Tony Porter Ponders: more ideas for Andy and a kick in the teeth for Astley residents.

It is beginning to feel like a Dear John column, but obviously it’s a Dear Andy one.

Last week I bemoaned that writing this on Sunday meant I knew nothing of your cabinet ideas, though to be fair you were not our PM at that time.

You bring back, let’s say, two ladies with a recent dubious history into cabinet, one back into the role she resigned from last year.

You do backbench two who deserved nothing less, so credit there, but moving others around from a failed cabinet to other roles seems bizarre.

You had the chance to start again, albeit without a GE, but bottled it.

Meanwhile the sycophant who cosied up to you and your predecessor, keeps her job. Unbelievable, how could you fall for such fake support?

Meanwhile, I have not spoken to anyone  who agrees that Number 10 North is a good idea.

Most think it will cost taxpayers more when the majority of decisions and laws will be made still, correctly, in London.

I mean look at the cluster mess that devolution has caused in the NHS in Wales, the chaos in Scotland and the lack of any governance for years recently in NI.

All it does is cost taxpayers more in wages and infrastructure, ie GMP having to fund the cost of added security to and from a building that was never designated to be of such significance.

Even if the Government pays for these extra GMP costs, that is still using taxpayers’ money.

Just like the “free” school breakfasts are not free. Working taxpayers of the country are paying for that, not the families who cannot be bothered to feed the kids they have.

Nothing the Government offers is free. Anything it says is free is funded by taxpayers.

So, let’s talk about tax. A 20 per cent cut in hospitality business rates is a good start; 50 or 100 per cent would do more.

No reduction on high street rates though. How many empty shops on the high street do you need? None of them is employing people, none is paying said tax, nor giving the Chancellor tax from employees etc.

Support small businesses, tax the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and the rest, maybe with the idea that it does not matter where your head office is - Ireland for example - you are taxed on the profit of each individual site’s profit at the location it is in, eg England.

They, by law would have to give those figures to the Treasury and this would help replace tax lost from reducing business rates in our towns.

On a different tack, I went to the Astley warehouses on Sunday after work and was surprised that three out of the four were not occupied.

More of a kick in the teeth for local residents who lost a green space and gained these monstrosities with noise, traffic issues and more with only a quarter of the buildings being used.

It is time to say that if something like these are planned in the future they must only get the go-ahead if they are guaranteed to be occupied immediately and again only if the impact on the residents is nominal.

Both of these counts were missed by miles by our Wigan planners.