Thursday 27 November 2008

The Death of the British High Street

The announcement that after Christmas that no more Woolworths will be in Strood High Street near where I live has upset me.

We have had to watch as the old family run butchers, craft shops, local businesses are all being pushed out by the poncy Starbuck international corporations - whilst even big British businesses like Woolworths are closing down or being bought up by foreign companies.

When I was young my mates were butchers, brickies, sparkies, scaffolders and had trades.

I remember my mate Rory in Chatham High Street outside the butchers in a bloody white tunic waving pork chops about and shouting out to the women ' come on ladies and get your hands on my meat'. All the old ladies would laugh, and nudge and wink at each other and whisper about what they would do with his meat if they could.

It was fun to go to shopping back then.

Now the high street is run by corporate trained drones and staffed by mainly eastern european waiters and serving staff with polite dead smiles and no personality. The high street is now just a place where you go and buy things, not a living, vibrant space where you met people, laughed, had a joke and enjoyed the banter with the people in the shops.

The takeover of the UK by foreign corporations, hedge funds, oil barons and arab companies is the death process of our nation writ large in our faces as we walk past the closed shops where we live.

Yet we do not see it.

When woolworths is shut in Strood and in Chatham high street then the soul of our nation and towns and cities are dying.

Woolworths was the shop where I used to go and shop with my grandmothers before they died, now it will just be a boarded up shop.

That is symbolic of how Britain is fading and dying - whilst we as a nation are fixated upon political correctness and anti-racism rubbish - the nation we love is dying around us.











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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dead right mate!

I remember when if you were a few pence short they would say `pay me back next time` you never get that nowadays!

Anonymous said...

So we stand on the cusp of a New Age, where we buy only British from local Brits with the few quid we have left?
Whats wrong with that?
We buy from farm gates and markets, local bakers, butchers and charity shops that do local British charity.
We ignore "corner shops" unless a fellow patriot owns it, we make do with last years kitchen, couch or cooker.
This is a good time lads, embrace it with your wallet.