Letters - May 17, 2016

I know that some shop owners, who cannot find a tenant, let their shops free of rent to some charities, who in turn pay the rates for the shop that would otherwise have to be paid for by the owners.

But recenty I watched a bakery shop not far from Abbingdon Street market close down, to find this shop, at some cost, being re-fitted to house a charity organisation.

Blackpool has to 20 charity shops in or around the town centre, seven of which are on Talbot Road, which is to become the hub of the so-called Talbot Gateway Project.

It is proposed that a new tramline will run right up the centre of Talbot Road, where visitors coming to Blackpool for the first time will be getting on the tram, and be taken right past a deluge of charity shops.

With the town centre being overrun by pound shops or so-called discount outlets, and the large number of run-down or empty units, is it not obvious to Blackpool Council that the present rent and rates for these units are excessive ?

Would it not be in their interests to lower the rates for all these empty units, and put a halt on the number of units being let out to charities?

I would not want to open a new business in an area where charity shops are the dominant feature, and I am sure that any businesses thinking of Blackpool as a base will also be put off.

I am not saying these organisations do not do any good, but letting them take a prime location on Church Street is not conducive to this area.

Blackpool people who own homes and businesses here count on this council to keep this town prosperous and pleasant.

As Blackpool stands, there seems to be little or no interest or incentive to bring people to buy, live, or work here.

S Easton

Exchange Street

North Shore

EUROPE

We have traded our freedom to the EU

Chris Davies (Your Say, Gazette, May 13) recommends we stay in Europe purely to take advantage of the huge trading block created in 1974 as the Common Market, which I am inclined to agree with.

But it is not our trading agreements that are causing problems, it is the political union that comes with it.

Since 1974, what was the Common Market has developed into a politically controlled bureaucratic monster controlling everything from mass immigration to our own sovereignty. Our lives are controlled by Brussels

This is sucking the power out of our democratically elected Parliament which, in my view, will ultimately abolish this country as we know it and we will become part of the European super-state as envisaged by Brussels.

Chris Davies implies our influence in Europe shapes the rules that affect us. How is it then that we have submitted more than 90 modernising proposals to Brussels over the last 15 years and none have been upheld or ratified? Where is our influence?

I suffer from a condition called ‘eleutheromania’ (an obsessive desire for freedom) and it is spreading. Political freedom is the answer.

Derek J Bunting

Birkdale Avenue

Blackpool

POLITICS

The Labour Party is going backwards

The letters page in The Gazette is one of my favourite reads. Sometimes you have serious letters, other times touching or light-hearted, and ever so occasionally a letter that makes me laugh out loud.

So it was reading Wednesday’s letter page that made me guffaw, and in particular the one from Royston Jones.

I have to admire his effort in spinning last week’s election results as ‘good for Labour and their hapless leader’ – they were the worst set of local election results for any new leader in a long time.

Jeremy Corby went backwards in Scotland, being leapfrogged by the Conservatives into third place, they lost their majority in Wales, the lost seats in England, and they failed to make inroads in taking Police and Crime Commissioners.

Only in Labour-dominated London did they ‘win’, and only then in line with their general election result a year earlier.

Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, and Ed Miliband all performed better in their first year as leader of the Labour Party.

In the heartlands of the North East, Labour are losing votes to UKIP, in Scotland they’ve lost to the SNP, in English marginals they are, at best, stagnant. In Wales they’ve lost their majority and in huge swathes of Southern and Eastern England Labour are just nowhere to be seen.

Mr Jones may blame the right-wing media bias, what I would blame would be Mr Corbyn’s outdated views on scrapping our nuclear deterrence, spending money we don’t have, crushing businesses, high taxation, unfetted working age benefits, lack of patriotism, and a disrespect to our Queen.

However, I wish his delusion may long continue, as it makes a stark contrast between a progressive party offering a living wage, lower taxes, national security, and long-term economic security and that of the picket line politics of the ’70s.

D Walmsley

Cleveleys

EUROPE

The ‘Remainers’ 
are just not logical

The reason the ‘Remain’ camp are saying such silly things is that even they can’t see any logical reason why we should stay in the EU.

Peter Bye

Address supplied