Nazir Ahmed, pictured outside his newsagents' shop, has had enough.

Getting up at 5.30am in the morning, day in day out, to work endless shifts selling sweets, cigarettes and papers for ever decreasing returns has finally got to him.

After ten years behind the counter at Idle Road Newsagents the 60-year-old is selling up and retiring to the sun.

His children don't want to take on his business, they've gone on to college or to work in less arduous office jobs and, quite frankly, he can't blame them.

When we call at the friendly shopkeeper's corner store he tells us the same story that Asian shopkeepers all over the country are telling. The corner shop is on its way out.

He shrugs his shoulders and gives a resigned smile.

"My kids aren't interested in running a shop. It's too long hours and too much getting up early," he says.

"I've got two kids working and one finishing college but none of them are interested in taking over the shop. They will help out now and then, they might go to the cash and carry for me, but they're not interested in taking it on full time."

The shopkeeper seems a little sad that his children don't want to follow in his footsteps but understands the reasons why.

"I bought the shop so it would be something I could hand on to my kids. But now they say - just sell it!

"I've been in this country for 44 years and it used to be very different. When I first started newsagents, off-licences and grocers were all different trades but now you have to do all of them to keep going. It means you are working very hard all the time. Nobody wants to have to do that. My son doesn't want to work in the shop so he works in an office at Yorkshire Electricity."

Mr Ahmed's story will resonate loudly with corner shop holders around Britain if the recent research is to be believed.

This week Professor David McEvoy, of Liverpool's John Moores University, revealed the findings of his in-depth study into the decline of the corner shop institution.

Speaking to the Royal Geographical Society in Belfast, Prof McEvoy told the assembled academics that young British Asians are no longer interested in working the endless hours their parents did for increasingly poor takings and that corner shops are being forced out of business by massive supermarkets.

The professor's figures make stark reading.

During the past decade the number of corner shops run by Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis has dwindled from around 15,000 to 11,500 and the number are still going down.

This means that corner shops are closing at the rate of more than one a day - meaning for many people there is no more popping out for a packet of fags or sweets to treat the kids.

Prof McEvoy stated that young Asians were now looking beyond the bounds of corner shop commerce and at higher education and white-collar careers such as IT.

He argues that highly educated young Asians were now not prepared to put up with the same condition as their parents.

He said: "The young people are saying, 'I'm not going to work 16 hours a day in a corner shop for peanuts and get all the abuse from people who are no better than me.' They reject the very hard work for very low returns inherent in a lot of small business activity."

Amjad Pervez, chairman of Bradford Asian Trade Links, believes the findings of the report are flawed.

For him Prof McEvoy's research assumes too readily that all young Asians are highly-educated professionals ready to lead dynamic careers in new industries.

Mr Pervez, whose organisation represents more than 200 Bradford firms, said that there had been a decline in the number of corner shops in the city but this was not because youngsters were reluctant to follow in their father's footsteps.

It's more complicated than that.

He said that the majority of young Asians were not going off to higher education and to lucrative white-collar jobs in IT, as the research suggests, but leaving the grocery shop industry for the fast food market.

And he added that the entrepreneurial spirit first shown by corner shop-owning immigrants was still alive and kicking in Bradford's Asian population.

Mr Pervez, whose family-run wholesale business Seafresh started life as a corner shop in the early '80s, said: "Whoever has done this report must be an academic who has probably never run a business before in his life. He has not drilled down to the real facts of life about Asian businesses. The number of corner shops are declining but not for the reasons he says.

"If you look at educational attainment in inner city schools in Bradford, 75 per cent of kids are getting their GCSEs before leaving school. Are you telling me that they are going on to set up their own IT businesses and being high-flying entrepreneurs?

"Obviously that's not happening, if it was Bradford would be thriving like Leeds.

"The findings are correct in the sense that the numbers of corner shops has gone down but that was because of over capacity in the market.

"If you look at Asian retailers they have changed - some have gone up market and some have diversified.

"What this report has failed to see is the overwhelming growth in the fast food sector.

"People who were working long hours but still not making any money in corner shops have moved into other areas. There has been a shift in the structure of Asian businesses. People have moved from corner shops to the fast food and other areas.

"If you go past the University now where there used to be one take away there are now five or six and this is happening all over the place. There will be an over-capacity in that industry in the next five years and then we'll have big problems.

"We're looking at a horrible scenario where people who want to work hard but won't be able to find jobs because of the market situation."

One area where Mr Pervez agrees with Prof McEvoy's research is that part of the reason family-run corner shops have been disappearing is because of competition from big-hitting retailers.

Since the 1994 repeal of the 1950 Shops Act, which revolutionised Sunday trading and late-night opening laws, corner shops have been robbed of their unique selling point - they were no longer the only store open all hours.

Mr Pervez, said: "The unique selling point of Asian corner shops was that they were open 24 hours, but they didn't have the power to compete with the big boys. Now Tesco on Canal Road is open for 24-hours and who can compete against the world biggest grocer?

"You have to be a realist. You can't take on a Morrisons or now a Netto or a Walmart."

Nazir Ahmed certainly can't - and that's why there's a big For Sale sign hanging from the front of his shop.