According to a retail analyst Springboard, shopping activity didn’t return to pre-pandemic levels yesterday thanks to the cold weather. Meanwhile, only two in five pubs opened in England due to the lack of suitable outside space. The Times has more.
Britain’s notoriously fickle spring weather dampened the high street’s recovery yesterday as lockdown restrictions were eased.
People going to shops, pubs and restaurants for the first time in more than three months endured cold conditions and even snow. On the south coast, temperatures were as low as 5C, half the usual average for the time of year. Little Rissington in Gloucestershire recorded 4cm of snow.
Shoppers who braved the cold appeared to be preparing to party. John Lewis reported that decanters, tumblers and highball glasses were “by far” the most popular purchases yesterday morning, with champagne and gift bags the two next most popular categories.
Some stores, such as Primark and Ikea, had queues first thing, but the number of people visiting high streets overall was a quarter lower than the equivalent day two years ago.
The retail analyst Springboard said that shopping centres had fared better, although they were still down on a normal day, suggesting that the weather had been a deterrent for many people.
Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, said: “The cold and snow will have kept an awful lot of people at home, particularly older people. That said, the pandemic is still casting a long shadow over retail.
“Shoppers are more cautious and the shift online represents a big structural challenge to high street stores.”
The British Beer and Pub Association estimated that only two in five pubs reopened yesterday because most venues lack a big enough outdoor space to trade profitably. It acknowledged that the cold weather would have deterred some customers.
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“shopping activity didn’t return to pre-pandemic levels yesterday thanks to the cold weather.”
My shopping activity isn’t going to return to pre-pandemic levels until shops are no longer populated by masked zombie shoppers shuffling along looking depressed, policed by security guards chasing people for not wearing a mask, and covered in signs and dots and arrows telling me where I can stand and where I cannot.
Ditto, and when those freaking messages telling me to wear a mask to protect those around me, blah blah blah. It’s like being constantly waterboarded.
Couldnt have put it better myself. Waterboarding indeed. I want Normal – and I do mean Normal (aka 2019) – otherwise why the f&ck should I bother?
You said it. They won’t see me if they show signs of treating me like poisonous garbage.
Thank you for posting that as it saves me the trouble. Shops are in for a nasty shock.
Things won’t return to the way they were before until they return to the way they were before. Numbskulls.
“According to a retail analyst Springboard, shopping activity didn’t return to pre-pandemic levels yesterday thanks to the cold weather.”
I suspect its more that there just isn’t 3 months of pent-up demand for shopping waiting to be unleashed. We just want normality back. Pubs, restaurants, theatres, museums etc. Scurrying around a shop in a mask, socially distanced and following one way signs to pick up some rags then home in the car coz there’s nothing else to do. Hardly enticing
UK weekly deaths 2,000 below 5 year average in the latest data released this morning.
The lockdowns, the virus, and the vaccines, just brought forward death for a lot of elderly people by a few months. At the expense of deaths of a lot of younger people from causes other than COVID-19, and at the expense of the mental health of everyone.
Is this how Lockdown Sceptics celebrate an easing of lockdown?
Doom, gloom and misery!
Soho was rammed with happy revellers last night. https://twitter.com/i/status/1381691672703201284
great stuff!
Jesus Christ some of the comments on there.
“This gives me the heebeegeebees. Sitting face to face across tiny tables, it’s still possible to pick up the virus. Ok, so they’re young and probably won’t get very ill, but more cases = more chances for the virus to mutate to a vaccine resistant version & back to square 1 we go.”
Scientifically illiterate. It’s the other way round moron.
I won’t be celebrating until all these silly and arbitrary rules which constrict our freedom are gone and we have a legally binding guarantee that they can never be reimposed. Until then I see nothing to celebrate.
What’s to celebrate is the number of people who are behaving (old) normally and ignoring the “rules” – as seen in the Soho video.
The more people are seen behaving like humans and not sheeple, the sooner the edifice crumbles and falls.
Have just walked down to the West End and sat outside pub with our first beers. No details taken. Walked into the pub unmasked to use the loo.
That is the real way forward, as with the teacher who posted here about not wearing a mask in class and not being fussed if his pupils do either, 50% non compliance mentioned.
Thanks to the cold weather? So nothing to do with the fact that this country has blatantly been converted into an Orwellian hellhole by a fascist and violent government and police and a medical industry which all appear to be colluding to carry out a nefarious remodelling of the world right before our eyes? It’s just the cold weather which is putting people off going to these modern day Churches of Satan?
I now know exactly how it felt in Hamburg in 1935.