I’m… actually quite impressed. What’s the catch, Tories?

There’s normally a bit where you say things like “The paths outside the shops will be re-paved with the ground up bones of the unemployed, disabled, homeless, transgendered and asylum seekers, created by our new £10 billion hunting programme”.

Rental auctions are an idea worth trying, but rates on high street locations are only part of the puzzle of dying high streets. There need to be people willing and able to set up viable businesses, and the locations need to be both affordable and desirable.

Confidence in the economy is not exactly at a high at the moment, and the £500,000 bung is drop in the ocean considering the decade plus of local underfunding and inefficient spending practices of local government (my local council recently somehow burned through nearly 100 grand putting up a couple of benches and a flower bed 🙄).

That’s all before thinking about the broader cultural changes we’ve seen recently, from the shift to e-commerce to effect of COVID.