SO another retailer bites the dust. As yet another ‘To Let’ sign comes down in the High Street, another branch of a national chain fills its space. The shops in Salisbury seem to be following the national high street trend: independents feeling the squeeze, retailers moving out of town and online, food and drink outlets carrying all before them. Just in the last month ‘The Last Bookshop’ proved itself to be a rather ill-fated choice of name and the deli on fish row made an indelicate departure.

If you want to buy a cup of coffee (seemingly more often served in buckets these days), a pizza or a burger in Salisbury, you are spoiled for choice.

But much else and you’ll soon be scrabbling. Now that BHS, that stalwart of the provincial high street, has joined the little lamented Woolworths, the high street of my childhood has all but disappeared.

Shopping has certainly changed over the years. I grew up before the internet was invented. If you couldn’t find what you wanted in C&A, Littlewoods or BHS you had to pay a bit more and go to Marks and Spencer. I remember a world before Debenhams hoovered up all the regional independent department stores, when the Co-op was so much more than a convenience food store.

And in the olden days when most families didn’t have a car, home delivery was commonplace. A quick phone call to the butcher and the International Stores and food for the weekend was sorted.

But rampant consumerism still wins.

And in spite of the growth of online shopping, the Office for National Statistics, continues to report shopping as the number one family leisure activity outside the home.

However, the collapse of BHS should raise more than an eyebrow and a quiet lament at the passing of an era. BHS’s story demonstrates the more corrosive and pernicious side of our obsession with opulent consumption. As its former owners lavishly lined their own pockets (neatly avoiding paying tax in the process) so the hole in its pension fund deepened.

Ironic that the same MPs who are now calling so loudly for Sir Philip Green to pay back into the pension fund the dividends he took out of the company, were just a few years ago feting and honouring him for his services to the retail industry.

And, who will pay to fill hole in the BHS pension pot? Why, us! The compensation that pensioners receive under the Pension Protection Fund is paid for by a levy on everyone else’s pension. Meaning each of us will have less to spend on pizzas and coffee in our retirement. Can’t see that bothering Sir Philip unduly aboard his new yacht…