New Horizons Digital 1 • Unit 7 p.82 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE Read and listen. Culture Crisis The UK is changing! We are experiencing a real cultural invasion by other countries. Is this a good or bad thing? Steve Chang looks at the changing face of Britain. If you walk down a British high street today , it is very easy to forget where you are! Shopping streets in British towns are all the same. In every town you generally find the chain stores – Currys, The Body Shop, Boots, WH Smith, McDonalds, HMV, Blockbuster Video, Next, Gap, Benetton – and the major banks. Small shops which are not part of a chain are becoming very rare. What’s more, many of these chain stores and the products they sell are not actually British. America has an enormous influence on the UK these days. The British eat large quantities of American-style fast food. But the USA isn’t the only country to influence what we eat. Here in Richmond, for example, we have Indian, Chinese, French, Greek, Thai, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian restaurants.