[Via Arthur's Seat]

Under pressure from the Treasury, John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced that developers could get permission to build on greenfield sites if there is no suitable inner-city land available in particular areas.

Oh where have you gone John Gummer, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

This is just so stupid to be unbelievable, although given this government nothing really does surprise me. Out of town shopping centres kill existing retail developments, and make it harder for the poor and the less mobile to buy cheap food.

And one does wonder what on earth this has got to do with the Treasury... is the Treasury really the guiding hand behind all government policy, or just a convenient scapegoat?

Despite this minor wee problem, the OFT seems to have decided that retailers were treating their suppliers fairly... rather than continuing their investigation 'till they've actually figured out what is going on in the supermarket business...

Before you get too astonished by the patterns on the maps, you should look very closely at the legends and how the wards [?] have been grouped.

Which is in and of itself sufficient reason to hold referendums[ae??] - local authorities in the UK have a rather bizarre yet utterly complacent belief in their divine right to rule.

After all, we do need to be developing the new generation of David Blunketts, don't we??

Congestion fees in London are reducing congestion, and radically reshaping how Londoners use both cars and public transport. This we know. The other effects of charging are, to put it mildly, less well understood and if we are honest they are also largely unexamined.

In particular, we know very little about how charging affects retailers. Charging does have some significant positives for retailers - in particular it is very good for their logistics systems. The negative impacts are, however, very poorly understood.

While retailers [particularly John Lewis] argue that the charge is behind a drop in sales, we know that consumption patterns in the UK are still rather fluid and that:

1. mobile customers are still migrating away from inner city retailing to out of town shopping centres
2. direct retail competition to central London is growing, particularly in other city centres [especially in Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow
3. online shopping is still growing fast in the UK: this is money that isn't going directly into high-street stores

So, how much of the retail decline in central London is the fault of the congestion charge and how much attributable to wider patterns of retail restructuring...?

No Mr Anderson, it's not, and that's why they want to open there. Princes Street has been in decline for quite a while, a decade by my estimate.

Major retailers are either bailing out being priced out, or considering large-scale reconstruction. Even Mr Anderson recognises that much of the street is unusable .

Which is of course completely useless for shoppers who park on the street...
Transport guru my ****. But then we are talking about the man who allowed cars to park in bicycle lanes, so we shouldn't be too surprised.

A better alternative would be to tax out of town parking. That would even things up a bit...

Would you believe that in Scotland, with its drink culture and culture of drink-related violence, there isn't a single drunk tank?? Not even in Glasgow???

If Eric Milligan ever went out on a weekend in Edinburgh he'd envisage several people being taken in every bloody hour...

There is no more typical British approach to a problem than this: thinking that we can be encouraged to recycle more by designing a new recycling logo.

The fact is that many of us, particularly in Scotland, have no home/kerb-side recycling facilities, which in the 21st century is quite the [under] achievement.

It's called a speculative bubble folks... and it's popped.