Woolworths

It's almost completely empty, other than the expensive items. The staff look miserable, the remaining stock looks pathetic. The Woolworths in Accrington has been here for as long as anybody can remember, and now it's dieing. It's truely one of the most sickening experiences I've had for a long time.

Accrington Broadway is in a poor state, as I've said many, many times before. We've lost most of our decent stores to the economy, even during the up times. Now we're heading down, and somehow I look to Woolworths not as a tragedy in itself, but a warning to Wilkinsons, Smiths and M&S. Perhaps not on a UK-wide scale, but the shops cannot be making enough money to stay open in this tough climate. I am not looking forward to the day that I enter town just to see another giant closing it's store forever.

Perhaps the galling thing is not the closure of the store itself. To me, the truely sad thing is that I know what happens next. Less big stores will decrease footfall. The customers that once plodded through Woolworths will take their shopping to the internet or ASDA. The spiral will continue. This is a threat to the entire commerical heart of Accrington. And looming over this is that, by about 2012, there will be a shiny new Tesco just a few hundred paces away. This Conservative council cannot run Accrington's town centre. I have heard far more of plans to place crop circles on Coppice Hill than to expand the commercial sector.

I'm already know what will happen to the space Woolworths filled. It'll be broken up into three and filled with three identical pound stores.