> in some places they have been replaced by artisan bakeries and pop-up boutiques, while in others they have been replaced by charity shops or nothing at all.

Charity shops, vape shops (used for money laundering), Turkish Barbers (used for money laundering), Automated Laundrettes (used for money laundering), Car Washes (used for money laundering), Phone shops (used for money laundering), Kebab shops (used for money laundering)

Banks and privatised utilities (used for money laundering.) Politicians (used for money laundering.)

This is the UK's entire economy now - extracting the wealth of the people who work in the UK and moving it to foreign owners.

London looks rich because some of the money sticks to the sides while it's passing through, but it's still being siphoned from the provinces through the City and out - to tax havens, foreign mafias, foreign aristocrats, and giant foreign corporations.

It's important the population isn't allowed to understand that the UK is a colonised country. So there's a huge media machine making sure the peasants blame "immigrants" for small-scale criminality, and poor people for being feckless and unproductive. It's useful to make sure everyone keeps fighting about racism/immigration and gender issues to keep them from looking at structural economics and the destruction of democracy.

We really do excel at money laundering. Go UK !