every government department.
Posted by: The Remittance Man | February 26, 2008 5:10 PM