Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
JOBS BLOODBATH ON HIGH STREETS
» 5,000 axed as Arcadia sold off » Boohoosnaps up £25m brands
DROP SHOP Stores not wanted by online giant
AROUND 5,000 shop workers at Sir Philip Green’s failed high street empire will lose their jobs – with thousands more set to follow.
Another 2,450 staff were told yesterday they were being axed after online fashion giant Boohoo bought bits of Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Burton.
The £25million deal includes the website and stock, but none of the three chains’ 214 stores.
It comes a week after rival internet fashion firm ASOS snapped up the Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge brands, but not their shops, triggering around 2,500 job losses.
Green’s Arcadia group employed 13,000 people when it collapsed in December.
Around 2,000 staff have already been made redundant. With fewer than 600 jobs saved by ASOS and Boohoo, Arcadia’s remaining workforce faces a grim future. A “devastated” group of 150 former Arcadia staff are to launch a legal battle over their redundancies, claiming the company failed to follow the correct consultation procedures.
Administrators at Deloitte have now raised £500m from the firesale of Arcadia’s businesses. However, all 400 of its
stores will close – worsening the empty shops crisis. The Mirror is championing their cause with our High Street Fightback campaign.
Meanwhile, there is growing pressure on Sir Philip to commit to plug any shortfall in the Arcadia pension scheme.
The sale of assets should reduce the deficit but experts still believe it could be as much as £300m. The Green family is among the first in line to recoup a £50m loan, yet thousands of
HISTORIC Famous brand workers, suppliers and others are set to be left short-changed.
Boohoo, co-founded by billionaire Mahmud Kamani, recently bought the Debenhams’ website but none of its 116 stores, heralding their closure and the loss of 12,000 jobs. Between Debenhams and Arcadia, up to 25,000 retail jobs have either gone or are at risk. Manchester-based Boohoo, founded in 2006 and worth £4.6billion, also owns the Boohooman, Prettylittlething, and Nasty Gal offshoots. It has seen sales soar in the lockdowns. Total retail sales were down 1.3% in January, the British Retail Consortium said, while sales of non-food items in stores fell 36.5% in the three months to January.
proposed new contract with Barcelona which will, apparently, see him earn £555million – yip, more than half a billion – over the next four years. Eye-watering or what?
I am awful at maths but even I can work out that’s not far off £140million a year, or £2.7million a week.
Looking back, I made a terrible mistake. I should have told my kids back in the day to forget about doing their homework and go out and play football.
For more than 20 years I was a regular contributor on a Friday morning to Highland Radio – “Ireland’s No1 local station” – where we would review the biggest news stories.
Some weeks, as you can imagine, were not exactly tumultuous, but when things were about to go flat we learned one thing to liven things up – mention abortion, even inadvertently, and the phone desk would light up like downtown Hong Kong. Never failed.
Dustin Higgs was the last of 13 people executed in US prisons in the final days of Trump’s administration.
Six of the nine Supreme Court judges who refused a stay of execution for Higgs, and the others, are Catholic.
Quite a few of these judges were appointed by Trump and the one common denominator in their appointments was that they were pro-life.
And in good old Northern Ireland the one thing that unites Arlene Foster and the Catholic Church is, again, this pro-life, antiabortion stance.
Back in 2019, when the Assembly was in a state of suspended animation, the First Minister, in an article in the News Letter, claimed hers was the only pro-life party in the Assembly.
She was up in arms at that time at the attempt to bring British law into Northern Ireland on this issue, stating abortion was a devolved matter and should be up to politicians here to decide.
Mrs Foster didn’t get a lot of support for this position from either the SDLP or Sinn Fein.
While on air on Highland one day, I actually told the truth in regard to my stance on abortion – not, in retrospect, my brightest decision. I was, I said, both opposed to abortion but also prochoice.
I explained, by way of example, I didn’t have a daughter but if I did and she was raped and found herself pregnant I would support her whatever decision she made.
I hated the idea of abortion – really, really hated it – but I was not the one who was pregnant. It would be entirely up to her.
All I will say is that for a couple of days afterwards I was crapped on from a great height, even by some people I thought would have known better.
All these years later I still haven’t got my head around the mental gymnastics of those who claim to be pro-life, yet have no problem with the death penalty. How does that work?
If you care to check it out you’ll find the DUP were behind an Early Day Motion at Westminster in 2011 calling for a debate seeking the restitution of State-sanctioned executions, the death penalty being abolished in Britain in 1965.
Sammy Wilson, Gregory Campbell, David Simpson, Jim Shannon and Jeffrey Donaldson were the MPS leading the charge, suggesting there were cases where the death sentence was “an appropriate punishment”.
In the States, Trump made a big deal about his pro-life stance when appointing conservative judges on to the Supreme Court.
Yet far from commuting any of the death sentences – unlike his actions in pardoning his convict friends – he exploited the executions for all they were worth in his re-election campaign.
What part of this do some people not get? If you are pro-death penalty you are not pro-life. Smug self-righteousness doesn’t change that fact.
Some don’t get it... if you are pro-death penalty you are not pro-life
Town ban & curfew for 2 men
TWO men charged with painting graffiti condemning Irish Sea border checks in a port town were bailed yesterday.
William Donnell, 21, and 25-year-old Mitchell Leeburn appeared via video-link at Coleraine Magistrates Court.
Donnell, from Belfast Road in Larne, Co Antrim, and Leeburn, from Deerpark Road, Kilwaughter, both face eight counts of criminal damage and a further count of possessing an article, namely spray paint, with intent to damage property.
All the alleged offences occurred in Larne on Saturday.
The charges relate to graffiti at a variety of locations in the town, including on several retail outlets, Northern Ireland
Housing Executive properties, a Roads Service road sign, walls and a billboard. Police had objected to bail on the grounds the two accused could commit offences if released.
District Judge Peter King granted bail with several conditions attached, including a nighttime curfew and a prohibition on entering Larne town centre. The accused, who appeared via video-link from a PSNI station in Antrim having been in custody since Saturday, spoke only briefly to confirm they understood the charges.
Inspections on animal-based food produce arriving at Belfast and Larne ports were suspended last Monday amid concerns over the safety of staff.
That came after separate graffiti threatening port staff appeared last month.
Officials from Mid and East
Antrim Council, Stormont’s Department of Agriculture and the EU Commission all stopped working at the facilities, which carry out checks required as part of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Environmental health staff from Mid and East Antrim Council returned to their duties at Larne Port on Friday. It has not been confirmed when the other officials, who work at both Larne and Belfast, might return to work.
Yesterday a detective constable told Judge King he could connect the men accused to the charges.
The officer said the PSNI was opposing bail amid concerns the pair could commit offences if released, adding: “There’s been 22 incidents of criminal damage in relation to the EU exit in Northern Ireland since January 1 this year.”
The case will be heard again at Ballymena Magistrates Court on March 25.
Fair play to Dan Walker
BBC for his Tiktok dance on Breakfast. Contrary to didn’t do widespread opinion, he score well for too badly. In fact, he’d the kids artistic impression. With this at home I too have perfected
I’ll keep tricky art. But I think that very much off camera.
The boxing legend, 43, is another fan of diamonds – which are easier to acquire when you are worth a reputed £300m. He splashed out £13m on the Billionaire watch by Jacob & Co, made from 18-carat white gold studded with 260 carats of white diamonds.