John Griff column: Can the enforced move to online shopping ever be fully reversed?

Anticipation is building ahead of next week’s reopening of high streets across the country – but has the nation already moved so far down the online shopping route that there won’t be business to be done on those high streets?

Long before coronavirus became a word on everyone’s lips and before the word Brexit did the same – people were starting to enact the prophesy that Microsoft’s Bill Gates made decades ago.

Then, he suggested that we would all work from home, have our shopping delivered to us and through technology we would be living a life of comparative ease. Three years ago he also forecast a pandemic that would kill 30 million people. The man seems to have been bang on target. When our shops open next week, which ones will be able to sustain staying open?

In common with a significant part of the world, the UK is staring recession in the face – and a scale of recession that we’ve not seen since almost a century ago. Prophets of doom abound and even the government has taken to softening us up with a ‘brace yourself’ message via the chancellor, Rishi Sunak.

Just a couple of days ago one of the nationals ran a piece saying that more people were actively staying at home despite the partial lifting of lockdown. Whether that partial lifting was inevitable because people had already taken matters into their own hands and ignored the pleas – and instructions – of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cohort of scientists and politicians remains to be seen, but with ongoing global mass gatherings fuelled by outrage over the alleged murder of black American George Floyd by a white policeman, you can understand why ‘coronaversion’ is now becoming firmly established and why some people are voluntarily putting themselves under extended lockdown.

Many places of work have spent a lot of time and energy – not to mention money – ensuring that they are as Covid-19 compliant as possible. At the radio station there are now traffic signs displayed in corridors, segregation of staff in studios, sanitation stations in place and everyone taking their temperature on arrival for work. For months there have been no visitors for interview and the use of Facetime, Skype and Zoom has become commonplace. There will be developments in the broadcast use of online platforms in the coming weeks and months, lockdown or no lockdown.

A good friend recently wrote on LinkedIn (Facebook for businesspeople) about how to behave on Zoom and similar platforms. His tips – (1. Look at the camera at all times, 2. Mute your microphone when listening to others and 3. Less is more with visual body language) are all excellent and of the moment.

Visual social media etiquette? Absolutely - it could become the growth market for the masses. Another friend posted a short film marketing a kit for people who want to make their own online videos for socialising, business or perhaps both. Sometimes I teach communication skills myself – but where these skills have up until now been aimed at businesspeople they could soon become mainstream for all.

This brings me back to Bill Gates and his prophecies. Now, in addition to shopping and working from home, we’re starting to socialise that way too. This week I WhatsApp’d with a friend who I’d not seen for ages - technology again shrank the planet.

How much further might it shrink if we see a second spike in coronavirus cases, Brexit approaching and an extensive recession?

On Monday, will we return to our shops and the previous ways or will online shopping become an unassailable force?