Headline Edition

Street gangs in rampage of browsing

Retailers have been having a hard time since the pandemic, with online shopping moving into their areas of business and shop lifting growing almost by the day. But now a new menace is making local and small businesses lives even harder.

“We are infested with browsers” said one shop keeper “and the thing is, you can’t tell them from ordinary paying customers.” she said. “They wander in, sometimes with elderly parents, and fiddle and maul the shelves, make some comment to staff about prices and go out again. It has to stop”

Browsing has long been a British tradition, but now it’s reached epidemic proportions. There’s even a Tik Tok challenge to go in and browse in as many shops as possible. And it’s not just the shop owners who are being bothered.

David Hughes is a customer at Welland Books in Dartmouth “The place used to be great, you could go in, know what you want. Now every space in front of every shelf is blocked by people taking books off the shelf, reading the blurb and putting it back.”

Groups of teenagers, bored with the lack of facilities in one town which chose to remain nameless, wander the high street late afternoon to evening wanding into shops and checking out the items on display with no intention of purchasing anything. Clothes shops, shoe outlets and sports equipment stores were the worst, but now coach loads of browsers – nicknamed the Clitheroe Browsers’ Barmy Army – travel the length and breadth of the UK to look through windows and then rifle through stock. “It’s a day out” said one member “We browse the f*** out of these places, and then leave. We go home at the end of the day with absolutely nothing. It’s very eco-friendly”.