In the Era of Coronavirus Is the High Street Facing Collapse?

They employ millions, and form the heartbeat of the economy, but are jobs on high streets - in retail and hospitality - now facing wipeout?

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[imovertheocean]

we shouldn't be structuring our lives around consumption but we need spaces to congregate physically

[JayeshPatel-ekou]

"Build Back Better" - Boris Johnson (2020).
"We Are The Builders" - George Osborne (2015).
Talking out of their arses.

[NoLiesWereTold]

I'm tired of Labour constantly getting it wrong and not getting the mood of the nation. Focusing on a single market and not the entire country / economy as a whole. So Boring

[DiM]

Not Pizza Express! Who will tempt Prince Andrew away from underage girls now?!

[tomsemmens]

Here in NZ we've seen a similar phenomena, while of course the tourism and foreign student sectors have been wiped out. The government response has been to immediately spend an additional two billion on apprenticeship and retraining schemes to soak up the unemployed (once the wage subsidy ends, although no one knows how much unemployment we will have - around 6-8% is the current guess) in useful training and to try and pivot the economy away from being so dependent on low paid jobs in retail, mass tourism jobs and the like. Luckily for NZ, we've currently eliminated COVID-19 which means that currently we are back to normal in bars, restaurants, concerts, sports event etc so unemployment is still only 4%, the economy is doing much better than expected and our primary exports are going gangbusters due to disrupted food supply chains elsewhere. NZ is always at it's richest when a global crisis converts our isolation into a massive advantage - we were briefly the richest country in the world in GDP per head when there just 1.2 million people here and on the back of the demand for food and wool caused by WW2 and the Korean war.

[deevy]

High street retail is certaintly dead. If we had something like UBI, then hospitality would boom as people will have more leisure time.

[FRU.No.]

You'd be a great lad to have 10 socially distanced pints down the pub with and have a good rant. Excellent communicator

[CrazyMama]

Just showed this video to my daughter, she's been asking me loads of questions this last year about to politics (I've been learning loads by trying to help her, not my intellectual comfort zone shall we say lol), one repeat question she's kept asking since he got elected is if BoJo is such a poor leader, which she's concluded herself, then why do people seem to like him. She's watched alot, not all, of his addresses in parliament and vs KeirS. I showed her this video, the two clips, showed her BoJos bodylanguage, way of talking and emphasising words to make himself seem powerful, confident, in control. I pointed out that most of his words are meaningless babble meant to sound good, he easily remembered but still vague enough that he can avoid outright lying (mostly). Where as KeirS seems softer, more easy going and unhurried, like you could easily have a brew with him, less aggressive even. I told her BoJo isn't in charge cos he's good as leader but cos he knows how to make lots of people who don't want to think too much about it think he's better than he is.

[JonathanSwiftUK]

Some retailers have struggled for years, Woolworths, BHS, Maplin. WH Smiths in London is largely in the train stations and very expensive. Anything related to travel will struggle. Woolworths and Maplin had confused and dysfunctional stores. BHS saddled itself with too much debt. The emits are staycationing, so at least the tourist sector won't be devastated. Nobody seems to have a plan or vision for replacement work - and we don't have unlimited time. Green jobs aren't going to provide large numbers of jobs. We'll have to manufacture more, get back into agriculture, produce more food here, make toilet rolls here, pharmaceutical companies, increase technology services. As Aaron says rents must come down, much more house-building is needed.

[dowlingthebakuninbot]

Its not simply 10 million receiving wages from the state. Many in full time employment, who have not been furloughed, are being subsidised via, U.C, Housing benefits. 10 million on top is on top of a massive expenditure. Boris said we won't return to austerity. That is a promise he will not keep. Many in low paid employment worked throughout the crisis, neither did they work from home. Now is the time to organise and not the government backtrack.

[antony]

Brilliant video, I've seen the slow degradation of the high street here in Brighton over my life and it is a perfect representation of late stage capitalism that is now being accelerated by the pandemic

[abzthedabz]

The UKs economy will become even more reliant on the city.

[mdkvisions]

I agree if you don't do something with landlords and stabilisation of rent across the country your are going have massive problems, America is going through it right now

[mikegriggs]

Great Show. Well Said Aaron. The people need to hear this. The workers need to understand this...
Around the World. It's happening every where.
Thank You

[pauljarvis]

Tax and spend? That is a fundamental misunderstanding of how government operates. He should interview Stephanie Kelton, or Richard Murphy. I'm sure people would like to see MMT feature more prominently.

[juliewake]

It’s a very similar thing to what happened to the mining and shipbuilding industries. They disappeared and were never really replaced, leaving many people out of work, but to be replaced for many years, if at all.

[hari.n.a]

Falmouth is a university town, it's hardly even the most at risk from a tourism crash

[cammino]

Instead of pumping billions into corporations for nothing, the government should invest in housing, infrastructure, farming, alternative energies to create jobs

[owaindyfrig]

Lisa Nandy was saying that with her focus on towns though and Novara was just taking the piss out of her. Should we start taking her points seriously now?

[robertproctor]

Just when we needed a radical, bold and challenging labour party. What have we got. A party too scared to do anything in case it loses more votes. If the Labour party can't sort itself out then we need those with ideas to leave and set up something else. We are facing a Covid crisis, an economic crisis, an environmental crisis and we are not going to solve these without radical action. Now I'd the time for radical action and people will be much more open to it as they start to suffer even more from the failings of our current economic system.