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The Herald Scotland
09-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
High streets dying as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers close
The problem is that a lot of these traditional mom-and-pop joints have pulled down the shutters for good. Or they have rebranded as an upscale, artisan facsimile of the traditional fixtures, their till areas decorated with Torres Jamon Iberico crisps and Perello Gordal Piccante olives (which I love, don't get me wrong). It's just too expensive to be a heritage retailer these days. Sky-high energy bills, soaring rents, the general cost of food products. The same factors that affect our own wallets and make getting the weekly shop from the new artisanal independents so cost-prohibitive. A couple of days ago, I was in Partick in Glasgow speaking to a recently retired butcher, Billy Bishop. We met at his former shop, W. Bishop Quality Butcher on Merkland Street, and stood in the sun-drenched doorway talking about what led to his decision to close the business after sixty years. The price of doing business just got too high. It was too hard to compete with the huge Morrisons five minutes away. Most of his trade was in small sales, his customers needing only to cook for one. READ MORE MARISSA MACWHIRTER Every ten minutes during our conversation, a passerby would stop to greet him and ask if the shop was open. Sweet elderly women offered to bring round biscuits or made sure he had a cup of tea. 'I'll miss the people,' he told me. He was the only person that a lot of his customers spoke to in a day; most of them were older and living alone. Much of his shifts were spent sitting back on the counter, listening to the idle daily gossip of the area long after orders were fulfilled. He also told me he rarely had a customer under the age of 30 come in. Us youngsters are missing a trick, I thought. There are plenty of days when I do not speak to another human being face-to-face, skirting the silent ache of isolation by ferociously voice noting my friends. If a Gen Z punter did wander into Billy's shop, I wouldn't be surprised if he was the only person they spoke to in real life that day. I actually bet the old dears, the regulars, are speaking to plenty of folk while getting their messages. When we talk about loneliness, stock images of grey-haired widows and widowers come to mind. Heartbreaking, aged hands pressed against a heater, or narrow shoulders wrapped in blankets. The real tear-jerking stuff. But actually, according to research by the Centre for Social Justice, young people are more likely to feel lonely than older people. Older people were found to be the least lonely age cohort in Britain. The researchers suggested this could be down to their involvement with their communities and the fact that they are more likely to speak to their neighbours. I fear sometimes we don't even realise how lonely we are, lulled into a false sense of social connection over text. Only in those quiet moments does the emptiness crawl quickly up the back of the throat and choke us. As the local traders pack up, they leave behind a hole in the community. And that hole is typically filled with hair salons, nail salons, barber shops or beauty parlours. And vape shops. The changing face of the high street says a lot about where our priorities are, where we stretch our paychecks at the end of the month. We look good in pictures, but we don't feel good in the flesh. We are a society of beautiful, anxious, lonely wrecks, so to speak. The other reality, as Billy pointed out, is that people are time poor these days. We are working longer hours and taking home less. One of the overwhelming trappings of modernity is the importance of efficiency, hence why our supermarket shelves are stocked with ready meals, and everything is pre-cut, pre-cooked, pre-portioned and ready to go. I'm guilty of it, having recently praised the discovery of frozen pre-diced onions and garlic as one of the best things to happen to me so far this year. But I remain steadfast that there is a romance to ambling along your own high street and seeing familiar faces, smiling and chit-chatting with the shopkeepers. The allure of slowing down and taking the time to assemble the food shop from different establishments. All while getting a kick out of the low-stakes local gossip, retold in a dozen different ways like a game of neighbourhood telephone. It's sad to watch the decline of our butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. So let this be a rallying cry to support yours, if you're still lucky enough to have one. Spend your Saturday getting acquainted with your local independents. And if you're stuck with a soulless chain supermarket lined with insufferable self-checkouts, keep an eye out for a manned till. If the cashier isn't too busy stocking shelves (because the overnight stock positions were axed), take the plunge and say hello. I often feel powerless under the weight of the cost-of-living crisis and the constant corporate race to the bottom line. And if boycotting the self-checkout is what it takes to combat our alienating present, so be it. To the fishmongers! Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am each morning, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
The Herald Scotland
25-04-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Glasgow should close the Clyde Tunnel - here's why
READ MORE: Clyde Tunnel could be forced to close as staff vote on strike action Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, staff members monitor the crucial underwater stretch of road between Whiteinch and Govan. They keep the motorists safe, watching the CCTV for incidents and responding to them, managing the air quality, and performing maintenance tasks. They even control traffic signals! This week, the union representing the workers announced they were considering going on strike. They rejected a pay offer from Glasgow City Council and are now voting on industrial action. If they go ahead with it, the crucial artery could close, sending thousands of commuters into a flurry of chaos. More than 65,000 vehicles pass through the Clyde Tunnel each day. That's five times the amount of traffic it was built to take. It is undeniably a crucial piece of national infrastructure, and it is vital to the West of Scotland, especially due to its proximity to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. When I heard that it could close (albeit temporarily), I thought, good. We should close it. Glasgow City Council is in pretty dire financial straits. As much as I agree that the workers should be offered a pay rise in line with inflation, I can understand the council saying that a 3% offer was the 'best possible' with the funding they have available. The thing is, they would have more funding available if they weren't footing the bill for one of the country's most important roads. So, let's close it. READ MORE MARISSA MACWHIRTER The Clyde Tunnel links to major motorways and is clearly not just any old stretch of asphalt. Yet rather than being treated as a trunk road like the M8 or the M80, Glasgow City Council gets the same amount of funding per kilometre for the tunnel from the national settlement as per a standard stretch of road. In other words, it gets the same amount of cash as say, a town high street in Dumfries and Galloway. It leads to an annual shortfall of £860,000, swallowing up nearly 10 per cent of the authority's entire road maintenance budget. The tunnel is only around 2,500 feet long. Imagine how many potholes we could fill around the city if the council could shake this white elephant off of its back? Close to 4,000, actually. Or resurface around 4.5km of normal, single-carriageway roads. The council is also expected to fund consistent repairs needed to keep it functioning. They need an investment of around £16 million for operational infrastructure and structural issues. The kind of fixes that get more and more expensive the further you delay them. I say we close it in protest until the Scottish Government agrees to fund it as a trunk road. Vehicles from all over the West Coast use the Clyde Tunnel without stopping in Glasgow. Imagine the bedlam if they were forced to reroute to the Kingston Bridge? It would not be able to cope with the swarm of angry lorry drivers beep beep-beeping through the agonising gridlock. Efficiency is money, and clogging up traffic across the west of Scotland might knock some sense into the Transport Secretary. It literally joins up the A739 (a trunk road). The council should not be paying for Scotland's only road tunnel. The alternative solution that the local authority has floated is to make the people who don't pay for council tax in Glasgow pay to use our tunnel. A tunnel toll is currently being investigated by the council (although they don't have the powers to implement it). The idea is that fancy cameras would scan registration plates and those without a G postcode would be sent a bill. Non-Glasgow residents cried that this was 'unfair'. Some branded it a 'tax' on hospital-goers. But I think it's unfair that people living in Glasgow should be left holding the bag. And hey, if they don't want to pay the toll, those motorists can use one of Transport Scotland's Clyde crossings. Another option is that the Scottish Government rethinks how its road budget is divvied up. A common-sense approach would be to fund roads by vehicle usage instead of length. The only hiccup there is that our country's approach to road infrastructure is illogical at best. Look at the absolute shambles of their attempt at dualling the A9 from Perth to Inverness. It will be more than a decade overdue, and the cost has ballooned to around £3.7 billion. That could fund the Clyde Tunnel for around 4,300 years. Now I understand that the folk who do not live in Glasgow can get a bit touchy about paying to use the tunnel, but you can hardly blame the authority for exploring its options. I agree with City Treasurer Ricky Bell's description of the current set-up. It is truly 'bizarre'. The cost of keeping the Clyde Tunnel open is fixed. A lot could go wrong with a 62-year-old tunnel beneath a river, so no matter what, its maintenance comes first when the council is slicing up its roads budget. And a critical part of keeping the tunnel safe is the team of staff members who watch over it at all hours of the day. They deserve to be paid accordingly for their work. Next week, we will find out if the strike is on and the tunnel is closed. I naturally have a little taste for chaos – I'm curious to see what would happen if this genuinely came to fruition. And whether the ensuing traffic meltdown would finally make the Scottish Government realise they should be paying for the Clyde Tunnel. Marissa MacWhirter is the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. Each morning, Marissa curates the top local news stories from around the city, delivering them to your inbox at 7am daily so you can stay up to date on the best reporting without ads, clickbait or annoying digital clutter. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
