TJ, HMV, JJB — an alphabet of despair

THE FRIDAY THING:

Last word on the week

THE union of TJ Hughes and Oldham was a marriage made in retail heaven. Oldham loves the store and the store loves Oldham, so surely a divorce can’t be on the cards, can it? Can we really lose such an invaluable asset to the shopping experience in Oldham?

The all-too-sad verdict is that yes, we can, just as we have recently lost HMV, Disney and JJB and might also lose Thornton’s, bolt hole for chocolate addicts everywhere.

Mike Flanagan, in charge of Spindles and Town Square, is in typical enthusiastic and optimistic mood when he sees “room for optimism”, but I wish I could borrow his glasses.

What is going on is not rocket science. It’s part — and a big and growing part — of the “we’re all in the it together” duet of Cameron and Osborne and the rotund demolition ball that is Eric Pickles.

If you put thousands of people out of work there is bound to be an impact on the shopping activities of thousands of families.

That is what we are feeling now and what is fuelling the plague of problems blighting shops and shopping centres in our borough and just about everywhere but the millionaires’ rows where Cameron, Osborne and their cronies flourish.

Across Oldham alone we have lost 382 stores, 108 offices, 76 workshops, 68 shops, 53 warehouses, 12 pubs, and four former banks. Crucially (and the one fact that seems to have escaped the dynamic duo running the country) we have also lost the spending power of the people who used to work in them.

So, just at a time when Oldham Council is being nominated for awards and winning commendations for its huge efforts on so many fronts — and richly deserved they are too — the lights on the path or the tram lines to prosperity have been at best dimmed, at worst turned off.

The loss of TJ’s and Thornton’s will only add to the gloom.




I SHOULD know better and am, perhaps, in need of counselling, strong drugs or urgent treatment, but I spent Tuesday night at a meeting of Saddleworth Parish Council.

It is more than 20 years since I was there last, but I can report that apart from being housed in its spanking new and expensive headquarters, it hasn’t changed a bit. It’s as chaotic as ever.

We were treated to the thespian profundity of Alan Roughley, the I-know-best arrogance of Mike Buckley (Oldham borough councillors both and therefore above all this parish pump nonsense) and a comedy double act on the top table that was vintage Les Dawson and Tommy Cooper.

I never thought I’d live to say it, but the only voices of sanity and reason raised belonged to John Hudson and Ken Hulme, who at least grasped the fact that 30 local residents had turned out to seek help with a major parking problem that wants solving now, not next year or even when Roughley gets a hair cut. Localism and democracy might be great, but not if this is it.


FINAL WORD: It is worth recording that in inspections only four per cent of schools had an “outstanding” rating for teaching last year and that 2,483 teacher trainees failed simple literacy tests and 3,313 failed simple numeracy tests.

All were allowed three further attempts at each test to pass and then became teachers. Did they have the gall to strike, I wonder?