Reeves plots £1.7bn tax on businesses
Rachel Reeves is plotting a £1.7 billion tax raid in the autumn which retailers have warned will accelerate the decline of high streets.
Is this Britain's most depressing ghost town?
Nowhere sums up the decline of the British high street quite as graphically as Burslem.
Once a thriving, mega-rich market town, it is now so dominated by boarded-up buildings that there seem to be more empty storefronts than occupied ones.
6 comments:
"And why not?" As Arnold Brown would say. And he was a real accountant.
Reeves' revenge for us all laughing at her tears?
What next? Why not totally kill our industry and buy a ship load of our bff, USA, military carp so that we can join Micron and Merz in futile gestures.
Listen carefully. Hear that noise? That is the gurgler that this nation is circling.
Doonhamer - I hear the gurgler too, and it's not a jolly sound.
Burslem was effectively the financial/industrial centre of what is now Stoke-on-trent. It was far from pretty when I moved north in the 70s, industrial, grimy, but was still a thriving centre with some lovely old buildings. The Leopard Hotel - now derelict and burned out - was where large parts of the canal and infrastructure was planned during the industrial revolution and pottery boom years. Up until it closed and was destroyed they used to have a large function room where they also hosted some music acts. I think Iain Matthews was the last gig I saw there.
Woodsy - I don't know it at all apart from fictional references via Arnold Bennett. Thriving but not pretty was how he described it, but that Mail article paints a dismal picture.
I hadn't realised I was channeling Arnold Bennett, it's decades since I read it! I could add that the hospitality industry catered for all types. A short way along the main road from the Leopard there was a night club that on one night a week had a disco geared for older ravers, I believe (without any personal experience) it was affectionately known as grab a granny night. Seriously though Burslem although not somewhere I have visited for some time has been increasingly visually dismal and headed downhill even just driving through it. Now a newish bit of road takes you round it. The council have concentrated on making Hanley the centre of Stoke On Trent allowing the other (what were separate) towns to decay to a lesser or greater degree.
Woodsy - it's a great pity when we consider the history of it, especially the painfully slow decay of such places.
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