Look at what’s been done to us, laments Carl Benjamin, sauntering through the centre of his hometown of Swindon.

The heart of the town is dead. Boarded up shops. Closed down department stores. Abandoned nightclubs. All that remains are gambling shops, barbers, and fast-food restaurants.

All of this has been done to them, apparently. But Swindon is the Hull of the South. Aspirational folk naturally move elsewhere. Though, actually, Hull is much nicer than Swindon.

I have had to help sell Swindon at work to address a recruitment crisis. This entailed explaining why Swindon was a good place to live and work. All possible with some imagination.

For while Carl may pine for the bustling town centre of his youth, he neglects to tell us that it has been supplanted by Swindon’s Outlet Village and its Greenbridge and Orbital shopping complexes.

Or that those seeking a high street experience would likely always have preferred to visit nearby Bath or Oxford anyway.

Not to blame: ourselves for choosing the convenience of out of town shopping parks and drive-thru fast food over buying locally.

In any case, the high street is not necessarily local anymore as families move on from the inner city and into suburbs or neighbouring towns.

If you need something, you’re more likely to find it on a retail park than at your local independent. More likely still: online, at a better price, with the convenience of it being delivered to your door the next day.

How ironic that right-wing commentators so enamoured by capitalism and free enterprise are the first to lament the fall-out of granting gargantuan tech companies a monopoly over our lives.

But of course, homes with 50″ TVs and Netflix that killed the local cinema, and the online retail that killed the high street are not at the heart of this tired lament.

Naturally, in the comments, that award goes to Swindon’s Bangladeshi population. Though that is highly unlikely, given that community only numbers about 500 souls.

The largest foreign-born group in Swindon derives from India, representing 6% of the town’s population. But that still leaves 89% of the town’s population being white.

In the end, despite these long-winded laments, it turns out to be not so much look what they did to us, as what we did to ourselves. 

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