A report out this week warns of a hefty demise in retail employment and lays the primary portion of blame squarely at the feet on the Internet.

For a long time it has seemed obvious to me that the future of brick and mortar stores has been in jeopardy. In recent years, boarded-up shops in town centres have been put down to the recession, expensive parking, poor public transport and councils gouging money with sky-high property rates.

Certainly all those things have played a factor in consigning the image of crowded shopping streets to something generally only associated with Christmas, but I would argue that the huge rise in online retail is playing the biggest role in the story.

There is so often a tendency to dismiss the impact of the Internet on shopping, usually by those who work in retail themselves.

“People will always want to try on clothes’, they might argue.

“Who’s going to buy a [insert random gadget here] without seeing it first?” is also a common question.

Well, online retailers are clearly mindful of the suggestion that, yes, we may well prefer to get tactile with a number of things before parting with our cash so they have come up with increasingly carefree policies on returned goods.

My daughter, way too busy with university study and an equally demanding social life, will routinely buy a new item of clothing from a website almost deliberately to just try it on and see what she thinks of it, safe in the knowledge that if it fails to meet her exacting fashion demands, all it requires is a couple of taps online, a three-inch strip of Sellotape and a pause at the nearest postbox for her purchase to be instantly reversed.

Like it or not, we live in an age where we can barely spare the time to sit down for our morning coffee. Leisure time only comes around in short bursts on our mobiles or late in the evening when all the day’s chores are finally complete and we are comfortably curled up on the sofa clutching our iPads. Is it any wonder that when the bliss of Saturday rolls in, the last thing on our minds is a traipse around the shops?

The appeal to the retailer is obvious, too. It costs a lot less to rent an out-of-town warehouse and staff it with casual workers than it does to pay those council rates on plush city centre premises where presentation is also a major expense.

The report on the future of retail employment came on the same day that the news told us of a deal between Amazon and Morrison. The online giant will soon start to take and fulfil orders for the supermarket.

Buying your weekly groceries from the comfort of your own sitting room is hardly a new phenomena but analysts are predicting that Amazon putting its considerable weight behind such a venture is going to threaten a market that Tesco, Sainsburys and Waitrose have previously had to themselves.

‘When Amazon parks its tanks on your lawn, it’s time to take note’, said one.

Cue more outrage and wringing of hands about the payment of corporation tax.

Facebook has extended the familiar ‘Like’ button. You can now respond with a slightly wider spectrum of emotions.

If making your feelings known to a remote friend via the exhausting act of typing is too much for you, love, haha, wow, sad and angry can all now be expressed by the simply click of a mouse.

What a time to be alive.