If online retailers really do succeed in swiping half all retail sales by 2018, as the consultant IMRG is predicting, the effect on the high streets of Britain would be seismic. Many stores would be uneconomic and whole shopping districts could wither away. Retail landlords would suffer badly, too.

Yet online retailers are going to have to improve their game if shoppers are to be persuaded to defect to the web in such large numbers. Complaints about delivery failures and shoddy or incorrect goods are on the rise.

The shop really is rather a clever invention, both for consumers and for business. Shoppers can see, touch, prod and sniff the goods on offer. They can choose the actual item they take home. They can’t be fobbed off with the dog-eared book, the limp lettuce or the gadget missing its instruction manual. They take the goods home, enjoy instant gratification and don’t have to wait in for a delivery.

They even have an actual place to go to and real people to moan at if something goes wrong.

For business, too, the shop is a compelling business model. Consumers do the work. They visit the store. They take the stuff off the shelves. In some supermarkets they even scan it through the checkouts themselves. And they operate their own home delivery service.

If traditional retailers can’t retain their customers despite these advantages, they will have only themselves to blame.

Is John Tiner being punished for the Northern Rock debacle? The former chief executive of the Financial Services Authority, which had the unhappy task of supervising the Rock and for years approved its fatal business model, left just weeks before it started to implode. Mr Tiner has been appointed CBE. By contrast, his predecessor, Howard Davies, walked into the sunset with a grander gong, a full knighthood.

patrick.hosking@thetimes.co.uk

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