brighton town centre turning into a ruddy GHOST TOWN

[beorhthelm]

Unless we are all quite happy with Tescos being the only shop on the high street, I'd have thought it would be in everybodys' interest for loss leading to be made illegal.

The death of the high street is a national scandal.

im not actually that bothered by the march of the supermarket. the high street doesn't even try to compete, ie by providing a better service, so why should i care much? as i say, im not sure theres as much "loss" leaders as we think. It wouldn't hurt to outlaw it, but the supplier will still provide cut price deals and you might outlaw the clearance sale in the process.

 

[User removed 4]

Actually, having worked in Croydon last year I was embarrassed by just how much of a proper high street they still have. Shops aplenty in downtown Croydon, and decent ones too. Their House of Fraser is enormous and new shops were popping up all the time. They even have a very good Waitrose now.

The sad truth is that Brighton is failing as a shoppers destination as Churchill Square is SHIT, parking is far too expensive, if it's even possible and all the individual quirky shops of the Lanes and North Laine are being driven out of town by exorbitant council rates.

North Street is starting to look like the hideous mess that is London Road.

I fear for the future of our once great city

I cant believe you think croydon is better than churchill square.

 

[jmsc]

Brighton has a few small things that are, to be fair, very good. The seafront, the Laines, the Pavilion

ffs, where is this mythical "the Laines"?

I know of 'north laine' and of 'the lanes'

Absolutely shocking from someone who lives here!

 

[Perry Milkins]

I cant believe you think croydon is better than churchill square.

Believe it fella...

 

[clapham_gull]

the high street doesn't even try to compete, ie by providing a better service, so why should i care much?

If you are quite happy with a lack of choice and competition and higher prices (the supermarkets give the illusion of choice and fair prices ), then I can't see why you would be worried.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

ffs, where is this mythical "the Laines"?

I know of 'north laine' and of 'the lanes'

Absolutely shocking from someone who lives here!

Id like to know as well. I keep trying to look for it. And Im Brighton born and bred of 37 years.

 

[Tony Meolas Loan Spell]

Oh and Im ashamed to say Im with Mr Bluejuice and Rose Royce in that Croydon HIGH STREET is better than anything Brighton has to offer.

Im discounting the Lanes and North Laines in that.

 

[The Large One]

Id like to know as well. I keep trying to look for it. And Im Brighton born and bred of 37 years.

There were FIVE Laines.

But only one is recognised and retains that name now.

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

There were FIVE Laines.

But only one is recognised and retains that name now.

where were the other 4? surely if the north laine is the most northern of the lot, i can't think where the other 4 would fit in!

 

[The Large One]

West Laine, Little Laine, East Laine, Hilly Laine.

 

[Perry Milkins]

Oh and Im ashamed to say Im with Mr Bluejuice and Rose Royce in that Croydon HIGH STREET is better than anything Brighton has to offer.

Im discounting the Lanes and North Laines in that.

Don't be ashamed. The shopping facilities are well in excess of Western Road and Churchill Sq. Its the scum that you have to rub shoulders with that are the problem.

 

[Bluejuice]

I don't think Croydon is "better" than Brighton, but the shopping facilities are much better for the general high street shopper, in that they have far more filled retail space taken up by big brand name stores and far less empty shells as we have popping up all over town where shops have gone bust and nobody can afford to fill the void - aside from tacky pound shops and tat peddlers.

Churchill Square is NOT a very decent shopping centre. It's not terrible - anyone who's been to Redhill's Belfry Centre will tell you THAT'S a shopping centre with NOTHING to recommend it - however it's not a particularly big mall, in fact in terms of square footage I think Crawley's County Mall is probably larger, particularly when you combine it with all the pedestrianised shopping areas outside as well.

What's really criminal about it is its location and the waste they made when planning it (as a replacement for the original Churchill Square). If you think that one side of it looks out over the sea and yet doesn't have a single window to take advantage of this fact you'll see what I mean. They could have made a really decent feature out of that, something unique and attractive, rather than just another identikit city centre shopping mall with nothing to particularly recommend it. That its flagship store is a fairly crappy Debenhams says it all.

In Croydon they have two huge shopping centres in the centre of town and as I said before the House of Fraser that one of them boasts is a fantastic store which seemingly sells everything under the sun, as well as having genuinely knowledgeable and helpful staff to offer advice. It isn't as cheap as shopping online, obviously, but they do make the experience far more enjoyable than the likes of Debenhams. It is more in line with John Lewis, one of the few major retailers to come out of this current recession with figures to boast about.

Anyway, as for the e-reader revolution I really don't think they're going to take off in the same way as mp3 players have in replacing cd's as seems widely predicted. For a start people don't tend to carry more than one or two books around with them at any one time, meaning your Kindle or other e-reader device doesn't really save you any space as an mp3 player does, storing thousands of songs in your pocket rather than having to carry several tapes around (in the days of walkmans) or cd's/minidiscs. People want a large selection of music when they are on the go because one album might only last less than an hour. Conversely there are few proper novels you'd get through in under an hour and thus taking a paper copy book out with you on the train, plane, bus etc. would normally be sufficient.

It's also worth noting that the mp3 player acted as the death knell for cd's, a media which was already frowned upon by the music snobs. There's nothing special about a cd, it's just a disc carrying data, and that's why it's easy to replace. mp3's have not replaced vinyl which still does a good trade in specialist shops for dj's, collectors and connoisseurs. Vinyl is the medium recorded music will forever call home, not the cd.

HOWEVER, we've not seen such a revolution in books, as they have ALWAYS been printed on paper, be it paperback or hardback - that's just how they come and have always come and in the same way that collectors like a nice healthy shelf of vinyl most people would sooner have a bookshelf full of books (either for their own reassurance, to make the space look good or for showing off to visitors) than a collection of files on their computer which they can download to their e-reader for reading on the go.

And as my final argument against the e-reader, I am always leaving books on trains, which is a pain but it's hardly the end of the world. In fact it sometimes gives me comfort that my lost book may very well be bringing enjoyment to a new reader somewhere on another train journey. Replacing a book isn't too difficult or expensive (generally speaking) but if you were to lose your e-reader you're going to be pissed off at losing expensive hardware. mp3 players always having fitted in your pocket has never made them as likely to be left behind and forgotten.

Of course there'll be those who rave about the new generation of e-readers "revolutionising" the way we read and swearing by their usefulness however I just don't see them making anywhere near as big a wave as mp3 players have in the music industry. The fact of the matter is that actually, they aren't that useful, it's just another gadget for ubergeeks to get excited about. I can already read the newspaper on my phone and if I want to read a book I'll take a book out with me, I don't need an entire library's worth in my rucksack because I don't tend to flick between multiple works of literature at any one time.

There'll be a market, sure, perhaps students with much revision could download all their course texts onto an e-reader and revise multiple sources at any one time, which would make life easier. But for the average reader why would you want to fix something that has never been broken?

 

[Barrel of Fun]

One for KZNSeagull..!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/05/tesco-little-help-independent-bookshop

 

[Guy Fawkes]

Anyway, as for the e-reader revolution I really don't think they're going to take off in the same way as mp3 players have in replacing cd's as seems widely predicted. For a start people don't tend to carry more than one or two books around with them at any one time, meaning your Kindle or other e-reader device doesn't really save you any space as an mp3 player does, storing thousands of songs in your pocket rather than having to carry several tapes around (in the days of walkmans) or cd's/minidiscs. People want a large selection of music when they are on the go because one album might only last less than an hour. Conversely there are few proper novels you'd get through in under an hour and thus taking a paper copy book out with you on the train, plane, bus etc. would normally be sufficient.

It's also worth noting that the mp3 player acted as the death knell for cd's, a media which was already frowned upon by the music snobs. There's nothing special about a cd, it's just a disc carrying data, and that's why it's easy to replace. mp3's have not replaced vinyl which still does a good trade in specialist shops for dj's, collectors and connoisseurs. Vinyl is the medium recorded music will forever call home, not the cd.

HOWEVER, we've not seen such a revolution in books, as they have ALWAYS been printed on paper, be it paperback or hardback - that's just how they come and have always come and in the same way that collectors like a nice healthy shelf of vinyl most people would sooner have a bookshelf full of books (either for their own reassurance, to make the space look good or for showing off to visitors) than a collection of files on their computer which they can download to their e-reader for reading on the go.

And as my final argument against the e-reader, I am always leaving books on trains, which is a pain but it's hardly the end of the world. In fact it sometimes gives me comfort that my lost book may very well be bringing enjoyment to a new reader somewhere on another train journey. Replacing a book isn't too difficult or expensive (generally speaking) but if you were to lose your e-reader you're going to be pissed off at losing expensive hardware. mp3 players always having fitted in your pocket has never made them as likely to be left behind and forgotten.

Of course there'll be those who rave about the new generation of e-readers "revolutionising" the way we read and swearing by their usefulness however I just don't see them making anywhere near as big a wave as mp3 players have in the music industry. The fact of the matter is that actually, they aren't that useful, it's just another gadget for ubergeeks to get excited about. I can already read the newspaper on my phone and if I want to read a book I'll take a book out with me, I don't need an entire library's worth in my rucksack because I don't tend to flick between multiple works of literature at any one time.

There'll be a market, sure, perhaps students with much revision could download all their course texts onto an e-reader and revise multiple sources at any one time, which would make life easier. But for the average reader why would you want to fix something that has never been broken?

However its only recently that MP3 players and in particularly Apples IPOD devices have been made more practical for everyday use, cars are now adding portals into which these devices are plugged in so they can be played in your car instead of CDs

Tapes still had a market while there were still significant numbers of cars out there with cassette players, but CD players becoming the standard finished them off. Will CDs go the same way when these changes in the market takes over and everyone starts to adapt more to MP3 in every tthing they do?

Having a digital e-reader could take off because of several benefits that they could offer over conventional books, these include: Storage space, instead of having several bookshelves full of books you could have either files on a PC or on the device itself, taking up far less space in your home.
alternatively, For travelling, especially abroad, you could load up alot of titles on a single device instead of carrying several books, this would save on luggage weight and space, and mean that you could take extra things with you without going over your baggage weight allowanceand either having to dump items or pay alot extra as excess baggage.

It may take a very long time for this sort of thing to become mainstream, but there will definity be a growing market for it

There was another thing i heard about a while ago was where they had a machine which had hundreds of book titles stored in it and you could then select the title you wanted and the machine printed it out and binded it while you waited. It could be an answer that shops could use to help keep the rarer titles available without first having to devote shop space to and to keep their investments in the stock lower, making them more profitable and in business long term.

An article about it is here http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/24/espresso-book-machine-blackwell

 

[jmsc]

There were FIVE Laines.

But only one is recognised and retains that name now.

Absolute BOLLOCKS!

Laine means "an area of arable land at the foot of a hill"

The bit left after various building projects might have been known as
"north laine" but that is a geographical term and not a definition!

Stick to things you actually know about!

 

[KZNSeagull]

One for KZNSeagull..!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/05/tesco-little-help-independent-bookshop

Thanks BOF, only just seen this - very interesting. I wonder how long that branch manager will stay in his job!!

Raises an interesting point about losing the expertise if the little shops all go. The main bookseller in SA does not really have any competition but I get so many customers coming to me because the staff in the main chain's shops do not appear to know what they are doing and are generally unhelpful. They will often tell people that a particular book is out of print because they cannot be bothered to order it for them!! Whilst price is a factor (and is not an issue for me as we are cheaper than the main chain anyway), I think service is the main area that the little shops can compete.