There is no regional variety

Well at least the accents have survived. I think that by losing the old stores with generations of tradition something is definitely being lost, and customer care does not seem to be so high on the list of these new fly by night stores which change hands at the drop of a merger.

I think that in the past it was more important to be nice to the customer. People were not so mobile so if a customer was upset that customer would stay in the town generally putting people off the business. Also people needed their jobs and were frightened to lose them, so they were more likely to be polite to customers. I do not think staff always want their jobs today, so they say whatever they like to the customer and they don't really care. Very sad

that right I was wondering where the customer is always right. and To to think of it when people started suing for stuff like spilling hot coffee on ones self right out of the pot (dumb women) this sit the mark as dont be polite to the customer any more what ya think?

It's true of the shops too, it's so expensive in the village shops that people go into town for cheaper things from the supermarket, when I was a little girl mum shopped in the village and we knew everyone. Now due to supermarkets it's even more expensive in the village for the few loyal customers. I do shop locally when I can but the bulk of my packaged items are delivered from the supermarket. There are so many people here now, it's changed a lot and when we go into town it doesn't really matter which towm you go to as they all seem to have the same franchises. Local Government here seems to reject anything new anyone brings to the area, the village is getting less of a community every year. I hardly know anyone here anymore, there's few locals left, no idea where they went.

I think that this gradual loss of local identity is being purposely pursued so that we are more controllable by the Government, there are less identifiable groups of people all sticking together, we are all in a sort of floating morass and it is very sad.

It is very sad, isn't it? We have found somewhere very undeveloped and we are keeping it very quiet as we like it that way. We may move there next year. I have to say though that from what we have seen there is not much "community" there either. However, we will be "incomers" so that never helps, does it!

That is an interesting point about the travelling, I didn't think about that. I was blaming television in my narrow little mind! There is a programme which I watch on the TV which is set in the North of England and all the characters used to speak with a regional accent but they are now bringing in a lot of characters which are supposed to be from London and they all speak with the same accents and it is very depressing. There was nothing wrong with the original accents.