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Big Spenders are back

Lower living costs and higher wages mean more disposable income this Christmas. Read about a large edge-of-town shopping centre in the northeast of England.
Fill each of the blanks in the following text. Use one word only in each space.

A shopping weekend in Gateshead, in the north east of England, is not everyone's idea of a holiday but Scandinavians are arriving in large numbers to visit the town's MetroCentre, Europe's biggest shopping mall. In the run to Christmas, the centre expects about 20,000 shoppers Norway, Iceland and the Netherlands.

Special deals being sold abroad, promising "a complete experience". The centre, just south of Newcastle, 350 outlets, parking for 12,000 cars, a railway , a bus station and a coach park. The MetroCentre is the heart of a retail area which has a turnover than Oxford Street in London.

the edge-of-town development first opened ten years , many feared that it would take shoppers Newcastle city centre and hit businesses there. some shops have closed since the MetroCentre opened, have found that the mall has brought shoppers Newcastle from up to 40 miles away. The city now draws more than 40 million shoppers a year, spending £1.36bn between them.

The region's retailing success is partly due to high levels of disposable income. Living costs, particularly the cost of housing, are much lower than in most other parts of the UK.
   


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