Orange Orchard Economics

This is just a quick post to distil my views on the empty high street problem.

Partly thanks to online retail, highstreets and city centres are dying - this is something pretty much everyone agrees is happening. Though pointing out the problem is easy, solutions aren't as forthcoming. Here's my plan:

1) Accept that we need less high street shop space. i.e. stop trying to artificially prop-up retail space that simply isn't needed in this online age.

2) Make it as easy for people to sell things on their local high street as it is to sell things on eBay. That is, create a public market space where people can hire kiosks/shop space by the hour, for a small fee. In effect, a local market place open daily, and open to everyone.*

3) Retail space that isn't needed repurposed. With some sold for new housing and some earmarked to become public parks and orchards.

4) More allotments. A greater emphasis on meeting demand for allotments in town planning. Viewing towns not just as spaces for housing and retail, but also as spaces for gardens, nature and food production. In summary, recreating the village green in macro.

*If the idea of selling things on your high street as easily as you would on eBay sounds strange, pause and think about it for a moment. Why is it so hard to sell things in the very town or city where you live? Is it really any wonder high streets and local economies are dying when they're so inflexible and difficult to enter as a seller. Perhaps if politicians stopped trying to strangle and regulate the online world, and instead tried to imitate it, local economies would re-bloom. After all, originally, in earlier times, it would've been perfectly normal for individual people to turn up at their local market place and flog their wares. It's only over-regulation that has stopped this organic process from continuing into our current era.

Again, you can list a bunch of items for sale very easily on eBay, or sell your homemade arts and crafts on a platform like Etsy. So why is it so difficult to take these very same items down to your local high street or town centre and do the same? Why is it so difficult to set up a stall, or book a slot of space on a morning or an afternoon?

Preserving Folk Memories

A few weeks ago I went to a folk night. In a small, little pub. All older folkies singing their traditional ballads, and younger art school types picking up the mantle. I feel I need to put it down in writing as it was such a snapshot of Britain as it is at this moment. I really felt like I was sat in an Adam Curtis documentary. The jarring mesh of imagery, along with the the music, creating a sad dystopian cinema reel. The people being filmed, here only by my eyes, having no awareness of how transitory their culture is. Or how lost and peculiar their world would look to anyone watching back in ten, twenty or thirty years' time.

The people at the folk night were all very left wing. Some had little Palestinian badges on their jackets. At points the traditional folk songs were slightly reworked to include lines about Palestine. One young girl sang an acapella song about immigration, the theme being that the people arriving are no different to you or I, and that they should be universally welcomed.

What I found most interesting about it though, was that everyone in the room was white.

It was such a stark contrast to my journey there. To get to the little pub I walked through Middlesbrough. From the sprawl of council estates in the east, past Albert Park, then the long, lazy walk down Parliament Road. My nanna lived near Parliament Road, and my mam grew up round there. Consequently, that journey is a journey I've made a million times before. I have memories of being pushed in buggies down those roads. Of getting ice creams and lolly pops from the shops along the way. I remember pubs that aren't there anymore. The White Rose, which is now gone, and the huge - to my infant eyes - Westminster Hotel. That building still stands, but it's now home to a takeaway and minimart.

As a child it was the scale and imagery that impressed me. I never once stepped foot in those pubs, I just remember the signs. "Why is there a picture of Big Ben on a pub sign?" I would wonder. "Why does Yorkshire have a white rose?" I would ask. It's all minor stuff, but it colours the landscape.

Anyhow, now things are different, and as I walked through the area I was naturally aware of this massive change. In my childhood, in the 1980s and 90s, the area was still mainly white English. Sure, the town centre was always a bit more diverse than parts of the town further afield, but still, it was majority English. Now, however, the demographics have starkly shifted. On the evening of the folk night ninety percent of the people I passed were non-English. There were two English drug addicts sat on the floor outside the shops. The odd English person coming and going, but aside from that it was totally non-English.

And I'm not making the point here that this is good or bad (I really am past the politics of it all now), I'm just stating that it's impossible not to notice the sheer change.

So, anyway, I made this familiar journey, mindful of how much things have changed ..then I stepped into a little pub, and suddenly found myself in a room full of white English people -- white English people that were all singing traditional English songs, no less. It was like a little cocoon.

How could I not notice this stark contrast?

And, likewise, how could I not notice the irony? That these left wing people were singing in favour of open borders and diversity. Yet, they were choosing to spend their free time surrounded entirely by other white people. Singing traditional English folk songs. It was revealed versus stated preference, illustrated perfectly in the wild.

I mentioned this to one of the people I was with, "Don't you think it's weird that they're all singing about diversity, yet every single person in this room is white?"

He looked around, "Yeah, that's true - I didn't notice that. It never even occurred to me."

"This is probably the most conservative thing you've experienced in a long time," I pushed on, "..a room full of white people, preserving their white folk songs, cocooned from the changing demographics outside ..but they're all left wing."

Of course, as I pushed on, I only pushed myself towards the, "Is he a racist?" bracket, and I could see some of the eyes apprehensively thinking, "He's one of those right-wingers, isn't he." Like I'd rolled up my sleeve to reveal a swastika tattoo or something. I tried explaining that I wasn't making a judgement about the changing demographics, just an observation of it, and an observation of some of the hypocrisies and muddled thinking surrounding it, but alas, it's a hard topic to navigate. Especially when you've had a few pints of some weirdly named ale, and it's slowing your judgement.

I felt a little sad and emotional listening to all the people singing their folk songs - that was probably partly the alcohol too. They were all really nice people, and they all sincerely meant well. It wasn't really the place for my disruptive, dragon-like observations. As I sat there I couldn't help but wonder if people would still be singing those songs in fifty years' time, or even twenty. Again, it was very much like an Adam Curtis documentary, where you're watching rare, old footage, of a world that once was. Grainy film of some middle-aged English woman, singing her gentle folk ballad - interspersed with footage of the changing world outside. The discordance as the camera pans over a kebab shop, as some folk balladeer warbles in the background.

Sadly, I couldn't capture it on film, so I can only capture it in writing.