I was in a Welsh town yesterday doing some specialist shopping and I was shocked by what I saw. I’m not going to name the town and this is for two reasons. The first is that this town has already suffered enough from the Covid restrictions and I do not wish to put people off going there and shopping there. Secondly I would not wish to see this town targeted by Labour Party tyrant Mark Drakeford and his goons for punishment because I’ve mentioned it.
I’d been to this place in the run up to Christmas before and although it’s never been rammed like the Bluewater or a Lakeside shopping centres, it’s always been busy, yesterday this place looked like a ghost town. Shops that due to their small size have to have restrictions on large bags and backpacks because these particular shops are popular with the middle class outdoorsy literary crowd, were empty. In addition to this there appeared to be a Welsh government edict in place limiting the number of people allowed in some shops to two. This is fatal for these shops as people often browse for a considerable amount of time prior to purchase and this rule obviously limits the amount of sales that a shop can have if they can only have two people in the shop at one time.
In several of these shops I was the only customer or the only one of two customers where in previous years these shops would be pretty busy. Gift shops and craft shops were also pretty empty and whilst waiting for my wife to finish her purchases in one particular shop I saw a usually popular outdoors equipment and clothing shop only get one customer in ten minutes. Normally this shop would be very busy at all times of the year with people purchasing stuff that they may have had at home but may have forgotten to bring with them, such as the very necessary, because it’s Wales, waterproof coat.
As for the catering trade this was also pretty light when it came to customers. A fish and chip shop that normally does brisk business at lunchtime now has a policy of not opening during the day and is only open of an evening. Mark Drakeford’s Corona restrictions has killed off in less than two years a healthy level of business in a town that took to my knowledge at least five decades to create the environment for these businesses to start and build.
Corona restrictions have robbed the people of this town of three normally healthy business trading periods, times where people flock to the town to shop at the pop up shops that open in the spring and in the regular all year round businesses. The local businesses have also been robbed of the summer trade and in this particular town the gains made in spring and summer would normally make up for a much quieter Autumn and Winter, excepting Christmas that is, trading period. The restrictions that have hit everything from bookshops to outdoors shops to catering places have not just robbed the business owners of one year of trade but of two.
Whilst the Covid restrictions have been bad for businesses across the United Kingdom in Wales it’s been particularly bad. Mark Drakeford and his Welsh Labour Party chums have taken already onerous and business destroying Covid restriction policies and gold plated them, making them even more onerous and strict than the ones in England.
What I saw yesterday I can only describe as Drakeford’s Disaster. The result of policies that have failed to contain or even minimise the spread of Covid but which have turned a thriving business town and one that people visit because it’s often one of the few places where different purveyors of a particular product can be found concentrated in one place, into a ghost town. Having visited this town in the run up to Christmas for many years I’d say that what I saw on the street whilst waiting for my wife to buy some stuff in a particular shop, was footfall that is probably 20% of what it would normally be at this time of year and roughly 5% of what it would be in a normal summer.
For two years this town has been robbed of the main events and fairs that bring people into the town and who spend money in the town’s shops both specialist and general along with the various cafes and restaurants. If there is another cancellation of next year’s main event and fairs then I can’t see a future for this town. It will have been destroyed by the Socialists in Cardiff whose only response to any problem is more business destroying authoritarianism.
I accept that Covid is a dangerous disease for some and I’m also thankful that vaccines may have bought enough time for this disease to hopefully burn itself out, but the disease is not the only worry. In particular I worry that the response to Covid in the form of the various restrictions that have been imposed by Drakeford and his cronies may end up doing more societal, economic and human damage than Covid itself has caused.
The town in question is one that I could never afford to live in, unless I won the Lottery big time, but is one which I really love visiting and shopping in and which I want to see thrive and keep its character, has been put on its knees by Labour politicians who have no care or no concern about small businesses or the people who run them. Welsh Labour seem to think that there is nothing worse than Corona. The problem is that there is indeed a lot worse and one of those worse things is the wholesale destruction of a unique and high quality trading environment the collapse of which will bring penury, despair and horribly reduced life chances to those who have the misfortune to have to run businesses under the misrule of Mark Drakeford and his Socialist destroyers.
I’m seeing decent and much needed businesses in apparent great trouble because of Drakeford and his Covid policies. This would be bad enough as a situation in itself but it is made worse by Drakeford disregarding the rules that he forces on the Welsh and flaunting his rule breaking by dancing sans mask or social distancing at a Dwalli event in Cardiff. Drakeford is a tyrant and a hypocrite but I doubt that he will pay for that by losing power, the Labour party is so strong in Wales that you could elect a cat turd if it was emblazoned with a red rosette. The people who will pay for Drakefords disastrous Covid policies are the small businesses that his policies have all but destroyed.
I drove through London on Sunday – lunch at brother’s house in Kingston – and though all the shops were open, and traffic was busy in places, it was nothing like you’d expect on the last weekend before Christmas. And there didn’t seem to be a lot of people out, either.
I’ll be going into Stratford (or maybe Canary Wharf, haven’t made up my mind yet) for a mooch around tomorrow, when I’m on my Christmas break. And I’m not expecting that to be as busy either. We’ll see.
Has the current crisis merely accelerated the process that was happening anyway. Our Xmas shopping has been done almost entirely online for a few years now. Wrapping paper and a few extra decs came from Asda when I did my regular shop.
There’s still stuff tht is not easy to get online and where it is better to browse the shelves to be sure that you get what you want. I agree that the current crisis has given a push to what already was happening. As an aside we might be returning to a situation that existed during the Victorian era where an independent shop would keep samples of things for customers to look at but who would order the goods the manufacturer if there was a sale.
Speaking of Asda, I went in this morning to get the fresh veggies in for Xmas dinner. It was busy but not as packed as it sometimes is at this time of year. It is a weekday of course so some will still be working. Mask compliance was close to 100%, I only saw about three other people without one. Little hope of mass civil disobedience come the next pointless effing lockdown.
Been about 90% compliance when I was last in a supermarket but what I noticed and which is interesting is a much smaller number of Mask Karens about kicking off about the unmasked. The compliance might only be politeness rather than people actually believing in the masks?
I went along with the earlier mask mandates but this time I’m putting my foot down. I haven’t encountered any hostility or anyone asking me to mask up*. I actually carry a mask in my pocket, I would comply if asked because I don’t think that it is such a big deal. Unfortunately I think that mask wearing serves as an opinion poll on whether the general population would resist any subsequent lockdown rules. The depressing answer seems to be that they would behave just like, I know that it’s a cliche, effing sheep.
*Ironically, the only place that I have been asked to wear a mask is at the local cottage hospital and the local doctor’s surgery, the people who should actually know better.
Similar here. They made some sense when we knew little about Covid but less so now. I would say that some people are wearing them out of politeness or because they can’t be arsed getting into a row and others are wearing them because they have been locked into a cycle of fear, these are the ones you see wearing masks in the street. I’m seeing less challenges to the unmasked in some of my small local shops but in the Welsh town I went to I got the impression that everyone fears being grassed up to Drakefords Covid brownshirts so this didn’t seem to be happening there. I’ve also seen only one family with the little kids in masks recently whereas this was worryingly common at this time last year. I think tht people are pissed off despite still wearing the masks. The ‘Partygate’ stuff is starting to cut through to the nominally non political and the long term effect of this could be politically interesting.