Empty Shops of Waterlooville in May 2017

Pigeon and youth problems in Waterlooville

There is a growing pigeon and youth problem in Waterlooville shopping centre (on top of the issue of the charity shop and cafe issues).

Pigeons
Over a number of years now the pigeon population has been growing.

You may say "wait a minute, aren't you a supporter of the environment?"

Well that would be true, but that doesn't make me an animal rights supporter. UK pigeons are goften not native, they have migrated across Europe over the centuries and decades then settled here. We have a lot of problems with our activities causing extinctions of many species and that issue is getting worse, in the case of pigeons our activities are also causing a problem with an expansion of species. So in both cases extinctions and growth of various species are a result of our own growth and influence.

Youths
There is a distinct problem of male youths gathering in significant numbers in Waterlooville early in the evening. Initially they congregated around Subway in small groups, the food outlet appears to be popular with school children and teeneagers, for some time Subway also wasn't kept very clean and by evening time the floor was often littered with food packaging and remnants of food. My last visit suggested it was cleaner, but that was just one visit, the staff in the outlet is generally young and maybe the work ethic was not there.

Anyway a digress, a bigger problem  appears to be intimidating males youths on their cycles and walking around the town centre in the early evening. I walked past the centre at about 18:00 recently and there were about a dozen youths larking about, one of them was kick boxing with another youth.
On another evening I noticed a police car had been parked outside Lloyds bank, it was empty and I assume it was there to send a psychological message.

It appears to be clear that in common with other shopping centres in Havant Borough, Waterlooville is potentially declining further. The centre still manages to maintain some character, but it is close IMO to an irreversible decline. Pigeons and larking youths just add to the issues.

A Christmas Message from the Elves

On a brighter note...

Improved pedestrian and cycle path

It's good to see that all the complaints about the pedestrian path/route through the Waterlooville Wellington Retail Park that I made on this blog over the years have been addressed.

See this speculative blog post that I made a few months ago (which includes links to other blog posts on the subject):

http://lovelywaterlooville.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-real-path-at-wellington-retail-park.html

The path is now raised and has a curb, it also has had the number of exists/entrances that cut through the path reduced, making it far more acceptable as a way of getting into Waterlooville on foot.
As well as those practical features, there are also big 'planters' with trees and a few seats placed along the path (street furniture).

Addition (9/8/15): I should also add that the upgraded path was essential to improve access to Waterlooville for those using mobility scooters. The improved path ties in with the building of the new ramp. Previously mobility scooter users had a long tortuous route that took them around the town centre and pass the fire station.

So why did it take so long to fix it?

It has been wrong for as long as this blog has been going, why didn't they do this from the start?

Plus - it of course doesn't fix the problem that the retail park was a bad idea from the start and has helped to ruin our town centre.

Sainsburys update

Sainburys large store (above) is due to open this winter. My mother who once didn't really mind or understand it's impact is now of the same view as me. It will have a negative impact on Waterlooville. What Havant Borough Council and others choose to ignore is that it effectively disrupts the flow of activity that was once present along Hambledon road into Waterlooville and effectively adds another 'block' to the traditional access of Waterlooville. The view is that Waterlooville will be cut off because many now won't bother going into the centre, especially in from the Hambledon road route.

The history of development and the cut off of Waterlooville started when the bipass was built and Hambledon road was cut off just below St Georges church. Following that event, Havant Borough Council sold the part of Hambledon road servicing Wadham Stringers to private investors. This eventually led to the retail park being developed and the road being turned into a feeder to the retail car park (above)

And so Havant Borough Council continues it's anti-local business agenda that supports mass car use and the monopolies of big business. In the photo above is Sainsburys attempt - that is fully supported by the council- to provide access to cyclists and pedestrians. The fact is it highlights the pro-car agenda the council has. The car park is a nightmare to get through for pedestrians and cyclists even now years after it was created and the ramp is just another meandering attempt to bodge another solution.

Pedestrians and cyclists are the leaders of sustainability and healthy life styles that reduce costs for the council, yet Havant Borough Council continue to push the car onto us with ideological intensity.

Sainsburys chop down trees for a petrol station

As Waterlooville is being turned into a building site (thanks to the Conservatives dumping any ideas of being environmentally aware) Sainsburys is duplicating Asdas actions by chopping down green things so that they can build a petrol station. This time it is trees that were originally a part of an old and established hedgerow that ran along the original path of Hambledon Road.

As a part of the plan to build a big store, Sainsburys is 'upgrading' the roundabout, thus allowing more cars to interfere with the pedestrian route into Waterlooville. Both the petrol station and roundabout developments have resulted in numerous trees being felled and ground being laid to waste.

Both Asda and Sainsburys seem to have plans for increasing green house gas emissions in the area, supported by the Brown party, namely The Conservatives.

Asda put fuel sales before plant life

In the race to supply fossil fuels to the public and with the prospect of Sainsburys building a petrol station to compliment their new store, Asda has built a petrol station in the car park near the Asda store.
The car park has had thick vegetation and trees planted around the perimeter to visually hide it from public view and this has worked for many, many years. The West of Waterlooville has been quite green with vegetation for a long time now, but it seems that marketing, bad planning and profiteering is overriding common sense.

The 'hedgerow' that once surrounded the car park has now been thinned out, but not thinned all around the car park, just the bit that was hiding the Petrol station from public view. From the photo you can see the vegetation at the back is thicker than in the forground. To the right you can see the roof of the petrol station, the vegetation has been cleared so that cars approaching Waterlooville along the dual carriageway can see the Petrol station.

It's sad, but this imitates the larger picture we have today, where the environment is not integrated into economic, community and political thinking. A large American corporation is putting petrol sales and the production of green house gas emissions above wider community interests and the environment.

The silly thing is that it is far more noticeable because they only thinned out a section that was clearly blocking drivers views of the Petrol station!

It's a pity that Asda can find the money to chop down bushes and other vegetation, but can't find the money to pick up the garbage dropped by it's shoppers and is a direct result of their operational policies.

But then their corporate mentality and the people they employ at the top are not interested in integrating nature into their business model.

Hurray - free plastic bags to be phased out!

Big reductions in this from 2015 onwards!

I started this blog because I was fed up with seeing plastic bags stuck in hedgerows and trees.

Today the news is that the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have agreed that plastic carry bags should be charged for from 2015 onwards.

We just need Labour to agree to the same policy now.

In Wales the 5p plastic bag tax has reduced use by 75%

Waterlooville: spot the differences

Created another panorama of Waterlooville town centre, then thought, why not compare it with the previous panorama!

So here are the two images next to each other. The top is 2013, the bottom is 2010. How many differences can you spot? Click on the image to view a larger scale version and expand your browser window to the full width of your screen.

Horsemeat and things

Cosham Iceland

'Food you can trust' says Iceland, who took a hit when Irish food inspectors found traces of horse DNA in their beefburgers. But at least it was only a tiny trace, Tescos were far more embarassed when it was announced that almost 30% of the DNA content of it's 'value' range of beefburgers consisted of horse meat.

Strangely in 'i' newspaper a Tesco spokesperson suggested it was illegal to have the meat in their products. I'm not sure that is true, what is illegal is to say a food product contains beef only, when in fact it contains other meats as well.

Cosham high street

Meanwhile the big corporates continue to fall on the high street. Following the news of HMV and Jessops in trouble, Blockbuster have joined the growing count of failing retailers.

I am just thankful that when I graduated as an engineer all those decades ago that I went more or less into a good engineering job and spent a year as a paid trainee. I designed things that were manufactured in this country, even often went on the 'shop floor' to see the products being assembled and chatting to production line colleagues.

Jessops, Portsmouth

Today young graduates often end up in service industries like supermarkets, despite having degrees in IT, mechanical engineering etc

Yet successive governments, including the Conservatives and Liberals just cut, poke, criticise, blame and find scape goats (such as jobseekers and others) for the situations they are responsible for creating. They kill the desire to make things and the desire to innovate. It is no wonder we are in a spiral and that many are disenfranchised.

Low carbon technology and engineering is a challenge and as such must be viewed as an OPPORTUNITY to exploit, hence fostering new industry and jobs. Wasting time and effort on old industries will result in other nations overtaking us, yet again. Commiting our graduates to stacking shelves whilst other nations take the prize projects and jobs.

Decoding Special Offers...

I always find it annoying when I am confrinted with special offers that sound so good. So I thought I would write a guide to what they really mean. Here goes:

3 for 2

At first this sounds fantastic. You buy two products and you get one free!
But with all these discounts, you need to translate it into a monetary value of a single item. You then find out what you are really getting. In this case imagine that the 3 products are containers and two are filled to the top with a liquid, where the liquid is the cost of the 3 for 2 offer. To understand how much you are paying you need to take liquid from the two full containers to fill the third, untill all three have equal amounts.

Say each product is £1 then the cost per product is (£1 + £1)/3 = 2/3 = 66p each
So the discount is 33%

BOGOF (Buy one get one free)

Same principle applies as the 3 for 2 offer.
Say each is £1 then the cost  per product is 1/2 = 50p each
The discount is 50%
A bit obvious really but like the 3 for 2 deal, it's easy to forget exactly what you are getting.
When they say you are getting a whole one free, psychologically it sounds better than getting 50% or half off the price. What you have to remember is that it isn't just the amount of goods that is important, the money you pay per item is the real info of interest.

5 products for £3 (products normally cost 79P each)

This is an example I came across this week.
Sometimes they use a different tactic and this sort of thing can require mental arithmetic that can be difficult on the spur of the moment. I'm not brilliant with mental maths standing in a shop staring at the prices!
I cracked this one by first assuming the deal was 5 for £1. That would mean each was 20p.
So then to crank it up to 5 for £3, we just multiply 20p by 3, which gives 60p each.
So in this case the discount is 24%

All of this of course assumes that the special deals are genuine. That the manufacturer hasn't changed the product for the period of the deal, to make the product cheaper, or that the retailer hadn't for a short period increased the price (legally) only to reduce it to the 'normal' price for the special deal offer.

Often the only time you can be sure of a good deal is when a product is an 'end of line' product or the 'use by' and 'sale by' dates are coming up.

More obesity and diabetes predicted for Havant Borough

As is obvious from my posts, I am interested in real evidence and science when it comes to policy and life in general. New research shows a direct correlation between the over provision of food shops and obesity and diabetes.

The research has been conducted by Professor Makse at City College, The City University of New York. His research shows that individual factors have less impact than collective behaviour. A major influence is the provision of food retailers, including supermarkets, restaurants, cafes and other facilities. The more food related economic activity, the greater the levels of obesity.

How does this translate to local activity in Waterlooville? Well it isn't exactly a secret that the Havant Borough Council have been actively trying to fill the town with cafes, food shops and supermarkets, largely because they approved other out of town retail developments that laid waste to the town centre. The biggest project is the Caetano manufacturing site, now handed over to Sainsburys supermarket. The obsession with the ideology of competition and market forces, will result in higher health bills.

Basically there is a conflict of interest. The flaws in todays unscientific economic theories, result in serious health and environmental problems. This is what happens:

1. You create plenty of opportunities to sell food.
2. Collectively and statistically people get fatter.
3. That results in higher health costs
4. But the current ideology is to limit or reduce state spending
5. The result is a big hole, caused mainly by flawed and unscientific economics that fails to include 'externals'.

Yet the 'right' would advocate personal responsibility, which would be fine if the science supported that idea. But as is often the case, people are social beings, like many species. Yes there is competition, but there is also peer pressure and that is often far more influential.
The science shows that individuals will not determine health, they are instead 'victims' of environmental factors, in this case created by flawed political theories and economics that over supply cheap food.

Will a small amount of spending by the council on health road shows and getting individuals to change do the job??
Again this is not supported by science or any fact. The national government sticking a few public information films on TV, or the council sticking a health caravan in Waterlooville town centre for a day, will do absolutely nothing. However refusing a supermarket planning permission will reduce obesity levels. Yet just about all councils think it is cheaper to allow planning applications for supermarkets. Is it really cheaper to get sued by a supermarket, or is it cheaper to spend millions on obesity and diabetes?? Which is the morally correct choice?

It is interesting that this research is published just as a new series 'The Men Who Made us Fat' starts on BBC2.

Here is the research:
Lazaros K. Gallos, Pablo Barttfeld, Shlomo Havlin, Mariano Sigman, Hernán A. Makse. Collective behavior in the spatial spreading of obesity. Scientific Reports, 2012; 2 DOI: 10.1038/srep00454

Or if you want it explained in plain'ish' english:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120614131207.htm

Sainsburys are back

This was always going to happen, but none the less, it isn't particularly welcome. Today Councillors at Havant Borough Council were voting on the latest plans Sainsbury are putting forward for their proposed Waterlooville store.

Sainsburys always intended to come back with a new proposal and had been given indications that they might be successful with revised plans. These included the moving of the petrol station to where the current recycling centre is. As soon as a date was set for the movement of the recycling centre to it's new home, then Sainsburys would go ahead by with a new application.

We have a nation of people with wide ranging skills and suitability to those skills, so in order to satisfy those skills we need many types of jobs. Creating 350 jobs at Sainsburys, will not only remove jobs from other shops (including the possibility of Waitrose), but will totally fail to create jobs for people who are unsuitable to work in that environment because their natural skills and education are better suited elsewhere.

Councillors at Havant have a long track record making bad decisions regarding our high streets, it looks like they are continuing that tradition.

Superscrimpers - Channel 4

Excellent programme on Channel 4 and although not specifically an eco show, it probably does more to get people changing than an eco show would.

But what really shocks me are some of the figures they give. Such as this week a mother that spends £45 per week on each of her kids clothing (£90 in total)!??!
Some people live on £90 per week (that includes food and bills).
Geez, £90 is probably more than I spend on clothes a year! And I try and buy organic if I can. My favourite winter coat is over 20 years old (I bought it in the 80s sometime, but can't remember the exact date). Sure kids need new clothing when they grow, but when I was a kid, I don't remember getting new clothing every month, let alone every week.

Then a few weeks ago they said the average adult in the UK spends over £1000 per year on clothing??
Who are these people??
No wonder wages are high and debt is high, along with masses of waste being generated. Hey folks, you are really sick in the head.

Superscrimpers web site

Sainsburys says I'll be back!

Yes Sainsburys is back with a new planning application for the Caetano site. It was predicted of course and the new plan has taken into account most of the issues raised by local residents, especially the location of the petrol station.
Councillors and residents had suggested moving the petrol station from the Sprint Print site to the current recycling centre site, Sainsburys have now done this.

It should be pointed out that the recycling centre must be moved to the new location by Taylor Wimpey by a certain date (can't remember the actual date) or on completion of something like 200 homes. So Sainsburys are constrained by these time scales and the progress Taylor Wimpey make at Dukes Meadow.

It should be noted that Sainsburys have ignored the environmental concerns raised. Cyclists and pedestrians trying to get into Waterlooville will have to deal with more traffic, whilst the store will obviously encourage car use and increase carbon footprints of shoppers attracted to the store. Small shops in Waterlooville will be under pressure, the green grocer and butchers will have to compete with a new business.

Also, although nothing to do with Sainsburys, the small Shoe Zone shop in Waterlooville has closed, presumably as a result of competition from Brantano.

Waterlooville Poundland

I think it is obvious to everyone now that the old Woolworths premises will be used by Poundland.
The comments at The News sums up many peoples thoughts... 'Oh no, not another shop full of...'

But it made me think. How do they maintain prices at or below £1?

Here's my thoughts about how a 'pound' shop might keep £1 prices in 50 to 100 years from now:

1. Inflation goes up, prices go up, they sell progressively different products, always keeping them within £1. Eventually in 50 years or so, the only thing they can sell is single rubber bands, a single chewy sweet, a thimble full of shampoo etc for a £1 each.

2. They sell the same or similar products as today over the same timescale as scenario 1 and inflation in the UK goes up. They need to find progressively cheaper labour in foreign countries, exploit the cheapest resources etc. so eventually their suppliers set up factories in the middle of the Amazon Rain forest and employ the children from local tribes.

3. They manage to turn the UK into a communist dictatorship which sets £1 prices on all the products forever.

4. They manipulate the markets so that inflation remains stationary or we have deflation. Not much different to 3 really, since they would need enormous influence.

A Visit to Havant

I was in Havant recently and noticed a small shop in the Meridian Centre which appeared to be closing down, 'Jon's Bits and Bobs'. Inside he seemed to be selling wool (for knitting) and other similar stuff.
But what was more interesting was the big photocopied letter from Havant Borough Council listing the months of council tax 'Jon' owed, placed prominently on the shop window!

What most people are unaware of is that commercial Council Tax rates are huge. Jon was apparently expected to pay £980 a month, yes that is per month, for an averagely sized small shop. Plus he probably had to pay a similar amount for rent per month as well. I'm estimating some £11,000 per year for Council Tax and a similar amount for rent. So even before thinking about making a profit, a small shop owner needs to have enough people coming in, combined with products with a suitable margin, that will firstly clear some £20,000 per year, plus generate a significant amount above this to pay other bills and provide an income (oh and then there are the other taxes as well!).

So it isn't at all surprising that most shops sell mass produced junk with a guaranteed margin, to produce a significant income to pay the bills. The old shops that could in the past get away with a small number of customers per week, just can not survive and if you add the fact that they have to compete with bigger stores with more political clout, it isn't surprising that that many small shops struggle.

304-306 London Road update (Woolworths building)

Work at the old Woolworths premises continues. I recently found a planning application at Havant Borough Council to approve the two units to be separated and for the smaller unit to be extended at the rear.

But having had a peek into the two premises, one would think they are doing the opposite and combining the two into one!

I guess the owner of the property (Aaron Wright?) believes they will get more in rents for two properties rather than one big one. Or they might be considering selling up?

Work on the Woolworths building

It is clear from a peek in the window of the old Woolworths building that the small unit that was once used by Woolworths for selling CDs, DVDs and Games is now being prepared for a new use.

The back office and even the back wall have been completely removed, so it is clear the intention is to extend the retail area and possibly rent it as an individual unit. Apparently JD Wetherspoons are proposing a pub in Waterlooville, with speculation about the old Woolworths location being used. A large organisation like that, would probably have the 'clout' to have extensive work done on any property, including knocking down walls.

Something stirring at Waterlooville Woolworths?

Could Allworths be opening up in Waterlooville? I was walking through Waterlooville centre and heard some drilling coming from the old Woolworths store. Admittedly it could have just been some maintenance work, but who knows?? Maybe the property has an interested tenant?

The site is almost split in two, with the unit on the side originally used by Woolworths to sale videos and CDs, so maybe this part is going to be rented separately?
Speculation, speculation..