Postcard From The Future

The phrase ‘grim up north’ lingers in the national imagination, conjuring images of soot-stained skylines, struggling towns, and industries long past their prime. Yet this caricature of tired decline obscures another, less told story: one of extraordinary historic wealth, ambition, and commercial power.

My wife and I are on a plutocrats’ tour thereabouts to examine how the land lies. This week we address the future. Where lies that golden horizon, you ask. California? China? No, dear Puffin, in Wigan. True fact, as I have been there with Mrs AWS.

The phrase ‘I have seen the future, and it works’ is attributed to American journalist Lincoln Steffens, who, perhaps prematurely, pronounced the Soviet Union such during a visit to post-revolution Leningrad. Will we have better luck in the Lancashire mill town straddling the River Douglas Leeds and Liverpool Canal? Read on.

In previous articles we discovered much former northern industrial land has been flattened and replaced by retail parks, not least by the giant developers Peel Estates, whose credits include the Manchester Trafford Centre built on disused Manchester Ship Canal acreage.

Likewise, Marus Bridge Retail Park south of Wigan. The coal and rail industries dominated the landscape thereabouts, which served as a critical transport artery for the Lancashire coalfield. While thousands of shallow mine shafts riddled the wider Wigan landscape during the Industrial Revolution, Marus Bridge sat in immediate proximity to several massive deep-pit operations

The physical decline of these collieries through the mid-20th century left disused and overgrown rail spurs. When developed, the vacant land became the Marus Bridge Retail Park and its surrounding road networks. Therein lies the ‘store of the future’, but first we have to get there.

The history books tell us that Mr Steffens crossed the Russian border by train from Finland on March 6th 1919. One’s obliged to do likewise. Mention of plutocracy draws one to the expensive end of an Avanti West Coast express. Remember – if you book ahead, travel off-peak and use your Two Together card, first class is cheaper than turning up on the day to travel second class. Plus, if you’re researching an article for a commercial website, it’s tax-deductible.

Breakfast was served and was very pleasant.

But, I must say the portions on the way back were small. Above is the entire meal, not just one course. Plus, no endless back-and-forth trolley allowing for pale ale, crisps, shortbread, chocolate and plastic wine bottle booty. One hopes Mr Steffens had better luck while crawling in and out to the trackwork at Finlyandsky vokzal.

While we’re on the subject, after our plutocrats’ trip to Liverpool – yes, Peel redeveloped the city’s Gladstone Docks – I’d been looking forward to a steak and ale Transpennine Express pie all day, but got this:

They issue irritating wooden cutlery which broke on a bit of tough steak. Didn’t do my teeth any good either. Back on the trip to Wigan, after alighting at the railway halt, my wife and I happened upon the local constabulary attending a gentlemen’s disagreement in Spoons. Not to worry, on to the bus stop.

Yes, bus stop. I haven’t been on a bus for years, but needs must, it being about an hour’s walk for even the stoutest Wigonian from the town centre to Marus Bridge. One of Mr Burham’s yellow Bee buses arrived. As if in the USSR in the 1920s, the driver needed to know how long we’d be at the retail park for before issuing a ticket.

You get an hour for two pounds, or five pounds for all day, therefore, it is cheaper for me and Mrs AWS to buy two adult singles each way. That’s eight (albeit tax-deductible) pounds for a trip to the shops. You begin to understand why people use the internet. On a lighter note, I’d forgotten how much fun it is sitting upstairs at the front while pretending to drive the bus. This kept me occupied until our 30-seconds-to-disembarkation landmark – a McDonald’s opposite the Ben Jonson Hotel. Moments later we stood outside the ‘store of the future’. Wow.

Observations. A customer toilet. Nothing but trouble. Board it up and send them cross-legged to McDonald’s. Self-service tills. Lots of staff, including a security guard. Will that last? Very tidy and well stocked with that large number of staff doing small amounts of top-up replenishment from small cages. And they were all wearing earpieces. Shelves with transparent plastic sliders on medicines and washing powder. What are these, you ask? They’re invisible shields that force bargain hunters to slide a panel to one side and take out products one at a time.

Why so? Because otherwise shoplifters can swipe entire rows of high-value items into a bag in a single motion. They can then exit the store. Remember, the staff are limited in how they can challenge them. This is especially a problem at stores with car parks, and near motorway junctions. Also, shelves are covered with notices informing shoppers of the presence of facial recognition. As you may or may not realise, every inch of a supermarket is covered by CCTV. Facial recognition software applied to the CCTV footage allows for just that.

Beyond the jesting, this is the future. Stealing is being decriminalised. The police don’t want to know, unless it’s over £200. But how can you tell it’s over £200 as somebody sprints out of the shop? Well, you have to find where they were ‘shopping’ on the CCTV, go to those shelves, see what’s likely to be missing and count up how much it would be worth. By which time, the thieves are well down the motorway.

The plan appears to be to make stealing a civil offence, with shoplifters being banned from shops, then asked to leave when facial recognition spots them. Recovering goods or their value will require civil action by the retailer, an expensive, time-consuming process with no guarantee of success given the progressive leftie courts.

And remember, if you manhandle a suspect, or even raise your voice, or if they claim to have had their self-esteem lowered, they might have you prosecuted, at no cost to them, via some leftie virtue signalling pro bono lawyer from a boutique London chamber.

This will apply to all types of theft. So, if your phone is stolen, or your house burgled, no crime has been committed. It will be up to you to find out who did it (get your facial recognition Google specs ordered and cam-up your house) and take a civil case against them – which will end with you out of pocket and being counter-sued for assault or hurt feelings.

In the meantime, the crime figures will drop like a stone while the actual number of people victimised will rise like a rocket. I have seen the future and …
 

© Always Worth Saying 2026