YHK - yet another hacker news clone

In the uk virtually all thrift stores are run by a well known charity and thus the locals call them charity shops.

Progress will unavoidably kill more and more physical shops, but this has huge cons: cities are emptier and more dangerous.

In the average European mediterranean city shops provide lights, vibe, safety.

As people feel less secure, because it's getting dark at 5-6 pm half the year (the time people usually leave work) and shops are closed, they also go downtown less accelerating the death of other businesses.

And the only people on the streets are either those returning home, drunks, or immigrants doing god knows what. And this progressive decay accelerates. The only shops left are then bought en masse by foreign entrepeneurs, often working the place with their families 16 hours per day to squeeze pennies.

Any random downtown in Italy bar the most touristic places that have people all year suffers of this, even major centers (100k+ citizens).

Glasgow at one point had eight American Candy Stores that were always empty but been operational for years. Not even good American Candy.

To be specific, Amazon (its business model) killed small* goods shops in city centers.

The only businesses still open are services (food/restaurants, health, etc). Because those need you to actually bring your own body near the bodies of others.

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*: and big, see the Galerie Lafayette/BHV struggles in Paris, they sell items that can largely be delivered in 2 days buying directly from the brand or from Amazon

And the ones left aren’t paying taxes, or wages.

Even if you control for the Amazon factor or the Walmart factor by looking at services, the bulk of these "successful" businesses are either chains or owned by a bigger corperate entity that can do kind of the same thing.

It's also a vicious circle : Because there is less and less physical shop selling specific goods, you have to turn to the internet, which mean local businesses get less traffic and die off. If you have any slightly niche hobby and do not live in a major metropolis, you are SoL. As an example, I would have to go 200km away to buy raw leather and leatherwork tools despite living in one of the biggest city in my country.

The manufacturing employees, such as there are, drive everywhere, often live far from town, shop online or at out-of-town megastores.

It's an individualist, selfish culture since Thatcher or before, there's little of the pride in local businesses or local culture that France enjoys.

Dumb Brits became pure consumers since 1982, and blame black people and Muslims for why there's "no British culture anymore", instead of recognising their role in making it happen.

Good manufacturing jobs were gutted and sent overseas with no thought or care what the impact on communities would be. In some places families are now on the third generation on benefits because there simply aren't any jobs and the ones that are available require skills that people don't have because they aren't taught them in school due to the obsession with the Victorian education model and the shortage of skilled teachers and training opportunities for young people.

At this point nothing except for a total economic rebuild will save the UK high street and there is zero political will to do that because the current broken system makes certain people money.

Also for Frenchman to say re les Anglais "what I perceived was their refinement"... there's a joke that the only people who think the English are refined are Americans (as we are a savage people).

And it’s true. Northampton is doing pretty great compared to a majority of the U.K.

As a Brit that’s moved to Australia let me say the kebab shops here are a revelation. The meat is nicely cooked, generally identifiable, and not swimming in grease. The bread is usually more like real Greek gyros bread, the salad fresh…

My memories of Kebabs in the UK is of very dubious slices of something coming off the elephant-leg at the back of the store, nothing you would ever consider when sober.

Modern döner-kebab meat is rarely the quality shawarma of a century ago. It is highly processed and basically a big hot dog.

Or just accept the world has moved on.

it never ceases to baffle me to see the progressive cosmopolitan types being utterly detached from the reality they live in.

We've build our urban centers as places that prioritize cars over people, and we're suddenly confused as to why people don't want to spend time in them.

I will say, that sounds expensive for parking, but completely not out of line with what I would expect to pay for premium (location) parking, though I'm used to VHCOL parking rates and maybe you don't live in that big of a city.

You're advocating central planning.

The real problem is that it's very hard to build stuff in the UK. This is a choice that the people have made and the status quo still continue until they choose differently.