Max Watson

Basically just sitting down all the time now!

[Stuey Beef 🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 @stuey_beef]

Morrisons just said the quiet part out loud.

Around 100 convenience stores are now on the chopping block.

Hundreds of jobs are at risk.

And the reason given is not “greedy supermarkets”, not “corporate profiteering”, not “Tory austerity”, not any of the slogans Labour spent years throwing around.

It is “significant cost increases resulting from Government policy choices”.

That is corporate-speak for: Labour made it more expensive to employ people, more expensive to operate, and harder to keep marginal stores alive.

This is the basic economic reality the Government pretends does not exist.

You can raise employer costs and call it “fairness”.
You can increase wage mandates and call it “growth”.

You can load more regulation onto businesses and call it “responsibility”.

You can demand lower prices at the till while making every input cost higher behind the scenes.

But eventually the spreadsheet wins.

And when the spreadsheet wins, shops close.

Not the imaginary shops in a Treasury forecast.

Real ones.
Local ones.
The ones people use for milk, bread, prescriptions, newspapers, top-up groceries and last-minute essentials.
The ones staffed by people who do not have the luxury of working from home while lecturing everyone else about “resilience”.

This is the part Labour never wants to own.

Their policies are always sold as compassion.

But the consequences are brutally practical.

A store that was just about viable becomes loss-making.

A worker who was just about employed becomes “at risk”.

A community that had a local shop now has an empty unit with metal shutters.

And then ministers will stand up and blame “global pressures”, “market conditions”, “corporate decisions” or “the legacy we inherited”.

NO.

Morrisons has named the problem directly: government policy choices.

That phrase matters.

Because it means this was not inevitable. It was chosen.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@heraldscotland Haud me back!

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Grand news! Have you finished Sauchiehall Street yet?

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@deathinparadise Oh dear gawd, another completely unnecessary character. Stick to the basics and it’s an excellent programme.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@heraldscotland Agreed! I read the headline & thought Ryanair, EasyJet amongst others! Not a Scottish story in any way.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Have you finished Sauchiehall Street yet? First things first.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@heraldscotland No more student’s accommodation. Let’s rebuild this iconic building.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@heraldscotland Because he says the glass they (he) used when he was involved in the refurb 25 years ago was quite “fragile”! Really? Fragile glass above a concourse with thousands of people passing under it each day!!! Questions need to be asked!

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Have you finished Sauchiehall street yet? Oh and what about cleaning the streets and emptying the bins?

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@HDewarSport Always watch her, she simply does it better.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@heraldscotland Whilst it is very bad news for their staff and I wish them all the best, I never once had a decent pint of beer in any of their establishments!

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@rickyaross @BBCDouglasF Indeed, couldn’t agree more!

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@ScotRail The beautiful class 303.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Finished Sauchiehall yet???

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@ScotRail I just wish I could use my Scottish bus pass via your app or your machines. Seems ridiculous in this day & age that the system can’t cope with it. Thank goodness I have a senior railcard too!

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Any chance of finishing Sauchiehall before you start on all these other ventures?

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@TerrySparrow4 @pacteaug From stuff I read, just runs in the Netherlands at the moment apparently.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@SimonCalder @OAG_Aviation Not going to the States whilst it’s so uncertain.

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@GlasgowCC Finished Sauchiehall Street yet?

[Max Watson @maxwatsonaudio]

@NetworkRailSCOT I would but nothing happens after I put in my postcode, no addresses are offered & screen seems to freeze. (iPad)