I hope you have a decent Co Op ...funeral plan, save us all the cost of an idiots burial.

If you have a pension (which I doubt you have ever earnt enough to invest in), economies drive progress, not the Hovis theme tune and Last of The Summer W(h)ine. Cleggy.

Yes, economies drive pensions but as Mrs Thatcher taught you, tying up capital in old, failing industries is not the way forward. Retail shops fall into that category and, as we will soon find, a lot of commercial property too (as part owner of a commercial property in London that will not be good for me).

If/when the likes of Marks & Spencer and Debenhams finally turn off their life support machines there will be holes in city centres akin to the blitz bombings. Nobody will ever take over retail spaces that big again. The huge BHS in Wakefield has been stood empty for years. It's a symbol of a failed retail model and the financial mismanagement that goes with it.

Landlords are suffering too, especially with tenants such as well known restaurants chains and coffee shops as tenants and especially if they (the landlords) have bank loans. Chains seem to be just saying to landlords, at least the smaller ones, they are not going to pay their rent for months.

Come on big lad, put forward a counter argument and tell us how / if city centres can be re-invigorated and cut out the schoolyard stuff.

A man without an opinion is just a sheep SUBMISSION:

The town planners have to take some responsibility too.
They keep on building shiny new shopping centres, which are in direct competition to the existing shops/stores.
All this does is move the shoppers around and with so many doing an ever increasing amount of shopping on line, the city centres will become white elephants.
Wakefield is a classic example of this very trait.
30(ish) years ago, we had the all singing / all dancing Ridings centre, which was a success and pulled some bigger names into the city.
However, opening up Trinity walk, which although very nice, has killed off the other half of the city centre.
Pre covid, there were already as many shops closed and boarder up, as there were occupied units.

If fashion/habits change and peole stop feeling the need to pay £3-4 for a cup of coffee to carry around and having their hair/nails done, there will be nothing left - it's depressing.

What should they have put in it's place, what about a new rugby ground for Wakefield Trinity.

Hull is the same,built Princes Quay, which killed Whitefriagate and Prospect Centre, built St Stephens, which killed Princes Quay.Hammonds now being converted into flats, BHS remains empty and Debenhams will be gone by the end of the year. M&S have no city centre prescence, but it's all going to be OK, they want to build a new Ice Arena and more flats...!

You still haven't mentioned in your capacity as a town planner what you would have planned for the land allotted to the trinity walk scheme, as for building a new ground for trinity, that was pure sarcasm btw.

Not sure what would have been the best thing for the land that Trinity Walk now occupies but, town planning in Wakefield has been awful.
The debacle over the old indoor and outdoor market, which were basic but, functional, replaced by a failed "indoor market" and with market stalls now lining the old precinct - once the pride of the city centre but, now, an eyesore.
If I'm honest, it's hard to remember what occupied the land where Trinity Walk now stands.
Some of it was the outside market but, I cant picture the rest.

The one certainty is that the City centre is badly lacking any cohesion and the ridings, once the jewel in the crown, is now a glorified jumble sale (Trinity shop of course, excluded ).

We could go on and discuss the old Clayton hospital site.

The hospital closed in 2012 and has fallen further and further into disrepair.
I understand that at some point it will be developed jointly as part of WGHS and QEGS but, for almost 10 years, it's been an absolute mess.

On the plus side, the area around Wakefield College and the new History Centre are coming on nicely, so, it's not all bad.

I am a proud socialist and can keep my head high, I will leave it to the likes of you who are Johnson apologist for all his failures to explain to the families of those that died unnecessarily, and those children who had their futures thrown into doubt. We will be having more enquires to fill a fridge and they haven’t gone a full year.
I would rather have a Labour council than a Conservative one that have been known to run things so well that they have to declare bankruptcy, how did that go for the services in their areas.

You can always rely on the tories for the “Grandest of Sh1tshows”

If that's a dig at me tovarisch pimpernel I am sticking up for your local labour council against another card carrying mate of yours that does not seem to agree with you vis a vie your all singing and dancing labour council, the very same one who you kept slagging off when they wouldn't build a new ground for the club, didn't hear much tub thumping for them then, hate to keep bringing this up though, what was your thoughts on the Tories when they let you buy your council house on Eastmoor?