Sick of places closing down

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I feel like sometimes I don't want to visit Chatham, my local town anymore. I seem to think there have been a number of shops closing down, my town and shopping centre has lost shops I used to see for years and are just standing boarded up and empty some of which of course I didn't go to like Tesco, Debenhams, Rymans, Footlocker, Claire's accessories (now a sports store), a few charity shops, WH Smith (now Deichmann shoe store) and now recently Wilko is going to. The upstairs of the centre used to have a number of shops and restaurants now there is almost nothing up there now.

I have sometimes found that my area has an interesting history and seem to think should have a lot to offer. I read that Nelson's ship The Victory which fought at the Battle of Trafalgar was built in Chatham Dockyard (The ship is currently docked in Portsmouth and I think really should be here in the place where it was built.), there were some battles that took place around where I live, there is Rochester Castle which bares the scars of siege warfare was under siege twice in its history and a bunch of dutch ships in 1667 sailed up the River Medway attacking the dockyard which I seem to think was a bit like Medway's or the UK's Pearl Harbour. Charles Dickens lived and sometimes worked here as a child and wished to be buried in Rochester but was buried at Westminster Abbey in London. There have been a lot of landmark achievements and disasters which have happened in my area. Recently I saw a video which talked about which talked about a terrible bus accident in 1951 in which 24 people were killed (most of which were young cadets aged between 9 and 13) and it took place near Chatham dockyard and was at the time, Britain's worst road accident. There is a plaque on the wall at the accident site and I have walked past or driven past it a few times already, in the past I never knew about it until recent years.

Unfortunately, as more sales are made online, traditional high street stores have taken a beating, resulting in losses of various stores.

It's just how it is and and the trend doesn't seem to be changing or reversing in any way.

Add to the fact that a decent number of people today don't want a job unless they can work from home.

We just lost the music shop, which had been in business for over a century. Cue much "oh well, if you didn't use it" on Facebook. I was bloody using it. Brought 2 sets of strings in there the week before the closure was announced; I've brought instruments, amps and several hundred pounds worth of sheet music there over the years. HMV and Waterstones are still hanging on, I'm not sure how.

i also dislike that. i really prefer being able to go a local shop rather than shopping online.
also its really nice to have areas where the community can get together. buying something on amazon for example is in no way the same experience.

Yeah, a lot of people have standards nowadays and won't stick with a job unless it pays something okay and/or has benefits of some kind, such as working from home.

Although in retail, a lot of jobs have been lost in the past few years in my country at least (the UK), and so the jobs are typically more sought after than they used to be, because they are fewer.

Online shopping is killing off local retail stores. Customers buy more online and buy less in person.

Sad.

Britain has been known for being "a nation of shopkeepers" for centuries.

Indeed!

I suppose the new and emerging world might not be as quaint as the old.

Yes, and the only way to really make up for that is to find ways of charging more to fewer customers. I'm not familiar with that area, but around here the income gap is sufficiently large that a substantial chunk of the population can't afford to go to such shops.

Wealth inequality is a problem in the UK, though less so than in the US.