Poll: Should The Number Of Charity Shops Be Restricted?

There has been a fuss this week about charity shops and whether their numbers should be restricted.

They get rate relief that other shops don't get and have voluntary staff, which other shops don't have. Because of this they can undercut other shops, such as secondhand bookshops, and help to destroy our high streets.

They raise a fortune for charities and provide invaluable experience for volunteers many of whom, as a consequence, go on to new careers in the retail sector. They help poorer families to buy quality goods at cut prices. They help to save our high streets by filling shops that would otherwise be empty.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Are charity shops merely taking advantage of a free market? Or are their tax advantages and volunteer staff killing other businesses? Should their number be restricted?

Please feel free to leave a comment and to vote in the poll on the side bar.

Chavs, Polly Toynbee and the Fabian Society

Polly Toynbee tribute girls, or chavs?

I don't think there is anything more patronising and insulting than socialists and/or pinko liberals. They occupy a non-existent moral high ground and look down on the rest of us with smug smiles, especially insulting to the people they think are incapable of standing on their own feet, the "working classes".

Their latest manufactured outrage is against the word "chav". They claim it is demeaning to the glorious workers and a prat from the Fabian Society wants the fascistic Commisssion for Equality and Blah Blah Blah to start prosecuting people who use the word.  Of course Polly Toynbee is leading this particularly ludicrous moral crusade.

I'm working class I think, although I find classification of humans in that way pretty demeaning so don't personally accept the concept of working class, middle class etc. It's about as useful as classifying people as ugly, plain or stunning. Or skinnny, well built and fat. Toynbee would no doubt find those classifications highly patronising, so why not classifying people by perceived income/social status?

"Chav" to  me is nothing to do with being working class, it describes somebody who is vulgar, tasteless and probably not the type of person you'd want to spend an evening out with. In fact it describes Polly Toynbee rather than any working class person I know.

Here is the entry for Gorton, where I grew up, on Chavtown.

Do I care? No, I think it's quite good actually.