Stoke and the decline of the high street

We took a trip to Hanley which is close to Stoke and what stuck me was the number if vacant units and also the sheer number of pound saver style stores and pawn brokers as well as the number of charity stores. It was all very grim indeed and whilst I fully appreciate how bad things are in the area (it has the third worst rate of unemployment in the UK) the sheer transformation of what was once a vibrant high street into a downtrodden parody of itself is just depressing, what’s even more depressing is that this is a pattern which is being repeated across the UK.
This does seem to echo cries that the recovery is only for the rich (which I don’t fully buy into) and I a certain if I took a straw pole of people out shopping today that would be saying that they have no confidence that things are better. I suppose part of this is that even though we are seeing strong growth in the economy we are still paying back the debts from earlier years, this has resulted in a cut in public services and a general lack of money for local government. In some ways this is no bad thing as my limited exposure to local government left me feeling that they operated in a parallel universe in terms of how they managed their financial affairs. I am not saying that this applies to all councils but it certainly did with regards to the council I spent time with . There are no easy answers.