To the shock and surprise of nobody, the Pakistani owned vape shop responsible for the fire which devastated Glasgow city centre failed to pay close to £10,000 in business rates last year.
I’m a member of the SDP, for my sins, and after only getting 46 votes in the Gorton and Denton by-election, It does make you wonder why I am. However you cannot say the SDP do not have policies which have be thought out and had substantial work put into them. Whether you agree with the policy or not at least the work has been put in. I think I’ll stay a member a while longer. Thanks for highlighting these issues Pete.
Small parties serve a function as think tanks and as models of how proper parties should function. SDP is good at this stuff and is improving all the time.
I saw your SDP candidate's video about the train station situation there and his suggestions for improving it. He came across as intelligent and the kind of person who does think through policies.
Spot on, again but the slopulists still don't seem to recognise the issue, we could expand this problem to the environment agency (as Clouson highlights) and the food standards agencies (as made evident with video evidence of a Muslim run butchers shop accepting an in-skin deer carcass, delivered via an open bed, unrefrigerated, pick up last year - I believe Avon & Somerset).
As I said to my wife when walking down our potholed road (no, a real main road, not a track or drive) the other day:"Decline shows up in the basics not being done". We got home to find our latest Council Tax demand, and I asked myself, "What are we actually getting for this?" Weekly bin collections is about it. Works out £100 pw. I can do it myself for less. Turns out most of the money goes to pensions for council employees. What's more our local council has not been able to get its accounts audit approved for the past 5 years...
I think Pete is definitely on to something here. It’s a bit like the “broken window” idea of policing. I can see the utility of making strict compliance with regulations a thing when it comes to certain ethnicities.
I do understand your comments and that rebuilding the administrative tier of government is important but I have to ask why the Civil Service grew by over 40%, in just 11 years, from 2015 to 2025? Surely much of this is just bloat.
Size of Civil Service (Source, civilserviceworld and ONS)
2015 392,000
2016 384,000
2017 392,000
2018 400,000
2019 416,000
2020 426,000
2021 465,000
2022 479,000
2023 489,000
2024 513,000
2025 549,660
eg: Why has the Cabinet Office grown from 2,180 civil servants in 2016 to 6,455 in 2024: a 196% increase?
The Treasury has risen from 1,170 to 2,610 staff, a 123% rise.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change in 2016 had 1,430 staff, while the today-equivalent Department for Energy Security and Net Zero had 4,355, an increase of 205%.
It’s almost like a “zero tolerance” approach, or broken window syndrome. These basics of regulation and enforcement are essential, less essential is counting how many fire fighters are differently abled and ensuring that tweets are policed, by working from home. I agree that the slop right needs to define what they would cut and what they would beef up. I’m sure most would be happy to have food quality checked rigorously but let the DEI stuff go. You can’t just say “shrink the state”.
Bullshit. Local Government enforcement officers need to prioritise the high risk businesses over long established butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. They won’t and we all know why the won’t. Because they’re Muslims.
The revelations from Glasgow just about sum up the desperate state we're in. The proliferation of immigrant-run vape shops, nail bars, barbers and car washes has all happened in plain site. God alone knows what criminal/illegal activity they conceal, everything from modern slavery and money laundering through to fire safety and trading standards breaches. No doubt "community cohesion" is a factor in the lack of inspection and enforcement, not just the cuts to trading standards depts.
Let's hope the shop owner had property insurance, but the odds are against it, and I don't suppose it would cover burning down half a major station. Act of God, perhaps?
I’m a member of the SDP, for my sins, and after only getting 46 votes in the Gorton and Denton by-election, It does make you wonder why I am. However you cannot say the SDP do not have policies which have be thought out and had substantial work put into them. Whether you agree with the policy or not at least the work has been put in. I think I’ll stay a member a while longer. Thanks for highlighting these issues Pete.
Small parties serve a function as think tanks and as models of how proper parties should function. SDP is good at this stuff and is improving all the time.
Agreed. Keep up your good work Pete. Thanks for replying.
I saw your SDP candidate's video about the train station situation there and his suggestions for improving it. He came across as intelligent and the kind of person who does think through policies.
Spot on, again but the slopulists still don't seem to recognise the issue, we could expand this problem to the environment agency (as Clouson highlights) and the food standards agencies (as made evident with video evidence of a Muslim run butchers shop accepting an in-skin deer carcass, delivered via an open bed, unrefrigerated, pick up last year - I believe Avon & Somerset).
Planning also seems to be letting development through on the nod, presumably because of staff shortages and cutbacks.
Aka backhanders
As I said to my wife when walking down our potholed road (no, a real main road, not a track or drive) the other day:"Decline shows up in the basics not being done". We got home to find our latest Council Tax demand, and I asked myself, "What are we actually getting for this?" Weekly bin collections is about it. Works out £100 pw. I can do it myself for less. Turns out most of the money goes to pensions for council employees. What's more our local council has not been able to get its accounts audit approved for the past 5 years...
I think Pete is definitely on to something here. It’s a bit like the “broken window” idea of policing. I can see the utility of making strict compliance with regulations a thing when it comes to certain ethnicities.
I do understand your comments and that rebuilding the administrative tier of government is important but I have to ask why the Civil Service grew by over 40%, in just 11 years, from 2015 to 2025? Surely much of this is just bloat.
Size of Civil Service (Source, civilserviceworld and ONS)
2015 392,000
2016 384,000
2017 392,000
2018 400,000
2019 416,000
2020 426,000
2021 465,000
2022 479,000
2023 489,000
2024 513,000
2025 549,660
eg: Why has the Cabinet Office grown from 2,180 civil servants in 2016 to 6,455 in 2024: a 196% increase?
The Treasury has risen from 1,170 to 2,610 staff, a 123% rise.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change in 2016 had 1,430 staff, while the today-equivalent Department for Energy Security and Net Zero had 4,355, an increase of 205%.
It’s almost like a “zero tolerance” approach, or broken window syndrome. These basics of regulation and enforcement are essential, less essential is counting how many fire fighters are differently abled and ensuring that tweets are policed, by working from home. I agree that the slop right needs to define what they would cut and what they would beef up. I’m sure most would be happy to have food quality checked rigorously but let the DEI stuff go. You can’t just say “shrink the state”.
Bullshit. Local Government enforcement officers need to prioritise the high risk businesses over long established butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. They won’t and we all know why the won’t. Because they’re Muslims.
The revelations from Glasgow just about sum up the desperate state we're in. The proliferation of immigrant-run vape shops, nail bars, barbers and car washes has all happened in plain site. God alone knows what criminal/illegal activity they conceal, everything from modern slavery and money laundering through to fire safety and trading standards breaches. No doubt "community cohesion" is a factor in the lack of inspection and enforcement, not just the cuts to trading standards depts.
Excellent points Pete. How does a Nozick-style minimalist state deport people? Or secure a border, for that matter.
Let's hope the shop owner had property insurance, but the odds are against it, and I don't suppose it would cover burning down half a major station. Act of God, perhaps?