£831m ‘recovery fund’ for 72 high streets. But what will they do with £11.5m each?
Lip-chewing Sunak: if I kept wasting money on projects that won’t actually help the economy, I’d be nervous too.
I don’t get it. If high street businesses across the UK have gone to the wall because of the government’s lacklustre response to the economic effects of locking us all away from Covid-19 – how will this cash be spent?
The Tory government has announced that 72 high streets will get a share of £831 million – that’s around £11.5 million each.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is bitching because Boris Johnson had offered £1 billion previously, but that’s not the point.
The question is: how is it going to help?
Many people – not just conspiracy theorists! – reckon the hardship forced on small-to-medium-sized business people may have been deliberate, in order to concentrate shoppers’ money in the hands of a few very large consumer chains.
I see little actual support for high street businesses in the projects mentioned by the Guardian article:
Among the projects selected for the funding were £17.9m for the renovation of the Scala Theatre and Corn Exchange in Worcester, a scheme to build 186 homes in Birkenhead and a plan to convert empty retail units in Tamworth, Staffordshire, into community spaces.
But according to Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, the money is supposed to be for
projects that level up opportunities and create jobs right across the country.
I don’t see how the latter will be achieved by the former. It’s just throwing cash away.
It should be injected into businesses to ensure they continue to be going concerns.
But then, of course, Sunak’s government is now best-known for spaffing £11 billion on companies owned by Tory cronies, for Covid-19-related supplies that they had no idea how to provide, while experts who had applied for the work were ignored.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
If I had a pound for every time Sunak has messed up someone’s finances, I would be richer than his wife.
Source: Government names 72 high streets in England to share £831m recovery fund | Business | The Guardian
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Dear Vox Political, high streets died because women over 50 died since 2011 pension age rise (foretold to Blair by his government actuaries back in 2005) and because since austerity began, people having been dying quicker in risen retirement age and pensioner deaths have increased, now made worse by the pandemic and Tory and Labour cravenly agreed, ageist Covid19 policies against us surviving the airborne plague.
Not least the blanket DNRs to people from 60 living in their own homes (from GPs) or in care homes (which are not hospices and where people can live for a decade or more in old age).
Value of older people to the small to medium town centres, is developers putting up old peoples’ flats right by high streets.
The theatre brings tribute bands for the older audience, who would have a meal before the show.
Community spaces could bring granny with the grandkids below school age, before going for a meal, after a bit of shopping.
The homes in Birkenhead had better be sheltered housing for over 60s, as it is us who shop on the high street. Or at least designed for those who are mobility challenged by the infirmities of age.
Independent retailers (aka small to medium ) survive better than chains, that are closing down nationally.
The outdoor and indoor markets need pensioners.
The pension age rise for 1950s women killed the high street, by taking at least £5bn a year out of our hands for good (or until we win our Supreme Court case for full restitution compensation).
But Sunak’s idea shows how out of touch he is. First he kills us off even more with Covid19 policies against the elderly and then he expects those few left to have money, that has been taken off us in many ways since 2010.
Now is the moment to pass emergency legislation (amend published law enacted next tax year, April 2021) to bring pension age 60 men and women now, for full pensioner status, full works and state pension payment, and take out the SERPs opt out reduction for pensioners since April 2016 and onwards for future pensioners from the new flat rate state pension.
And pay pensioners retired before April 2016, the new flat rate state pension, from April 2021.
I remember Margate high street being given a grant to help the high street a few years ago. All that happened was a couple of shops reopened as art galleries with the “art” inside costing far more than the general population can afford and having no real benefit for other local businesses. Just another attempt at gentrification if you ask me.