Tag: high street

Posted on by Tim Worstall

Horrendous Concern For The High Street – Half Of Children Have Never Used A Buggy Whip

This truly is dire and a sign of our times, research has found that fully half of all children have not only not used a buggy whip they’ve not been into a buggy whip shop on the High Street.

The future of Britain’s high street is looking bleak after it was revealed that a third of primary schoolchildren had never been to a butcher’s or greengrocer’s shop, a survey found. According to a poll by Nationwide Building Society of 2,000 children aged five to 11, a quarter said they did not know what a high street was.

… See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Matt Hancock’s Really Stupid Idea About Business Rates On The High Street

As we all know there’s stupid, idiot and then politics. The last being the worst because people propose things just because they sound good rather than because they solve – or even understand – the problem at issue. So it is with Matt Hancock’s idea about an Amazon tax to alleviate the rates burden on small shops. The thing being it’s not the tenants of the shops – even the operators of them – that carry the rates burden.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Guardian Is Just So Damn Gullible – Sheesh

‘Did they even visit?’: life on the supposed ‘worst high street’ in Britain
A London property consultancy has named Shields Road, Newcastle, the least vital high street in the UK – but locals say the report is classist, insulting and confuses ‘good’ with ‘rich’

Cue The Guardian visiting that howling wasteland that is the area north of the Marylebone Road and finding out that, actually, they’re just peeps and often nice peeps at that.

Which is, of course, to entirely miss the point of what was said:

On Shields Road in Newcastle, Steve Compton is cutting the hair of a man in his 50s.

… See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Commons Committee Fails To Understand – Landlords Pay Rates, Not Retailers

There is indeed something interesting going on in the retail sector at present. We’ve that new, irruptive, technology of online retailing making its mark. This is going to mean, as with other such structural changes, sets of winners and losers. And why not try to analyse who is who and what, if anything should be done about it?

Which is that the Commons committee tries to do here. It being rather handicapped by the fact that it’s not the slightest clue of the subject under discussion.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Solution To Climate Change Is Government Control Of Fashion

There seems to be more than a small gap in the understanding of what it’s all about here. The latest concern is that fast fashion is destroying the planet. Therefore – well, therefore something very stupid indeed. We’ve this for example:

A cross-party report has found that people today buy and discard clothes faster than ever, and it means we get rid of more than 1m tonnes of clothes a year, with £140m worth going to landfill every year.

… See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Welcome To Health Fascism – Ban The Milkshake Now

It’s not actually necessary to sport a toothbrush moustache, invade Poland, in order to be guilty of fascist behaviour. Attempting to use the law to force others do as you insist, not as they desire, comes under that rubric. Like, for example, spotting that milkshakes have more sugar in them than you think good for people, thus they must be banned. The correct answer to this sort of claim is that you should go boil your head, of course it is.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Public Health England Is Full Of It – Grimsby’s Unhealthy High Street Doesn’t Kill Grimsbians

Public Health England has just treated us all to a lovely report – paid for by us of course – telling us how healthy or unhealthy High Streets are around the country. A comparison that Grimsby won by a country mile according to PHE. Lots of bookies, takeaway shops and few pharmacies.

Well, yes, we can consider that – the presence of pharmacies would indicate to the sensible that there’re sick people around but then that’s being logical, not a known attribute of the public health crowd these days.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

CVAs, House Of Fraser And The Death Of The High Street

Landlords are beginning – well, vocally at least – to complain about the use of CVAs in reducing rents on commercial properties. Company voluntary arrangements are akin to a bankruptcy, in which all the various contracts entered into by the company originally are up for grabs. OK, not in detail they’re not but in practice that’s pretty much what happens. Companies like House of Fraser are making use of them to get out from under the cost burden which is collapsing the business.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

10% Of High Street Shops Are Empty – 10% Of Sales Are On The Internet

This is one of those things we’re supposed to be celebrating – but then there’s no one a conservative as a lefty in the face of change, is there? High Street shops and chains are closing across the country. This, apparently, will put retail jobs at risk.

Good, we don’t need people doing those jobs any more. They can go off and attempt to sate some other human desire or want:

Shoppers are deserting the high street in greater numbers than during the depths of the recession in 2009, creating a brutal climate that is putting thousands more retail jobs at risk.

… See More