'The High Street is dead, let's have several centres in Swindon'

I think the SA is excellent at providing stories and pictures of local activities.

It is a pity more people don’t engage with local events.

I like the ‘Nostalgia’ pictures you display and having lived here for many years enjoy trying to see if I can place the pictures.

One spread was about the long ago demise of one of the nation's favourite shops. I heard someone likening the imminent departure of Wilko to that of Woolworths.

With many High Street shops closing and the rush to fill their spaces with flats, perhaps it is about time that we acknowledged that the High Street as we knew it, is dead.

When all the shops were in the town centre and all went by bus, things worked ok. However, with the forces of online shopping, cars, and out-of-town centres, we are in a different world.

Perhaps we should embrace the new ways of doing things rather than trying to recreate a dodo. Maybe we could aim for several mini-town centres.

After all, we have the Orbital, West Swindon Centre, Greenbridge, (remnants) of the town centre, and Old Town.

If, instead of pop-up stores all over the place, a concentration into number of ‘centres’, we could have a view to the future that we are managing rather than being manipulated by retail experiences.

But this would take local councils to have the personnel to plan such ideas.

However, with national government systematically siphoning off monies which should be ear-marked for local projects ever since they came to power, these dreams will have to be just that.

Bob Pixton,

Abney Moor,

Liden.