East Lancashire town centres receive high street grants (From This Is Lancashire)

• "What we are about to witness is a head-on collision between the combined fantasy of the public bureau and politicians on the one hand and economic reality on the other.
  
  Firstly, supermarkets are continuing to expand their estate and competition for customers is intense. Secondly, internet shopping is growing exponentially. Thirdly, young adult consumers have been schooled in the world of supermarkets and the internet and while they will frequent the super-regional shopping centres, such as Meadowhall and The Trafford Centre, they tend to avoid local town centres like the plague.
  
  These structural drivers are in large part responsible for the decimation of the high street.
  
  Fourthly, we are in the grip of The Great Recession, some might use the truthful term depression, when unemployment is rising markedly and household incomes are under intense pressure. Many in work are worried about the security of their jobs and pay. Moreover, pay cuts, pay freezes and pay increases below the rate of inflation are wreaking havoc with household finances.
  
  In short living standards for many folks in East Lancashire, which were below the national average, are now dropping like a stone.
  
  Into this maelstrom the local bureaucratic and political elite is setting out to encourage fellow citizens to try their hand at business by entering high street retailing with a model that is demonstrably failing, and will be squandering public money (that could be better spent on other things) to demonstrate that with a few notable exceptions economic reality will trump the delusional fantasy of the local bureaucratic and political class."
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