This summer’s news that the charity shop retail bubble has begun to burst should, in a normal civilized society, elicit solemn sympathy. Yet, I’m struggling to shed a single tear. In fact, across the country, I bet a collective, cynical cheer is rising from the cobblestones. Recently, Cancer Research announced plans to shut 200 shops, while disability charity Scope warned that over half of its high-street estate is at risk. Sombre charity sector spokespeople complain shops are buckling under rising costs.
Most popular
Douglas Murray
Middle England is finally waking up to the migrant crisis
Well, for the last three decades, I’ve watched their hostile, tax-sheltered colonization of our town centres. Are they now cracking under the weight of their own bloated administrative overheads? What beautiful poetic justice. It seems not even an empire built on free stock and free labour can survive the modern British economy if it is managed with total, cynical incompetence. The sheer scale of the charity cartel’s high-street takeover is terrifying. In 1990, UK hosted a modest network of 3,200 dusty shops. By 2000, that number nearly doubled. Today, there are more than 11,200.
