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On average this saved people a lot of time and money. One thing to remember is that most women were stay-at-home mums and were grocery shopping every day. But

On average this saved people a lot of time and money. One thing to remember is that most women were stay-at-home mums and were grocery shopping every day. But once you have a car and a fridge (1970s) you can go to the supermarket once a week only, which saves a massive amount of time, especially when you now also have a job. High streets need to be attractive. Old, dodgy shops are dead, clothing shops have a hard time. That's the way it is and best to go with the flow than trying to put things back "the way they were". New housing developments are awful, though. The price gap between nice neighbourhoods with "old houses" and those will just keep growing.

ChatGTP 3y ago
Looking forward or Amazon deliveries to my lounge, and generative AI TV shows that go forever. Also AI generated events such has the superbowl. Everyday!
DrBazza 3y ago
It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small. In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000 people) has no butchers or bakers left. It also does not have a town centre supermarket. It does however have McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Costa, kebab shops, and so on. You can probably guess correctly, that my local town centre is like ghost town. It is extremely depressing that the UK is becoming like this, whilst at the same time planning rules and regulations (or lack thereof) are encouraging the centralization of shopping habits into large supermarkets in the chase for profits by the house builders.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say... The advantage of an independent butcher is that you can order in advance or ask them to source/prepare special things (in my experience that's the only way to find fresh lamb kidneys, for instance). But that is less and less the case, and people are less and less interested. And, again, it is much more expensive.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Those big chains drain money from the local economy though. Small independent stores only send the cost of supplies/restocking out of the local economy. Chains mean there is continuously less money circulating in the town and requires people who import money from other local economies. Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      > Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow. This is not true in the US. There are lots of places with chains (everywhere?) that are growing.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        This is true for suburbs because the money comes from outside of the local economy since those people mostly commute to work. For actual small towns, nowhere near a large city, it's quite a different story, almost reminiscent of a 3rd world country.
    - DrBazza 3y ago
      > Those big chains drain money from the local economy though Exactly, all revenue goes back to HQ, and then off to somewhere else. In some cases being part of a large company means the smaller branches that don't barely break even stay open and it's "good" for those towns in boom years. But as soon as there's an economic downturn, they are the first stores to be closed.
  - sneed_chucker 3y ago
    > Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country. They are precisely not the local economy as much as those other shops for that reason.

ChatGTP 3y ago

Looking forward or Amazon deliveries to my lounge, and generative AI TV shows that go forever. Also AI generated events such has the superbowl. Everyday!

DrBazza 3y ago

It's not so much 'the way they were', rather, I'd prefer to live in a small town with a butchers, bakers, and grocers, so that I'm spending my money in the local economy, and that I'm getting higher quality produce, and back to the original post, shops that are within reasonable walking distance. The number of towns or villages in my area that have this are vanishingly small. In fact, my medium sized town (20-30,000 people) has no butchers or bakers left. It also does not have a town centre supermarket. It does however have McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Costa, kebab shops, and so on. You can probably guess correctly, that my local town centre is like ghost town. It is extremely depressing that the UK is becoming like this, whilst at the same time planning rules and regulations (or lack thereof) are encouraging the centralization of shopping habits into large supermarkets in the chase for profits by the house builders.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. Independent butchers and grocers have mostly disappeared because they are expensive and less convenient. Places were you can still find some are usually either 'posh' or where the local demographics has special meat/dietary requirements, shall we say... The advantage of an independent butcher is that you can order in advance or ask them to source/prepare special things (in my experience that's the only way to find fresh lamb kidneys, for instance). But that is less and less the case, and people are less and less interested. And, again, it is much more expensive.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  Those big chains drain money from the local economy though. Small independent stores only send the cost of supplies/restocking out of the local economy. Chains mean there is continuously less money circulating in the town and requires people who import money from other local economies. Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > Having chains in your town means that within a generation or two, the town will be effectively dead and hardly ever grow. This is not true in the US. There are lots of places with chains (everywhere?) that are growing.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      This is true for suburbs because the money comes from outside of the local economy since those people mostly commute to work. For actual small towns, nowhere near a large city, it's quite a different story, almost reminiscent of a 3rd world country.
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    > Those big chains drain money from the local economy though Exactly, all revenue goes back to HQ, and then off to somewhere else. In some cases being part of a large company means the smaller branches that don't barely break even stay open and it's "good" for those towns in boom years. But as soon as there's an economic downturn, they are the first stores to be closed.
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  > Well, McDonalds, Costa, etc. provide jobs to locals, especially young people. That's the local economy as much as other shops. McDonald's and the rest provide very low wage jobs to locals while leveraging their economies of scale to undercut local competitors on price, while all the profits go into the balance sheet of a company that's headquartered far away, sometimes in a different country. They are precisely not the local economy as much as those other shops for that reason.