Glittering Christmas lights can’t hide the grim reality of our high streets
On high streets across the country, the Christmas lights are up and on. But beneath them, the rows of empty shops are growing. In one patch on London’s Strand, bang in the middle of the city, there are four empty lots in a row. Even the sumptuous, glittering lights of Regent Street can’t obscure the depressing reality of closed shops and empty pavements. The lights are on, but everyone’s at home.
The only argument in favour of a November lockdown is that it isn’t a December lockdown. If the Government can get us shopping again in the run-up to Christmas, a period when many retailers make a third of their sales, maybe there is some hope for struggling shopkeepers across the land. Many high streets were already emptying out before Covid because of online competition and they didn’t need a pandemic to accelerate the process. If the lockdown goes on and on, or if it’s lifted but we’re too scared
If the Government can get us shopping again, maybe there is some hope
or hooked on internet shopping to venture out, then this change to our cityscapes will become a permanent blight.
Telegraph readers have been exchanging tales of problems with not-so-smart meters installed in their houses by various energy suppliers. Our smart meter never really seemed to do much except tell us resolutely, no matter the hour, that our energy use was in the “red zone”. It officially stopped working after we switched away from British Gas, which had attempted to increase its bills tenfold overnight. Along with dozens of its feisty start-up rivals, our cheap new supplier quickly went bankrupt, landing us back with British Gas again.
Recently, the company emailed to announce that the infernal meter, sitting dormant in a basement, is apparently “smart again!” How this happened, I have no idea. But I do know now how all those science fiction characters feel when it turns out their spaceships have been secretly harbouring a malicious artificial intelligence bug in their computer systems all along.