Vladimir McTavish: Vaping and cycle couriers – the big drivers of the UK economy
At the start of the week, I saw a report on BBC News about the proliferation of vape shops on Scotland’s high streets. In some areas, almost every other retail outlet is selling e-cigarettes. This trade has grown exponentially since the Covid pandemic.
In 2020, there were 5573 shops selling vapes in Scotland. By 2024 that was up to 7069, an increase of well over a quarter. One imagines this figure will only have increased over the last two years.
Greenock has been christened “Scotland’s vape capital”. The Inverclyde town, one of the most deprived in Scotland, has more such stores than anywhere else in the country.
Obviously sucking fruit-flavoured water vapour through a plastic tube is now a big money-earner. And one can only assume that a number of these businesses may well be fronts, laundering money for less legal activities, much like many tanning salons, car washes and fast-food takeaways.
Their impact can also have wider implications. The fire which closed Glasgow Central Station and destroyed other buildings in the surrounding area, started in a neighbouring vape shop. The stock was obviously highly combustible.
Most outlets selling vapes are undoubtedly legitimate businesses and their rise over the last half-decade represents one of the few growth areas of the economy.
With even charity shops facing the crunch, they appear to be the only evidence of a boom on our high streets. A decade or so ago, this would have sounded utterly implausible. In fact, lots of people would not even have heard the word “vape”.
Now, people who cannot decide whether to give up smoking or not can suck sweet-smelling steam out of an electronic device. It’s hard to believe that virtually nobody did it ten years ago.
As an ex-smoker I’ve never seen the appeal.Now and again I miss fags, but I’d hate to become a slave to a bubblegum-flavoured tube.
Deliveroo is another growth area of the modern economy and another word that was not in our dictionaries a decade ago. Fast-food delivery cyclists are everywhere in Edinburgh these days. We never had them ten years ago.
Deliveroo, along with other providers such as Just Eat and Uber Eats, sum up the era we live in. They are futuristic and Dickensian at the same time. Deliveroo employees don’t have a boss or a line manager, they’re employed by an algorithm. Yet their working conditions are positively Victorian.
Imagine spending your working day cycling up steep cobbled streets with a massive fridge on your back to deliver meals to people who are too lazy to get off the sofa and walk to the kitchen. This explains why young people now fall into two distinct categories.
They are either clinically obese or they’re anorexically thin from cycling hundred of miles a week delivering food to lazy, fat people.
Of course, many are now on e-bikes and they are a menace to both pedestrians and drivers, and also to other cyclists. They cycle on the pavement at ridiculous speed, and weave in and out of traffic without using hand signals.
Driving behind one the other day was so nerve-racking, I was craving a fag. Thankfully, I was able pull over outside a vape shop.