HOW THE UK HIGH STREET LAUNDERS YOUR HAIRCUT

Why is every UK high street the same vape shop and barber?
We discuss, responsibly and without accusing anyone, the £30m laundering crackdown.

Debenhams couldn't survive. Woolworths couldn't survive. And yet every town in Britain now supports four barbers, a vape shop and an American sweet shop flogging £9 cans of Prime, all thriving shoulder to shoulder, completely above board, obviously. 

We do the maths so the National Crime Agency doesn't have to, explain why the corner shop charges you a premium for the crime of walking, and salute the 75 brave new officers tasked with policing organised crime across a nation of 70 million. 

Then we bulldoze the lot and rebuild the British town centre as one vertical vape tower, bargain booze at the summit. Make Grimsby great again.

00:00 The high street that's identical everywhere
01:35 You don't need customers if you launder
02:10 The terrified barber test
04:25 Why the corner shop costs more
05:05 75 officers, 70 million people
06:12 The vape tower: a new town plan
07:56 Make Grimsby great again

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Transcript

0:00

So UK high streets now, they're like the greatest shopping experience because no matter where you go, no matter what town, wherever you are, you can do the exact same things, right? You can go to a vape shop, you can get yourself sorted out in a Turkish barber's, and like they seem to be absolutely booming. There's these phone shops, there's really expensive sort of tourism and candy shops, and I don't understand how they're surviving better than all of these, you know, massive retailers. Like we've lost Debenhams, Woolworths, I think that might be back now, but yeah. Even Greggs struggles to survive on certain high streets. How do these phone shops, vape shops, barbers do it? It's, it's wild. I think they're just, um, they're very business savvy. They're r- just really good, uh, accounting and how they run their businesses. They have a really efficient model, and but yeah, uh, unlike the old traditional, uh, stores like, like you say, Woolworths, Debenhams, Marks& Spencer, but they just couldn't cut it. Badly organized. But, uh, these, these newer businesses such as a Turkish barber, they- they're just really good at what they do. They- they cut- Yeah, like … a lot of hair. Yeah. I think the biggest problem with a lot of this is that like the, the bigger companies, what they tried to do was have customers, you know, sell products, like manufacture things, have a supply chain, and all of these things are really, really expensive. A much better way to do it is just to launder money through them, right? If you launder money, you don't need many customers. There's nobody really checking for stuff like that because all the police are busy arresting people for posting stuff on Facebook and for flying like Britain flags and all of these really important crimes that need to be dealt with. So you can just go ahead and, you know, launder money and, and make it look like you're cutting lots of people's hairs. And, and I think to be fair, we need to bring in just so that we're not being like xenophobic, we need to bring in nail shops to this as well. There's a nail shop issue in the UK where-… th- they seem to survive quite well as… And I don't un- you know, I don't under- yeah, I, I guess I'm not saying they're all laundering money, but it does seem a little bit suspicious. It seems incredibly suspicious. And yeah, you're right. And, and it's, it's just so bizarre that so many retailers are closing down'cause they just can't afford to, to run a store, and there wasn't the demand, yet somehow it's affordable for someone to like open all these small random shops and somehow have a thriving business. But if you actually go in and ask for a haircut, you'll see this look of terror on the barber's face 'cause he's like, "You've clearly never done it before." Yeah. And obviously, obviously we're not saying all of them, but every single high street seems to have One, usually all of those things, a vape shop, Turkish barbers, a nail salon, uh, some dodgy little place selling sweets. And it's like, how many sweets are you selling to, to pay for rent and the bills on that premises and have, like, two members of staff work there? You know, it's just none of the math would, like, work out. Yeah. Yeah. And you… Sometimes I wonder if the two members of staff work in all of the different shops. Um, I, I mean, we need to be fair here, right? There, there are still some booming businesses on the average high street in an English town. There's Bargain Booze, um, maybe the- Ladbrokes … you know, Ladbrokes. Yeah. The betting shops. Yeah. The, you know, these kinds of cornerstones of community are still there, right? So you can still go in and get four liters of, you know, Scrumpy Jack's for £7 or whatever and- Yeah. And I guess also you have, like, the, what do they call it, like Tesco Metro or Sainsbury's Local or something like that, where they sell the same stuff as the big supermarket, except there's no offers, so it kind of makes everything just that little bit more expensive kind of for no reason, 'cause it's the same product by the same retailer, but somehow it's not, so you have to pay more 'cause you walk there rather than drive a car to the big supermarket. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And you could argue, well, you know, it's laziness, but you could also argue it's just targeting the poorest people in the community with higher prices. Although, to be fair, it's great for shoplifters. It is. Yeah. There's al- There's, there's always a, a plentiful supply of shopping to lift. And I mean, that's, that's another bizarre thing that's seems to be happening now in the UK a lot more as well. It's like, I don't know, shoplifters would kind of get caught back in the day. Now it's, it's getting more like that American model of just run in, take what you want, run out again. No one's gonna stop you. Oh, but like I said earlier, it's because the police are very busy dealing with, you know, much more important crimes, like arresting people that are bleeding to death on the street and, uh, you know, closing down people's Facebook pages, and all of these other really important things that need to be resolved, you know? So- Yeah … you can't really blame- 'Cause there could be a non-crime hate speech thing going- Yeah … off somewhere, and you need to send 10 officers down there to make sure the arrest gets made. Yeah. Yeah, if someone burgles a house and then gets held in, they need to go and arrest the owner of the house for wrongly imprisoning the person burgling them and stuff. Um, and then of course, the government is doing their very best. So they've, they've got 75 new officers that are gonna crack down on these kind of illegal front businesses that we see on a lot of the high streets, and I'm sure those 75 officers can do the work in a population of 70 million people across, you know, however many high streets that we have left in the UK. Perhaps they should just bulldoze every town center and turn it into a retail park. Yeah, it could be nice. Um, yeah. You know? And, or would they just do it exactly the same? I mean, if there was a, a new town being built now with the town planners, sort of have all the houses around it, and then in the center just one massive vape shop, like It- Sort of huge, monolithic… The same sort of size as a Sports Direct- Yeah … but just sells vapes. But, but I'm thinking more vertical, like some- … some huge tower. You can have eight floors. Yeah. Vape shop at the bottom, Turkish barber section, you know, nail shop section, and just, yeah, just have it as the, you know- Maybe bargain bins at the top for the pinnacle of our civilization. Yeah, exactly. So, and then that'll probably be good because if people do drink too much, trying to get to the top floor is obviously quite difficult, so, you know. But getting down will be a lot easier. Um, but yeah, that could be a new way of town planning. So you have this big, like, almost pyramid structure in the middle, all the houses in a circle around it, so it's easy to get to the center. It's just walking distance. Yeah. You know? Rather-- yeah. Rather than having things one here, something at the other end. It's all just circular and… And then you can still put big supermarkets, like, on the outskirts, at least a dual carriageway drive away. You know? Yeah. So anyone that's kind of at, at least like the, you know, the richer end of the nouveau poor in the UK can drive their vehicles to the far away and get the discounts, right? Yeah. But, but then you'd probably-- you'd have to make it, like, a 15-minute city or something like that. Yeah. So it'd probably need to take you 16 minutes to get to the actual supermarket, so you have to pay some kind of toll, I would, I would think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think what I'm gonna do one day is go back, and I'm gonna take over Grimsby and just we're g- we're gonna become like a, what's it called? A, our own country. How, how… Like Monaco. We're gonna become a principality of Grimsby- Okay, cool … and Cleethorpes. We're gonna restart fishing and oil in the North Sea. We're, we're gonna make Freshney Place the high street next to the m- the best high street in the country. Freeman Street is gonna become, you know, laid out, and it'll just be scallops and lobsters and cod, and everyone will be happy. You'll be able to get fish and chips for £3.99. Like back in the '90s. Like back in the '90s. Yeah. I think it's- And I remember- … it's a good dream. Make Grimsby great again. Make Grimsby great again. Exactly. And I remember high streets used to be much better in the past, and maybe we are just rose-tinted. Maybe we just weren't so much into vaping back then. Yeah, probably not. But, I mean, I remember where I grew up, so it was a, a town called Redcar, and that's where I went to secondary school. Um, but when I was a kid, you could go there, and there was like, there was loads of shops. There was stuff to do. If you go n- there now, it's, like, almost all of those places have shut. All of, like, the big things like, I don't know, Woolworths, WHSmith, all that kind of thing, they're closed. There's a lot less of, like, little interesting shops. There's a ton of charity shops, and there's a load of empty buildings, and then you just got your, your usual everything else: bookmakers, Wetherspoons, book- Hmm all the other things we talked about. But it used to be really, really nice when I was a kid, but now not so much. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's the kind of place you need a stab vest just to go and shop in those charity shops. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, what a world we live in. The high streets are dead, um, and I don't see any way out of it. So you might as well start vaping, get any booze in at Bargain Booze, and this is not life advice, but, you know, go and get yourself a haircut on the way home. Yeah. And long live, uh, Grimsby. Yeah. Yeah. Don't forget, folks, if you've enjoyed this episode, like, subscribe, leave us a comment. What do you think about the high streets in the UK? How could we rescue them? And we'll see you next time. Goodbye. Bye.