SOME things may get better in 2025, but the British high street will not be one of them.
Business experts at the Centre For Retail Research predict that 17,350 outlets will shut over the coming year.
Shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs are expected to turn off their lights for the last time — and it is predicted that an estimated 14,660 of them will be small, independent outlets that are the lifeblood of our communities.
These small businesses give character, soul and identity to our neighbourhoods.
In this world of giant chains, they are the reason that home looks like home.
The CRR predicts that these closures will result in a staggering 201,953 job losses.
What happened to the high street?
Online shopping happened, of course. And the shoplifting epidemic.
And the war against the car in our major cities has deterred the casual shopper from driving to visit retailers who are fighting for survival.
But the main reason why the British high street is about to have its worst year in history is because Labour is simply not listening to local businesses.
In the digital age of easy, one-click shopping, where your heart’s desire is delivered to your door — or more likely chucked over your next-door neighbour’s bush — the high street was always going to be in a fight for survival.
But this business- illiterate Government is hammering small high street outlets with overheads that will kill them.
The hike in Employer National Insurance contributions by Chancellor Rachel Reeves has made it vastly more expensive to employ someone in the real world.
Her inflation-busting increase in the minimum wage also makes it harder to hire staff.
Rachel from accounts is not elevating the poorest-paid workers by raising the minimum wage — she is chucking them on the dole queue.
The last government gave small traders — who had been badly battered by the closures of Covid — rates relief of up to 75 per cent.
This relief is now being slashed to 40 per cent.
The commercial property firm Altus Group calculates that the average high street shop’s business rate will rise from £3,589 to £8,613 in the coming tax year. For thousands of small businesses, this is pure poison.
And the problem is that there is not a living soul at the top of this virulently anti-business, anti-growth Government who understands the pressures of running a business.
The rot has already begun. The shuttered stores. The vibrant little local cafes and restaurants and shops going the same way as the pubs that had been there for generations.
The hard-working men and women who devote their lives to these places create more than wealth. They create communities.
They make neighbourhoods live and breathe. And as I watch my once-vibrant high street slowly dying, I keep hearing that old song by The Specials.
This town, is coming like a ghost town.
Behind the stark statistics is a mountain of misery.
Those 200,000 redundancies will cause profound anxiety in thousands of families.
There will be countless hearts broken when those 17,000-plus businesses close their doors.
And the quiet death of the British high street will have an impact on all of us.
Our quality of life, our sense of community and our connection to each other.
So love your local high street — while you still can.
RICHARD Gere expresses fears that cinemas will die out as more people get comfy watching films on their TV.
But a few days ago I went to my local cinema – and to my surprise found it was totally packed.
No, we were not there for Kung Fu Panda 4.
We were there to watch Anora – an adult Cinderella story about a sex worker who falls in love with a fabulously rich man.
Yes, it sounds a lot like Richard Gere’s biggest hit, Pretty Woman, where the golden-hearted hooker was unforgettably played by Julia Roberts.
But Anora is like an adults-only version of Pretty Woman.
Anora tells the story of a young New York stripper who falls for the even younger son of a Russian oligarch.
His rich Russian parents go mental.
Anora is not as romantic as Pretty Woman, and a lot more cynical.
But Mikey Madison as the stripper, is as electrifying as Julia was in Pretty Woman.
So good, in fact, she is the odds-on bookies’ favourite to win Best Actress at the Oscars, while Anora is favourite for Best Film.
Which proves that we will still go out for a night at the pictures.
If the film is good enough.
DAME Helen Mirren has revealed she stays fit, trim and looking good at 79 with a 12-minute exercise regime designed 75 years ago to improve fitness in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
“Exercise doesn’t mean joining expensive gyms,” says Dame Helen.
The actress is talking about the 5BX – five basic exercises – workout, which is one of the most effective regimes in the world and kept the late Duke of Edinburgh sprightly until his death aged 99.
You don’t have to do very much.
Running on the spot. Leg lifts. Touching your toes – or at least trying.
Very simple exercises, all of them.
And you don’t have to do it for very long. But you do have to do it every day.
As with any fitness regime, consistency is the golden key.
And if you want to shed those extra Christmas pudding pounds – and don’t we all? – then the simple but effective 5BX workout is well worth checking out.
Dame Helen’s endorsement comes as the NHS reveals that nearly two million patients needing hospital treatment in 2023-2024 were clinically obese.
Perhaps instead of all those trendy fat jabs, the NHS should be prescribing the old-fashioned 5BX workout.
ONE of the big hits on Netflix is Fireplace For Your Home – 60 minutes of an old-fashioned log fire burning.
And that’s it. It’s not Squid Game 2 but I loved it. Nothing happens, but the experience is strangely and genuinely compelling.
Which brings me inevitably to With Love, Meghan, the new Netflix show from the Duchess of Sussex.
From what I saw in the trailer – the show doesn’t “drop” until January 15 – Meghan smiles as she shops, cooks and serves food to friends, and she only stops smiling when she needs to laugh.
Her fawning friends all act as though her recipes bring on paroxysms of multiple orgasms. But that’s it.
Nothing else happens.
Meghan may just have a hit on her hands.
IT is hard to imagine, but socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein, who has died in Paris at the age of 84, was once one of the most beautiful women in the world.
It is shocking to see images of the young Jocelyn because she looks like God’s second attempt at Rita Hayworth.
But that is not how the world will remember her.
It will remember her as “the Bride of Wildenstein” or “Catwoman” – the fabulously wealthy lady who spent millions on disfiguring cosmetic surgery that she truly never needed.
Jocelyn, born in Switzerland, became one of the richest women in the world when she caught billionaire husband Alec N Wildenstein in bed with a Russian model.
Jocelyn landed an historic divorce settlement – reportedly £2billion with £80million annually for 13 years.
Jocelyn was rich enough to indulge what became an addiction to cosmetic surgery.
Someone should have stopped her. For was there ever a more eloquent argument against plastic surgery than Jocelyn?
I once sat next to her in a Chinese restaurant and she seemed to struggle to even eat.
Her face and her mouth could not function as a face and a mouth should. Those decades of obsessive cosmetic surgery had gone too far.
The extent of Jocelyn’s tragedy is revealed when you see what she looked like naturally in the first half of her life.
What a shame the world will not remember her that way.
REST in peace, lovely Johnnie Walker, who has died at the age of 79 just two months after presenting his last Sounds Of The 70s show on Radio 2.
I met Johnnie a few times but I knew him best from being a listener.
Johnnie was the last of the old-school DJs.
He wasn’t interested in breaking into TV. He did not see radio as a poor relation. He was there for the records, and he span good ones with a passion that lasted a lifetime.
Thank you for the music, Johnnie.
LONDON’S New Year fireworks are usually the best in the world.
This year they were a party political broadcast brought to you on behalf of the city’s mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan.
Like some narcissistic Third World despot, the event began with the grandiose announcement that the display was “presented by the Mayor of London”.
The music mocked the wicked Tories – Why Does It Always Rain On Me? was meant to bring to mind Rishi Sunak announcing the General Election in a rainstorm, followed by the old Labour anthem, Things Can Only Get Better.
Things can only get better under Labour, Sir Sadiq?
Talk about a blast from the very distant past.
