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  • A curious phenomena is that of people buying from the likes of Amazon without a single thought and then bemoaning the state of the high street, and the high street operators assuming that access by car is the only way to get goods sold in competition with the online competition. This has increased vehicle use enormously. It also displays a curious ignorance of the big picture.

    In addition there is the constant pressure to buy new stuff, and the consequences of that. The news reports a decline in sales and profits as bad news, when actually it might be exactly what we need right now.

    In our town we have a lot of empty shops but the rents (and to some extent) the business rates are the same for someone wanting to run a social enterprise as a high street chain. I ran one for a few years in an old shop, but had the devil's own job getting help with a reduction in the rates from the council, even though we attracted hundreds of people into the town every week (and hardly any of them by car), and were a not for profit organisation. When we lost the use of the building we were never able to get any help finding somewhere new, the local authority the business improvement district, other traders were completely uninterested.

  • people buying from the likes of Amazon without a single thought and then bemoaning the state of the high street

    I define British-ness by this (I am forrin and in my country the online shops are failing after a huge boom as people prefer local and are generally more empathetic)

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