Shoppers in Ashton are being urged to dust off their loyalty cards as Andy Burnham descends on their beleaguered high street with a blueprint plucked straight from the ‘Counterfeit Street’ playbook—a sort of Mary Poppins bag, if Mary Poppins had been intimately familiar with money laundering and vape paraphernalia.
Civic Clean-Up, Burnham Style
The Mayor—flanked by a battalion of police officers and what appeared to be the cast of a particularly dour dramaschool production—rolled into Makerfield promising ordinary residents less organised crime and more ‘pride’. Pride, it appears, will be delivered wholesale: one raid, one business rate recalculation at a time.
Crime hotspots to face ‘high impact’ police action, presumably just before lunchtime queues at Gregg’s peak.
Operation Vulcan, a name that manages to evoke both formidable Starfleet efficiency and the threat of molten disgrace, is to be cloned and rolled out until even the most hardened street entrepreneur has nowhere to hawk their imitation designer tracksuit. Manchester’s Bury New Road—long held together by counterfeit zip ties and audacious optimism—has already lost over two hundred questionable establishments. Next stop: Ashton-in-Makerfield, where dreams and business rates go to die.
Burnham’s prescription is targeted, if not entirely related to actual criminal activity. Vape shops, which have lately outnumbered both actual smokers and functioning post offices, are to be corralled and potentially rationed, lest they be mistaken for honest small businesses. Meanwhile, empty pubs—those mausoleums of civic spirit—are to be revived as symbols of everything that once made Britain slightly less miserable.
High Streets, Low Tolerance
The legislative artillery follows, as Burnham demands powers to tackle illegal e-bikes—a threat more insidious than any international cyber plot, if one believes the current campaign wisdom. Logistics warehouses, those modern pyramids of Amazonian capitalism, face higher taxes to fund sweet relief for anyone still clinging to the illusion of independent retail.
With every illicit e-bike seized, a small business is allegedly reborn. It is unclear if they will reimburse residents for lost Deliveroo orders.
Burnham’s contact book—rumoured to contain the names of every surviving town planner above the age of thirty—will be placed at Ashton’s disposal. Council authorities could soon possess unprecedented powers to ‘control the types of use for business premises’, a phrase which strikes terror into the hearts of both local entrepreneurs and anyone with fond memories of impulse lamb kebabs after midnight.
All this, plus a promised 20% cut to pub and club business rates and a business rate amnesty for the smallest of plucky traders, makes for heady stuff. Ordinary residents may be forgiven for wondering if pride alone will be accepted as legal tender in the newly cleansed town centre, once the sweep is complete.
ConfidentialAccess Fires the Starting Pistol
As the political class stage-manages photo ops among shuttered vape emporiums, ConfidentialAccess.by and ConfidentialAccess.com stand ready to chronicle the post-lavatorial flush of civic renewal. While crowds smoulder with anticipation or mild confusion, one thing is certain: somewhere in Ashton, a council official is dusting off the keys to a forgotten pub, and history—if not credibility—is on the bar menu once more.
