Wilkinson's going into administration

[Vamino]

Crikey this got deep & dark very quick !!

Next to go IMO will be Boots , To many years of greed & Not moving with the times. In the future we will not need to go out , They are doing everything they can to make it harder and harder for us to drive places. I don't think they have considered the impact on revenue though they will need to shift the taxes somewhere else. You only have to look at electric vehicles , People with money get free installs of charging points at home , Tax reliefs and cheap electric deals. They are paying no tax at the moment. By the time us minions get around to having enough money for one the government with have kicked in by charging & taxing us to the hilt. The only people benefiting , yet again, is the rich and electric companies.

Dave.

I've done a bit of subcontracting for Boots over the years, the older workers have seen a massive change which they sometimes share with people like myself.

Boots used to be a VERY asset rich company until they were sold in the 00's. Apparently the new owners sold lot of the estate that Boots owned outright, most of the property was sold on lease back deals which in turn generated a quick profit for the owners but sucked a lot of life out of the company and reduced ongoing profits somewhat.

Their IT helpdesk used to be based in the UK and was top class and fantastic to liaise with. Corners were cut top to bottom throughout the company and now the IT dept is based in India.

There's a lot of profit in a sick population and sickness seems to be a growing phenomenon so I think Boots are safe for now. I presume that profit alone keeps them afloat as at some stores the pharmacy staff are working flat out on the shop floor and in their care homes departments behind the scenes.

Oh and if you ever subcontract for Boots don't question the sales of baby milk powder, it can quickly turn a happy informal chat into something strict and more formal. SO DON'T MENTION THE BABY MILK POWDER!

 

[Bods]

PM you mate.

My partner works in supermarket, and someone got a deliveroo driver, to come to the store and deliver a toothbrush! lol WTF! I worked in a hospital, and every day I would say 95% of people would wait for a lift to go 1 floor up!!! Lazy buggers. These aren't old people with health issues, but youngsters carrying a latte!

Throw in Electric Bikes and Scooters too

Was thinking one night, who rounds up these Government Electric Scooters, you have people driving around at night picking em up in vans, taking them somewhere to charge them up, then take them back to locations again

It's proper gone mental this world lol,

Surprised WH Smiths still there to be honest, think they will be next meself. They used to be Brilliant Boots and Smiths, much of our time in 1980s in town centre was spent in those two testing the latest games out, my Akai Boombox came from Boots, can remember watching the videos showing you the new games, Dragon's Lair on C64, can remember playing Kung Fu Master on Nes think it was in Boots, best times they were

 

[Vamino]

Yeah, Boots were great for videogames back in the day.

Pretty sure I bought Mr Wimpy from there for my C64. I also used to go there every week to see if any new NES games were released, if I remember correctly the first 3rd party game released was Top Gun. Cost me 30 quid and whilst it wasn't the best game it was made by Konami and simply learned to enjoy it.

Pre NES release, as well as Boots we also used to go to Lewis's in Bham town center, they had a small room downstairs with an SX-64 in there and people used to copy that floppy and share new releases with each other! I was too poor to have a disk drive though.

There was also an independent computer shop that we used to see other new releases in. There was also a shop (Tandy I think!) on Corporation St that had MSX computers which always seemed to be playing Antarctic Adventure. I remember a shop called Grays, a massive department store, when that was closing down they had a massive sale that had millions of C64 disks for something like £1 each, mostly Interceptor Software games.

Going to town every week was an adventure, we always found lots to do.

 

[Vamino]

Those electric scooters and electric bikes man, sometimes whilst I'm on late shift I see people riding them on the roads with no lights dressed in dark colours, I can hardly see them sometimes!

Pretty sure some of them can do like 30+, I don't wanna be that killjoy guy, but they are mad dangerous and the last thing I want on my conscience is knocking one of those lunatics off their ride.

VOI sccoters used to be all over the place, seen them in trees and allsorts. Then they vanished never to be seen again, think it's a new company now but most people I see use their own scooters.

 

[tb lilley]

I miss Spangles. I suppose some some sort of shadowy elite force did away with them, as part of their effort to implement a totalitarian world government. That would make sense. Original Cadbury Boost (the coconut / caramel one) also a likely casualty.

 

[Akira99]

I miss Woolworths, when they went I knew it was the beginning of the end for the high street.

 

[Bods]

Leicester centre had some great shops too

Boots had upstairs with Electrical Dept, HI-Fi, TVs, Computers Consoles and games
we had shop called Dimensions which was Computer sales and repairs, had my Konix joystick from there and my replacement C64 PSU which then died just out the warranty, used to envy Atari ST Owners when looking at the games in there, International Karate looked amazing, years later when I had the game on ST I wasn't so impressed and still happy with C64 one, there was another Text Adventure game on ST, Pictures looked awesome but forget what it was now, one pic was a Skeleton

We had Mays Hifi shop, then they also had another shop further down just for Computers, remember see Road Runner on ST, that looked awesome and my mate got bargain once for his Atari 800xl, Track & Field Cartridge for £10 and it came with Touchpad controller like Arcade, two Run buttons and Jump in middle, I managed to get one for C64 some years ago, not cart though it's disk

we were too poor for Disk Drives, most of my games were copied else i'd have naff all hardly, used to buy the 5 game sets like We Are The Champions, Gauntlet, Road Runner, Indy Jones, Road Blasters and then wish I was playing them in Arcades

Lewis's used to have Hi-fi dept and Computers and we had a Commodore Centre, used to get 2nd hand Zzap Mags from there for 20p I think, they had C128 and remember typing Go 64

Times were good, town centre was brilliant on a Saturday with all the shops and loads of arcades, there every week and thats what I wanted to recreate at home with the machines

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Boots X NES 😍

 

[Vamino]

Leicester centre had some great shops too

Boots had upstairs with Electrical Dept, HI-Fi, TVs, Computers Consoles and games
we had shop called Dimensions which was Computer sales and repairs, had my Konix joystick from there and my replacement C64 PSU which then died just out the warranty, used to envy Atari ST Owners when looking at the games in there, International Karate looked amazing, years later when I had the game on ST I wasn't so impressed and still happy with C64 one, there was another Text Adventure game on ST, Pictures looked awesome but forget what it was now, one pic was a Skeleton

We had Mays Hifi shop, then they also had another shop further down just for Computers, remember see Road Runner on ST, that looked awesome and my mate got bargain once for his Atari 800xl, Track & Field Cartridge for £10 and it came with Touchpad controller like Arcade, two Run buttons and Jump in middle, I managed to get one for C64 some years ago, not cart though it's disk

we were too poor for Disk Drives, most of my games were copied else i'd have naff all hardly, used to buy the 5 game sets like We Are The Champions, Gauntlet, Road Runner, Indy Jones, Road Blasters and then wish I was playing them in Arcades

Lewis's used to have Hi-fi dept and Computers and we had a Commodore Centre, used to get 2nd hand Zzap Mags from there for 20p I think, they had C128 and remember typing Go 64

Times were good, town centre was brilliant on a Saturday with all the shops and loads of arcades, there every week and thats what I wanted to recreate at home with the machines

80's Leicester sounds very similar to 80's Bham.
A lot of my childhood was spent going out to town with my mates and enjoying the organic experience of the high street which is why I have an interest in how things are changing. Some people are not interested in questioning where things are heading, and that's cool, but when all that's left is Amazon they can then charge whatever they like if there's no competition. Simple business tactics 101, predatory pricing scheme, get rid of the competition and then monopolize.

Yeah Wilko is not the be all of the high street and it may be a shop that finally ran it course in 2023. But this is not an isolated incident, many shops have fallen and some have been near deaths door for a while that haven't been made public.

M&S seemed to have bounced back but a lot of pretty big stores have gone now, BHS, Debenhams etc etc. And that's not even documenting the smaller independant shops that have vacated the smaller outer city high streets. What's replacing them on the high street? not much apart from charity shops/pawn shops/betting shops. Simply put stickers on the closed shop windows that make it look like a bustling shop and no one will ever notice unless they look up from their phones.

One of the more serious things to consider is that banks are closing at an alarming rate, once a bank closes in a location it affects the confidence some companies have in an area which makes them more likely to move out when things get tight. Shops and banks go hand in hand, people go to the shops and maybe also do some banking, or they may do some banking then go to the shops. One of the banks I bank with is Santander, over the past couple of years I've known at least 3 local branches close, go back 5 or so years and it's more than double that amount and that's just for Santander.

Ah well, gonna see if Amazon has anything to buy that I don't need then I'm gonna call it a night.

 

[69er]

Many high street closures tend to affect our own hobby or business either direct or sometimes just annoyingly… Wilkinson and Woolworths great for cable wire screws nuts and bolts and fair to say most electrical hardware can be bought cheap and delivered on eBay etc ….
However more annoying MAPLIN those essential components over the tech counter 5k pots resistors. Rectifiers etc as one off purchases very handy for all Arcadia restorers repairers engineers ..


Then for the juke box collectors the demise of high st record shops especially for post 99s music when CD mp3 and video tapes took over OUCH the old stuff still survives on selling sites but where are the once popular shops….
Records closed Cd was short lived in comparison then video tape hire shops vhs tapes ( a good place to site an arcade game on shares income) they all disappeared


Maplin also a good place for disc jockey home or mobile music sound and light systems… it’s nice to see a partial revival of some of these type of services but very few and far between and still have eBay and Amazon to compete with…
We drove back from our local town yesterday and passing through a few peripheral shop zones couldn’t help notice how many fast food shopp were closing and whited out windows .. chicken fry kebab and other takeaways too is home deliver to blame The big leaflet drops get all the sales maybe with deliveries ????


Pubs too all hit by change of times we passed by the lion and railway sign still hanging on posh apartments the station is across the road but less trains stop and the chip shop opposite was the first fast food closure we commented on.. as we left town Freemasons arms still bears the bold big brassy lettering on the wall but is a solicitors/accountants


Nightclubs in our region too it’s like the SPECIALS predicted in the 80s it’s a GHOST TOWN… part of Northwich main market precinct is so poorly supported by tenants it’s being demolished and the few surviving phone shops veg stores and cake shops trade with difficulty amid the few short term nail bars and eyelash beauty advisors and Turkish barbers who last only a few months while start up aid helps with overheads but electric bills now adds to the problems across all of them


Our business was built on youth clubs too in the 80s towns and villages alike pool tables space invaders and often jukeboxes made good proposal but they too are all closing down We owned one till earlier this year but electric standing charge at over £50 pcm and car park drainage water run off charged at £900 a year and kids just want sit behind shops vaping and on NO it’s a losing battle you need charge more than they have spare just to get them in and our club was probably the best arcade equipped youthie in the northwest? With drivers other videos air hockey pool pinball and all sorts but even at 10p/20p a game they struggled to meet the electric used to open

“The times they are a changing” ‘Bob Dylan record ‘ way back in time

Rant over if you enjoy these comments ‘press like ‘ I get bored now over 70 and trying to put Arcadia in my past but it’s in my blood after 50 years …..I could maybe lighten somebody’s day ???

 

[Bods]

rest of the Wilko's gone this weekend then

At least they sold decent quality stuff, ones bought by poundland are opening as poundland who don't sell much anymore for £1 and most stuff is worse quality than things made in 1980s Hong Kong

Feel for all the poor Staff after years working there