Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
The future of the High Street: lattes or Ladbrokes?
Welcome, then, to one very depressing vision of the future. Lattes, book festivals, and high-end casualwear if you're lucky; pound shops, Ladbrokes and boarded-up businesses if you're not. If 21st-century Britain often feels like two countries, we may not have seen the half of it.
An article in the Guardian examines the future of British high streets, as the chain stores like HMV are squeezed out by the rise and rise of the supermarkets. Now which of the two scenarios above do you think is likely to happen to our local high streets like Wood Green?
Tags for Forum Posts: high streets
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
-
Why don't Ladbrokes do skinny lattes?
-
Permalink Reply by Liz on
-
The Billy Hill's near the St Ann's bus stop used to do coffee. Costa Coffee had nothing to fear (other coffee outlets are available). Not sure if the bookies still bother with all those little extras to make you feel like you are in Vegas in the morning.
Judging by comments coming out of Crouch End twitter streams, you *can* have too many lattes and buns.
Neither vision presented at the end of the article (quoted above) seem particularly attractive to me.
-
Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
-
The FT featured this survey on their front page last week and the point that stuck in my mind was, bookmakers increasing their share of the high street over the last two years by 5%. Betting shops are not a normal business, carry no stock, have no deliveries, few fittings and consequently have low overheads (though taxation takes a big chunk of the profits).
These characteristics means this peculiar business can normally afford to pay top dollar for the prime high street sites that come on the market, often high-profile corner sites in prominent locations, such as oppostie Turnpike Lane tube or the attempt by Paddy Power on Everybodies Music oppostite Seven Sisters.
The Gambling Act that limits the crack-cocaine of gambling, the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, to four per premises, means that there is a big incentive to apply for additional premises, which is why we sometimes find more than one outlet of the same company in close proximity.
Why the New Labour Home Secretary selected four as a limit is unknown, but it was seen as an attempt to limit the social damage done by the FOBTs. One irony is that if the limit were fewer than four, or more than four, either way, there might be less incentive to open additional premises. Fewer than four would limit the viability of new premises; more than four would increase the profits from existing premises and might reduce the need to incur extra cost & overheads by opening new betting shops.
-
Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
-
Yes Clive, Tessa Jowell possibly got it almost exactly "right" for some High Streets. As for her motivations, I see nothing but the best of intentions in the face of a massive lobbying effort by the gambling industry.
-
-
John, I think good government should include resisting massive lobbying efforts by self-interested commercial groups. Some groups, I seem to remember including church groups, opposed this über-permissive legislation but were taken little heed of. The Gambling Act (2005) was a government bill, supported by the government, voted for and passed.
The government had not been an innocent party in all this. They were either fools or knaves. One of the few things I would credit Gordon Brown with, is halting the spread of casinos – a decision he made within a day or two of becoming leader.
The limit of four FOBT's was perhaps the only concession to concerns about the social damage that the Act was about to wreak. It would have been better if these machines were limited to fewer than four per premises. As David Lammy MP has pointed out, they share more characteristics with casinos than with traditional betting shops.
-
Permalink Reply by pamish on
-
Just because I need to rant, this is as good a place as any.
Tesco's Tottenham has now ditched its ordinary tills in the evening.
Tesco's Tottenham, big store, open 18 hours a day. 10pm tonight Monday. Two staff plus one on security: one guy frantically spinning between the wretched robot self-staffing machines trying to calm those of us shouting at the robots, and one woman on the 10-items-or-less aisle with a queue 20 people long with laden trolleys, those who can't face the robots. (Plus a couple of shelf-filler guys trundling trolleys somewhere in the back.)
So, front-of-house total wage cost, let's say £30 an hour. Maybe £50 an hour with on-costs.
Anyone know the likely hourly turnover of a shop this size?
Latest Tesco half-year profits (not turnover), £1.6bn.The unemployed claimant count rate in Haringey is 6.3%.
© 2024 Created by Hugh.
Powered by
