Originally Posted by
outwoodclaret
I look at my local town centre. How it has changed since I moved here 35 years ago. We had 5 Banks and Building Societies then to serve the community. They have all closed their branches. Sure most people bank online these days but we don’t even have a banking hub in their place. If you actually need to go into a bank you will need to go to Bolton or Bury or even Manchester. Our shopping centre consists in large part (apart from a Lidl and an Asda) of a multitude of barbers, tanning salons, nail bars and vape shops. I cannot believe such a mixture of shops many ostensibly competing for the same business can be commercially viable so what real underlying trade is going on? Our civic suite was demolished. Pubs have closed in droves to be turned into HMOs. Serco are writing to private landlords asking them to sign over their properties for the next five years. We are witness to communities and the buildings, institutions and meeting places that bound them together being systematically destroyed. And if this wasn’t enough the Mayor and Labour councils plan to build over greenbelt land that will then be lost forever for future generations. From my perspective we are in a country that is out of control with a succession of Governments that have proved unable and in some circumstances unwilling to defend our communities. If it was just incompetence it would be bad enough but it has been compounded with outright lying. It is no wonder that people are ditching the Conservative and Labour parties and will continue to do so as long as they are ignored, marginalised and sneeringly written off as merely populist or worse.