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Post by Patrick on Sept 25, 2008 23:01:09 GMT
Three huge new shopping centres will open for business in London, Liverpool and Bristol despite the credit crunch. I quite like shopping - but boy do I find these big places exhausting! You really do turn into a Dawn of the Dead Zombie after spending time in some of them! So much nicer to be out and about exploring the lanes of a town and just occasionally popping into one of these - It's astonishing how a new shopping centre is now the answer to everything - every ailment a town is suffering from, every regeneration project and refurbishment scheme! When I think back to all the higgeldy piggeldy back lanes near where I used to live that were absorbed within the new centre built there - I'm just remimded of the character of the place - all right, so it was car park mainly - but the fact that you could see around you, what was going on - and getting to parts of the town didn't involve long detours through or around the aisles of stores...... I'd heard a few years of a town in the US that tore down it's shopping centre and restored the original streets. This was mainly due to people preferring to shop from their car - jump out - call in shop - jump in - drive twenty yards up the road - jump out - call in shop etc! Do we really need so many huge shopping centres?
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Post by markindurham on Sept 26, 2008 6:03:42 GMT
The thing that gets on my nerves about these edifices is that they're all so similar, with the same names appearing at different shopping centres almost without exception. Very difficult to recall exactly WHERE you are  Mind you, many town centres are a bit like that too these days. What happened to VARIETY, ffs? Still, so long as folk don't go all American & say that they're off to the 'mall', then I think that I can handle it  |
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Post by housesparrow on Sept 26, 2008 7:08:25 GMT
The really annoying bit is that, despite having driven several miles to get there, these malls never have much that I want. I've only done it twice, and each time have returned with some rubbish I bought to justify the trip, only to find that my small town has just what I want.
There is a little therapy in hunting down a bargain in a little hidden place off a backstreet, but now I steer well clear of malls
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Post by markindurham on Sept 26, 2008 8:47:47 GMT
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Post by trubble on Sept 26, 2008 20:26:25 GMT
Is this something kinky?
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Post by markindurham on Sept 26, 2008 20:33:43 GMT
Hell, no  |
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Post by Patrick on Sept 27, 2008 11:24:30 GMT
I sometimes wonder where I am inside my own home!  As for sam-ey - ness I had this feeling on my first trip to Kendal. You approach the town and you think - oooh picture-skuwey original townscape! - Must be some fab old names trading here - then you spot Next, then Dixons, then Edinburgh Woollen Mill et-yawnsome-cetera! There are one or two individualistic place there - but IMO Kendal has missed a trick there. Lancaster is on the verge of it too - Big conglomerate Developer breathing down the City Council's neck - luring it with dreams of a massive Debenhams and shopping heaven all washed up in a scheme that'll bulldoze many traditional buildings - OK! So they are derelict historic and traditional buildings - but English Heritage have objected to it's impact on the town, "Natural England" has objected to the scheme - which effectively will ghetto-ise the place into two halves and not by any means encourage more people to either end! I spy conspiracy in these cases too - I've noticed that The 1980's and 90's saw the end of many small shops that might have traded for the past 50-70 years! Successfully. Then - "Just like That" they're gone! I worked in a shop, along a street where you could trace some the shops back to the 1930's! they outrode recessions and war that must have given a rougher ride than the ups and downs of the 90's!? Why? Aside from the "Generational" thing - where they say a family business will only last three generations - before the last get bored and want to do something else - I think we have had a gradual shift of preferential terms for retail owners away from the little guy to suck up to the big boys. I feel that there is an inherent imbalance today on what each are charged in business rates or council tax! The town centre usually has the most expensive rates yes? The big boys can afford this - but town centres no longer have the footage that the big boys want - so they have now moved out to the edge where it's (for them) cheaper. This leaves poor Mr Independent struggling with rates that have - in effect been pushed up by Mr Big's presence in the town!? If you see what I mean........ (Cos I've run out of puff now!) |
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Post by housesparrow on Sept 27, 2008 20:54:34 GMT
I said I was steering clear of malls, not males! |
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Post by markindurham on Sept 27, 2008 23:56:30 GMT
I said I was steering clear of malls, not males!  |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 27, 2009 14:40:01 GMT
More Shopping Centre's opening. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7851803.stmI notice in the article that grand claims are made for Cardiff and Wrexham - but not funnily enough for Swansea that's also mentioned. This could possibly be that Swansea will never be anything other than A Dump. How depression though that we are still on this mental platitude of shopping being the answer to everything! Even the latest efforts by Mandelson to kick start the economy is to help car manufacturers to "sell" cars by making credit easier, or more accessible to buyers. Whay Buyers? There is some serious mental instability going on here - tunnel vision really from those who make the decisions for them to think the only way out of this is for everyone to spend money! Surely it's time now to take stock, and think; Why not slow Down? Do we really need to manufacture quadzillion amounts of this and that? How about a "Go Slow" mentality where people are just paid to make something, or answer phone calls without being held hostage by targets, without the crack of the whip saying "We Must Make More and More and More!" Why not revert to "Supply on Demand?" After all - that's where the Japanese car makers managed to win out over everyone else in the seventies - they kept their costs down by supplying the minimum amount needed to keep the market flowing. Not ending up having to store thousands of cars on airstrips somewhere when the down turn came. Isn't it calle "Economy of Supply" or something? Trouble is, now we've gone the other way we think it's the only way. |
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Post by everso on Jan 28, 2009 0:03:59 GMT
There's a little corner shop near to my house and the elderly couple that run it moved in just a few months after we moved into our house, so they've been there since 1981. When they first opened, they did a roaring trade. Widespread Sunday opening didn't exist and at weekends the place was fairly buzzing. Now, however, their best money-maker is in selling home made sandwiches and rolls for the local businesses. They don't stock lots of things because of "best before" dates, and Sunday opening and 24 hour Tescos have put paid to a lot of their trade. Thing is, I'm not really complaining because they were/are very expensive. |
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Post by swl on Jan 29, 2009 9:17:57 GMT
What's depressing is so many of these malls are built on the sites of former industries which provided real jobs and a sense of community. A boy could leave school and get a job there with real training that paid a real wage that would, in time, support a family. They've gone and been replaced by retail jobs that trumpet "flexible working practices". Flexible for the employers maybe. Zero hours contracts, virtually zero training, a minimum wage that absolves employers from paying employees according to their worth and very little job security.
We crow a lot about equal opportunities and so many women now being in the workforce, but it's been at the expense of real jobs and real wages. Is it really a step forward for society if woman go to work not because they want to, not because they're entitled to, but because they have to as one wage can no longer support a family?
These shopping malls are the tombstones of the working man.
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Post by Patrick on Jan 29, 2009 9:35:36 GMT
Every bit of "industrial" or "brownfield" sites within town centres are being given over to housing now - and have been for the past ten-twenty years. One council I know, in fact several of them have been actively encouraging this, and as a result there have been policies of putting pressure on businesses to get them out of the town centres - What you are left with is dormitory towns where everyone has to leave the area for work - leading to increased congestion on the roads and a burglars paradise as there's no one around to keep an eye out! It's probably the darkest hour ever in the history of town planning. It's then no wonder the unemployed without transport can't find local work any more - because they can't afford to travel outside the area to get there!
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Post by trubble on Jan 29, 2009 10:19:23 GMT
What's depressing is so many of these malls are built on the sites of former industries which provided real jobs and a sense of community. A boy could leave school and get a job there with real training that paid a real wage that would, in time, support a family. They've gone and been replaced by retail jobs that trumpet "flexible working practices". Flexible for the employers maybe. Zero hours contracts, virtually zero training, a minimum wage that absolves employers from paying employees according to their worth and very little job security. Undeniable fact... but hold on just a cotton pickin minute... This is a joke, yes? Yes??  Because I can't tell, I am answering it as if you meant it. Women have always worked, they have always done the low paid zero contract jobs. The fight was to allow them to carry on working when they got married thus allowing them to build a career rather than just keep going until they met a man to support them and then be forced to resign. The fight was to let women earn the same as men for the same job rather than presume men needed more to provide for their family and women didn't need equal pay. The fight was to allow women to support themselves and a family so that they didn't have to depend on a man for everything - so that they could leave a bad situation. The result of having both parents equally providing is that it costs more to run two housholds than one but it's not true that today's wages won't run a household in just the same way as they previously did. Men on low wages in the past didn't support non-working wives unless the wages were good and they were middle class - men were merely the main bread-winner and wives of the lower waged also worked while raising the family. And the fight was to allow women the same chance of career as men. Why should it have been a male only option to climb the career ladder? I know you know this swl, so I'm disappointed that women are being implicated as the cause of low wages for all. The cause of low wages for all is the same as it's always been, greedy big fat profit-heavy cats at the top of the pyramid. |
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Post by trubble on Jan 29, 2009 10:19:53 GMT
To summarise, blame cats.
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Post by Alpha Hooligan on Jan 29, 2009 10:42:10 GMT
I quite like shopping - but boy do I find these big places exhausting! You really do turn into a Dawn of the Dead Zombie after spending time in some of them!I like that though. Every time I hit a shopping center, I have "the Gonk" tune bouncing around my bonce, I sometimes look out for weak points and plan the best escape route in case of a zombie invasion...or I pretend to be a zombie and look out for the best places to corner screaming meatbags before I start munching on them (depends on my mood).  uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ydocoaWpc2YOf course we do, where else would all the zombies go? AH |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 29, 2009 11:24:46 GMT
I'll have that tune in my head for the rest of the week again now! I've already been told off for whistling it in Sainsbury's last week as it is!
I was Google Earthing Derby not long back only to see huge amounts of building work going on there - a bit more research found out that they too are expanding their existing shopping centre. Absolutely pointless with Nottingham half an hour up the road on the "Spondon Flyer!" Which spent the best part of the nineties digging up the badly needed old Central Railway to cover with shops and a token tram system. Cities such as Derby would do better jumping on the Historical band wagon and try to encourage smaller boutique shops and curiosity places to compliment Nottingham's brashness than try to compete!
Norwich has become an awful place in the past twenty years with two huge shopping additions to the place, not to mention the out of town bits. When I was there in 1991 it was lovely - you could just spend a day and cover the whole city in a leisurely walk. Enjoy the Willy Wonka sensation of the scents from the chocolate factory drifting down Theatre Street. Survey a glorious mixture of old and new down the little side streets, lovely. Now it's just common.
Sorry if I've done that before btw.
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Post by Patrick on Jan 29, 2009 11:34:16 GMT
I know you know this swl, so I'm disappointed that women are being implicated as the cause of low wages for all. The cause of low wages for all is the same as it's always been, greedy big fat profit-heavy cats at the top of the pyramid. Not just women really - the "Part Time Position" is king it seems, despite the legislation to make the working rights equal to full timers. From the ex ship, mine and steel workers who couldn't find equivalent full time positions once their jobs were taken away from them twenty - thirty years ago through to the Rover Workers form 2005 where it has been found that Two Thirds are earning less than they were. More and more vacancies "appear" to be part time or job share. |
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Post by swl on Jan 29, 2009 13:21:11 GMT
Undeniable fact... but hold on just a cotton pickin minute... This is a joke, yes? Yes?? Because I can't tell, I am answering it as if you meant it. Women have always worked, they have always done the low paid zero contract jobs. The fight was to allow them to carry on working when they got married thus allowing them to build a career rather than just keep going until they met a man to support them and then be forced to resign. The fight was to let women earn the same as men for the same job rather than presume men needed more to provide for their family and women didn't need equal pay. The fight was to allow women to support themselves and a family so that they didn't have to depend on a man for everything - so that they could leave a bad situation. The result of having both parents equally providing is that it costs more to run two housholds than one but it's not true that today's wages won't run a household in just the same way as they previously did. Men on low wages in the past didn't support non-working wives unless the wages were good and they were middle class - men were merely the main bread-winner and wives of the lower waged also worked while raising the family. And the fight was to allow women the same chance of career as men. Why should it have been a male only option to climb the career ladder? I know you know this swl, so I'm disappointed that women are being implicated as the cause of low wages for all. The cause of low wages for all is the same as it's always been, greedy big fat profit-heavy cats at the top of the pyramid. I don't disagree with any of that, but I would rather we had stayed as a manufacturing society with a high skills industrial base than this drive to a service economy. So many of the figures that bang on about women being equal in the jobs market are disguised by the fact that so many jobs are shitty no-skills part-time zero hours retail jobs. Just to be clear, I would welcome true equal opportunities for women to be miners, steelworkers, shipbuilders, engineers and craftsmen. But I would also want the real working wage to be enough to support a family so that one parent, (not necessarily the father), could afford to stay at home if they wanted to and provide the stable upbringing and parenting that so many kids today lack. |
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Post by Patrick on Jan 29, 2009 15:09:59 GMT
Some brave talk from traders in Ulverston (Cumbria): "An Ulverston greengrocer has hit back at suggestions Tesco could drive him out of business, by saying: “Bring it on”.
The supermarket giant will open one of its Tesco Express convenience stores this spring in the former Woolworths building in Market Street.
Mr Brocklebank said: “I doesn’t bother me. As far as the public and Ulverston are concerned about wanting to keep it a quaint market town, that’s great.
“We’ve seen Asda, Tesco and Morrisons come, but we’re still here 35 years later."
Mr Brocklebank’s confidence has been echoed by a group of anonymous independent Ulverston retailers.
In a letter to the Evening Mail, they supported Tesco Express and described how “beneficial it will be for Ulverston traders”.[/color] Charming as it sounds, I think they're being extraordinarily naive! Once Tesco gets back inside a town they leaflet ruthlessly with discount vouchers deliberately undercutting other independent traders in the area - it's happened before - it'll happen again. However the "traders" letter continues: "The letter read: “We are lucky in Ulverston not to be overrun by high street superstores.
“However the Woolworths retail space could only ever have been taken on by such a superstore and as traders we are aware that the increased footfall that Tesco will give rise to will enhance trade in the town and encourage other investors."
“With the arrival of Tesco we can look forward to all shop doors remaining open.”I think they're going to be in for a big surprise myself. Full article hereGood quote by the local MP at the end - pity he's LibDem and doesn't count though: "There can be little doubt that a powerful supermarket monopoly has damaged farmers and has weakened rural communities.
“Between April 1997 and April 2008, the number of greengrocers fell by almost 3,000 – a fall that equates to five closing per week for the last 11 years, meaning fewer jobs, less choice and more food miles.” |
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