Things that worked better in the old days

[blondeseaside]

Just been for a drive thru Mcdonalds. In the good old days, the whole menu would be hanging above the car on a metal sign. What do we have now? One big screen that just shows a couple of menu "highlights", so it only showed one wrap, one burger....so yeah, we get that you do burgers and wraps, but which ones? Where is the full menu? There are 16 burger types at Mcdonalds, but only 1 burger was on the screen. There are 4 wrap types, but only the Tikka one was on the screen (so I ordered that). How on earth are you meant to know what you want to order, if they only show a fraction of the menu? I asked Gemini and she said you're meant to look at the menu on your phone now....but I am driving!

First world problem, but it did my head in!

The car park at a local beauty spot didn’t work , so we went somewhere else. How much trade may be lost by these stupid machines?

They can't survive in isolation. They relied on other shops to draw people, i.e. parades of shops that used to be all over towns, the "high" street even in small towns and villages, etc.

People aren't going to go to the out of town supermarket and then stop off at Mrs Miggin's fishmongers on the way home, especially when the council have pedestrianised the road or put down double yellows and other traffic calming meaning you have to park, pay, and then traipse down to the shop!

Peoples' habits have also changed. Now women work, they don't go shopping every day or two and instead do a "one off" every weekend or even get it delivered.

We had a family newsagents back in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It was on a parade of around a dozen shops, including greengrocer, grocer, butcher, fishmonger, chemist, hardware shop, bakery. A bloody great Asda was built at that end of town and trade dropped virtually overnight. Over the subsequent couple of years, the other shops closed one by one leaving us the last shop standing, but trade was dead and ours ended up closing too. Before the Asda, people would come round and go to 2/3/4 different shops, but they went to Asda instead, and the number coming dwindled as the shops closed and there were fewer shops to come for.

So, to answer you question, the shops closed because their customers stopped using them!

Pavements worked better when they were just for pedestrians. Now they are a no man’s land of random silent bikers who can take you out at any time. They never have a bell to signal that they are behind you and will not use their voices to alert you.
They shouldn't even be on the pavements though! If a cyclist shouts or dings at me on the pavement, I just keep walking (if they're going slowly) or, if they're going fast, stop dead. They can find their fucking way around me if they will cycle illegally.
They always shout/gesticulate at me for that too <<shrug>>

Because the profitable bits of the post service have been siphoned off by the likes of tnt leaving the royal mail trying to run a public utility on the scraps that are left. Infuriates me.

I prefer Aldi and Lidl because, although they still aren't perfect, they do tend to have far far fewer types of products available.

I don't want to be sold six different flavours of chocolate x eight different brands. I want all my fruit, veg, bread, meat and pasta etc to turn into food.

Our local Lidl has an instore bakery and a lot of chocolate. But we have lost our local bakery with traditional local bread and nice cake along with most other shops...greengrocer, fish shop, florists, hardware, and even our greasy spoon!
We have bookies and barbers and pizza places though.

Unfortunately, Royal Mail didn't adapt when home shopping/internet started to become popular. They were VERY late to introduce proper tracking etc. It let their competitors into the market who were cheaper and offered a better range of services, not to mention Sunday deliveries, which, again, Royal Mail were far to late to introduce.

You need to get a Firestick - they are great to take on holiday!

And they had the items in stock and you were not told to go and order it on the internet !
In the days of old, sizing was fairly consistent. And many clothes were made in the UK too.

I remember when I was young shopping with my mother you went to a fishmongers who had fish all laid out with ice. A proper fruit and veg shop. Butcher and Marks and Spencers delicatessen shop for cheeses and bacon. There was a separate shop for Marks Deli then. It always smelt lovely in there and everything wrapped in greaseproof paper individually. Polished tiled flooring. There were individual hardware shops where you really could buy one nail if you wanted to. And bakeries of course.
I am glad I experienced that. The high street had fashion stores and two department shops. Music shops selling vinyl. Boots of course. Woolworths.
What do we have now ? A all in one Marks and Spencers. No individual service. Clothes made abroad, not stocked. No fishmonger to speak of, not one that knows you. No butcher either. And out of town supermarkets where people argue over car parking.

We reap what we sow. "We" chose supermarkets and online instead of independent small shops - now they've gone. Likewise the demise of small/friendly pubs, cafes, restaurants, etc. The "chains" have taken over because that's where "we" have chosen to go and turned our backs on small independents.

I suppose that the independent places couldnt keep up with the chains on price and so on. I do agree that a lot of it is our own fault, but once the rot set in then it’s hard to stop isn’t it and they offered connivence and longer opening hours and cheaper prices.

Many of these things exist where I live or nearby.
I don't say that to sound insufferable, more to say it's not all bad news; these things are still around and used and loved by at least some of the community.

You make is sound as if I am solely personally responsible !

IMO, councils have played their part in the demise of the high street, by treating motorists as cash cows.

We used to be able to park on our high street for free. The council introduced complicated parking charges on an app, ignoring the local opposition to it. There is no O2 reception in one area of the town centre and both of us have phones on networks, based on O2.

Rather than wandering around, trying to get reception, we might as well go to a large supermarket, where parking is free and we can get everything.

DH’s home town had free parking, and shoppers came from all the local towns, because of it, while their own high streets probably died.

Councils have done this all over the country!

It's not just prices, it's convenience. We had a newsagents shop. The supermarkets don't sell newspapers/magazines any cheaper, yet people bought from Asda instead of us, for their convenience. We were open 12 hours per day so it wasn't restrictive opening hours either - in fact, on Sundays, we were open longer than the Asda!

Likewise cafes, pubs, etc., the independents aren't particularly more expensive, but people clearly preferred the chains or simply chose not to bother anymore.

Yep, nail on the head. It's not just money grabbing, it's the way they want to "punish" drivers by pedestrianisations, one way systems, traffic calming, pedestrian traffic lights all over town, bus gates, etc. Drivers won't put up with it when there are alternatives, i.e. out of town retail parks, big supermarkets, etc. Even offices like solicitors, accountants, vets, some GP surgeries are leaving our city centre because of the "anti car" council and moving onto out of town commercial sites with free/easy access and parking. The councils are killing town centres with their "vision" of everyone travelling in by bus or bike for the "cafe culture".

IMO, councils have played their part in the demise of the high street, by treating motorists as cash cows.

Not just that. I live in a borough with a very large sporting arena with regular matches. The locality has cafes, restaurants, bars, and of course the obligatory barbers (about ten), and vape shops. There's no interest in the council in encouraging other shops because all the profits are made by the shops providing to the sporting crowds. That was admitted a few years ago in a survey the council ran - on match day profits of cafes, bars and the like are up. Everyone else's are down because people go elsewhere to avoid the crowds or don't shop on those days.

We do have some decent shops - a new baker (if you want to pay £ 4 a loaf), Waitrose and a few others. Inevitably the new shops fail because there's little footfall to sustain them; because there are few other shops actually selling day to day stuff.

A while back a local councillor was wittering on about making the place a '15 minute city.' I assume she hasn't walked through the centre and looked at how few shops there are where anyone would shop regularly, ie day to day. Offhand I can think of about five in half a mile of shops.

Our gp moved to the fabulous new primary care centre a mile out of town. It has an antenatal and baby clinic so the GPS don't need to provide that. There is no chiropodist or physiotherapist or dietician on site...there are rooms set aside for these.
There is a clinic for optical checks for people with diabetes. They need someone to drive them home because of eyedrops. There is no bus. The local taxi business closed because of covid.

A marvellous example of a lack of strategic thinking and communication. Everyone in their own bubble.

Delia Smith says in one of her books "the traditional fishmonger has been wiped out by those horrid yellow lines".

Or you buy tickets as a present and set it up so the recipients won't have any problems getting into the venue only to get a phone call saying that they're not being allowed in because the account/cardholder isn't present and then having to drive 40 minutes to the venue to show them your card. Then you get to the venue clutching your card only for the poor sod in the ticket office to have to tell you that their incompetent colleague didn't press the right button and you and your card weren't actually needed after all because the correct information was on their system all the time.

Exactly. Just like politicians (and holier-than-thou Mumsnetters) make it sound as if we are solely and personally responsible for climate change, and other woes.

Is it our fault that trains are prohibitively expensive, so we travel by car because it is (slightly) more affordable?
Is it our fault that we have to work to pay the ever-increasing bills and taxes that politicians keep throwing at us, so we have to travel to work, because not every job is working from home?
It is our fault that so much stuff is supplied in wasteful plastic packaging?
See also "Lockdown lasted as long as it did because you didn't wear a mask."
"Why did you have children with this man?"

Markets used to be mainly made up of stalls selling fruit and veg, meat, fish and so on. Now they're full of overpriced fast food vans, coffee stations and stalls selling absolute shite. There's a huge stall on our local market which is literally just selling AI images of people's dogs.

Running a sports club used to be much simpler as well. Now there's so many rules and regulations and so much red tape to tangle everything up, it's hardly surprising that people don't want to volunteer.

Is it our fault that since EVERYTHING is so much more expensive now, most of us will go for the cheaper way out of necessity, even if it is not the most "ethical" way? Shopping at supermarkets, online from big suppliers, clothes from Primark, etc? Lots of us can't afford to "do the right thing".