The number of empty shops blighting our high streets has trebled since the start of the credit crunch, it was revealed yesterday. A report shows 12.4 per cent of shops in town centres are empty, compared to 4 per cent in the summer of 2007.
In some towns and cities a quarter of shops lie vacant as the recession has exacerbated the effect of other problems, such as rising rents and the growth of out-of-town shopping centres. Epitomising the trend is Victoria Street in Wolverhampton, (pictured), with boarded-up shops apparently outnumbering those still open.
The Housing Minister, JOHN HEALEY, has just said on BBC Radio 5Live that repossessions are the best option for STRUGGLING HOMEOWNERS.
REPOSSESSIONS were at their highest for 18 years last year with 130 FAMILIES PER DAY LOSING THEIR HOMES. This was despite, the MAN WHO WOULD BE
Mr Healey incidentally had his mortgage paid by US, THE TAXPAYER from 1997 until last year when he sold his two bedroom flat for a PROFIT OF £88,000 WHICH WENT STRAIGHT INTO HIS POCKET and now we pay his rent!
HYPOCRITICAL BASTARD!
18 comments:
DL
Another scandal is that when Chancellor, Gordon Brown changed the rules on business rates. Previously, commercial landlords would have six months exemption from paying rates if a tenant vacated. Now, full rates are payable from day one. It is a pure stealth tax. Empty shops do not require their rubbish to be collected, so why should landlords have to pay anything? It is a classic double whammy because landlords are receiving no rent but have to pay out on rates.
Labour say they changed the rules to encourage landlords to re-let empty units quickly. On what planet would a landlord deliberately keep a property empty? The truth is that Labour hates private individuals owning property. By forcing landlords to pay rates, this drives down rents as landlords scramble to find a new tenant quickly. But lower rents = lower profits = lower corporation taxes = higher national debt.
These fuckwits are destroying our country because of their archaic class ridden prejudices.
Banned.
Wolverhampton should exploit this opportunity to promote themselves as a movie location for scary 1980s New York cop chase scenes, would bring in millions.
Mind you most of the cash would go to Birmingham since there are no decent hotels in that dismal town, recently damned as the worst in England by Lonely Planet.
Fred, aren't the business rates paid to the council? If so, I don't see the gain for him making them pay up even if there is no-one in the shopsd. What happens if it's a charity. Surely they don't pay business rates? It's time the rents and rates were lower. I opened a shop in about 1987 and the rent and rates were nigh on £50k per year. It was a fish shop and wasn't even right on the main street. Fucking impossible to make a profit when you have to make £1k per week before you pay wages.
Anonymous,I've only been to Wolverhampton once and it was scary enough for me. I haven't been to Birmingham for a few years but it was the worst city I've ever seen. Well apart from Liverpool.
It’s obvious – form a charity to take short leases on empty shops, ask the owners for a donation equal to 25% of the rates they would otherwise have to pay and use the money in the charity to buy heating for old people.
See how long it takes the Jacobins in Westminster to close that one down.
They are incompetent fools, they dabble in things that they should keep their sticky fingers out of and we should use their laws to highlight their foolish Republican stupidity.
Here’s a thought – if Blair and Brown did a deal over Blair’s abdication in favour of Brown are all the seemingly implacable enemies actually operating in concert to rip us all off? Is Brown really doing a deal with Salmond whereby he (Brown) eventually comes back as President of Scotland; stranger things have happened, in which case guid luck tae ye all cuse yer genuinely doomed if that they case.
Just thinking about it - it would probably only take about six months to raise enough money to buy British Gas.
The idea is growing on me.
DL even at the height of the "boom" I looked at the High Street here in sunny Barnet/Finchley and still couldn't work out why there was no sign of full occupancy, like you would get in a "boom". The window dressing has gone now. In the old days the guys in the background could engineer ghettoes in cities then they could make ghettoes out of cities, now they can make nations ghettoes and we are the lucky one.
BTW Anon above is that banned as in doing sod all on his blog recently? Your thoughts mirror mine, only I thought of Detroit.
DL
Business rates (otherwise known as NNDR - National Non Domestic Rates) are collected by local councils but then handed over to the government which distributes the money as it sees fit. So business ratepayers in Conservative areas subsidise the work-shy in Labour’s heartlands.
There has long been a call for councils to be able to keep the money they raise locally. Such a move would encourage councils to keep their business rates low to encourage companies to locate in their area, and as everyone except Gordon Brown knows, low business taxes helps to stimulate the economy.
As far as I am aware, charity shops are exempt from NNDR (but stand to be corrected).
Stouters-"in which case guid luck tae ye all cuse yer genuinely doomed if that they case". Are you pished? Fuck me man, it's only the back of eleven o'clock. Get a grip on yourself and you were doing quite well there at least you were lucid for a moment. Your Carribean Ancestors may get drunk at this time in the morning but they've got the sun to lie in all day long. It's fucking cold here. So come on, buck up!
INCOMING!!!!! I suppose it's our own fault really. We roll up to the Supermarket on some out of town site and buy, fruit, meat, fish, papers, medicine,grocery, clothes, hardware, etc etc. We used to buy all this in individual shops until at least where I stay they banned parking in the High Street and pedestrianised it and now no bastard goes near it. Never been to Detroit but I could believe it would be bad, but worse than Birmingham or Liverpool?
Yes, Banned seems to be too lazy to even log in now and doesn't seemed to have posted since mid January. You stop visiting when it's not updated regularly. Still he's maybe got other things to do apart from this shite.
Fred, thanks. I hadn't relaised they handed the money over to Brown. What happens in Scotland then when the Government has lowered the business rates, presumably then the Scottish Government must be subsidising that?
You Jocks should be whingeing more – you have 8% of the UK population but you pay 9% of the NNDR bill; that’s even more surprising when you work out that London pays 25% of England’s bill despite only having 15% of the population (of England).
I don’t like unfairness and it seems Scottish business must be paying over the odds – who sets the multiplier in Scotland, is it the Scots in London or the Anglo Saxons in Edinburgh?
Stouters, the rates both domestic and commercial have always been higher in Scotland for some reason, a fact you never take into account when you talk pish about subsidy junkies. The rate was set by London but the Scottish Government now has the option of regulating it by freezing it which they have done in the case of Domestic rates and lowering it which they have done in commercial rates. It still is nowhere near as low as it is in England because we have to pay for it out of the 'pocketmoney' we get back from the Treasury after we pay for the country out of our oil revenue.
Wolverhampton doesn't seem to have changed much since I last visited about 30 years ago. Seems it's not just Scotland that has missed out on Gordon's boom.
Talking of Gordon I see he's spouting that the Euro problems in Greece are nothing to do with us and we won't have to cough up. Didn't he sign the EU Treaty last year ?
" Article 122.2 of the Lisbon Treaty states: Where a Member State is in difficulties or is seriously threatened with severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional circumstances beyond its control, the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, may grant, under certain conditions, Union financial assistance to the Member State concerned."
So yes it will cost us.
Stavros, yes old Brownie thinks that just because we're not in the Euro we won't be involved or so he tells us. Trouble is once Germany bails out Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, their coming for us! AAAAAAAAAH!
DL I beleive you could be correct. Some out here have noticed that this might be the only form of living other than state handouts. Like Guido, though we'll all be licensed soon and back to square one serfdom. Hopefully banned has got something up his sleeve.
I see our debt counter has now passed the £900Bn point.
When it gets to a £1 trillion does it re-set back to zero ?
That would be cool. Start another spending boom !
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00684/debtcounter585_684127a.swf
Stavros, that's fucking frightening. It goes past £100,000 in seconds! I'd bring it onto the blog but too many widgets slow down the loading too much and people stop visiting!
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