Nick Griffin

A Life Worth Living.

The pubs shut down. It was the last one, there used to be six or seven, I can't quite remember, now there's none. It shouldn't be a surprise, no one has been able to afford a few pints after work, or a midweek bevvy in quite some time.

It's just another empty building on the highstreet. Plenty of those today.
We used to have for or five banks, they're all gone. Have to drive fifteen miles to the nearest one.

Butchers closed years ago, the hardware store gone, the little trinket and gift shop, gone. Even the two big retailers, one clothes shop the other selling computer games they've gone. All empty now.

Well, not everything is empty, we've got four Turkish barbers and two nail bars, the little shop that sold newspapers and cigarettes has gone, but a vape shop opened up. There's still an oxfam, but they've started pricing stuff higher than a London boutique.

At the bottom of the street the pound shop has remained but everything is two pounds now, always makes me laugh.

No people on the highstreet, not much to be there for I suppose.

Not all that long ago, young men would have withdrawn cash from a bank in their town, walked in that confident way young men walk, wearing new jeans bought from the highstreet clothes shop. Into the first pub to meet their mates, a few drinks later after laughing at someone's hair cut he got from Terry's barbers it would be onto the next pub or pop in the chip shop before home.

Not now. Now they stay at home, spend digital money at digital stores, they drink a can from the fridge if their minimum wage will stretch that far.

They play computer games or post on X, they search dating sites for the girl they would have bumped into at the Kings Arms.

Progress seems to have given us hyperspeed digital access to everything you could imagine. The cost has been a life worth living.