Posts Tagged ‘HMV’

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

Sunday, January 15th, 2023

Two protests in London on Saturday 15th January 2011.


UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone – Oxford St, 15 Jan 2011

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

A couple of days ago in 2023 the Commons Public Accounts Committee reported that £42bn is outstanding in tax debt, with HMRC failing to collect around 5% of tax owing each year. Committee chair Meg Hiller commented “The eye-watering £42bn now owed to HMRC in unpaid taxes would have filled a lot of this year’s infamous public spending black hole.” The report states that for every £1 the HMRC spends on compliance it recovers £18 in unpaid tax, and the MPs say it simply isn’t trying hard enough.

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

In addition, they point to the pathetic effort our tax authorities are making to recover the £4.5 billion lost by fraud over Covid support schemes, only even “trying to recover less than a quarter of estimated losses in schemes such as furlough.

UK Uncut VAT rise & a Pillow Fight

Back in 2011, anti-cuts activists UK Uncut were campaigning to force the government to clamp down on tax avoidance rather than cut public services and increase the tax burden on the poor. This protest took place following a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20% and a couple a weeks before the UK deadline for tax returns by the self-employed of January 31st.

They said then that rich individuals and companies such as Vodafone, Philip Green, HSBC, Grolsch, HMV, Boots, Barclays, KPMG and others employ armies of lawyers and accountants to exploit legal loopholes and dodge around £25 billions in tax while the rest of us on PAYE or ordinary people sending in self-assessment tax forms pay the full amount.

Little has changed since then – except the amounts involved will have increased, but nothing has been done to move to a fairer approach to taxation which would eliminate the legal dodges and loopholes and insist that tax is paid on money earned in the UK rather than being squirrelled away in overseas tax havens. It should be a general principle that any scheme to deliberately avoid tax is illegal.

Many believe the main impetus for the Brexit campaign was the intention announced by Europe to clamp down on tax avoidance, which would have cost the wealthy backers of Vote Leave millions by cutting down their dodgy dealings.

UK Uncut held a rally on the pavement on Oxford Street outside Vodaphone, one of the companies that manage to pay little or no UK tax. Large numbers of shoppers walked by, some stopping briefly to listen and applauding the protest.

Speakers pointed out the regressive nature of VAT, applying to all purchases of goods (except those exempt from VAT) by everyone regardless of their incomes. Income tax should be fairer, as it is related to income and the ability to pay – and it would be fairer if the loopholes allowing tax avoidance were closed.

One speaker made the point that multinational companies not only use tricky accounting to avoid UK tax but also by shifting profits to tax havens they deny desperately needed funds to the poorer countries of the world.

Others spoke about the effects of the government cuts on education, with rising university fees and the removal of the maintenance allowance that had enabled many poorer students to remain in sixth-forms. At one point people held up books as a reminder of the cuts in library services being forced on local authorities by the government.

A member of the PCS spoke of his concern that the government was actually cutting down on the staff who combat tax evasion as well as relaxing the rules on tax avoidance rather than trying to collect more from the rich.

Prime Minister David Cameron had called for a ‘Big Society’ with charities and community organisations playing a larger role – presumably to replace the public services which were disappearing under his austerity programme. But many of these organisations were also under pressure as hard-pressed local authorities were having to slash funding grants.

More at UK Uncut Protest VAT Rise at Vodaphone.


Pillow Fight Against Solum at Walthamstow, 15 Jan 2011

Ealier I had photographed Walthamstow residents staging a pillow fight in protest against plans for inappropriate high rise development on Walthamstow Central Station car park which were tocome to the council planning committee meeting the following Thursday.

Solum Regeneration had plans to build a 14 storey hotel and 8 storey blocks of flats there, towering over the surrounding area of largely late-Victorian low rise development.

The scheme had been condemned the previous year by CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment set up in 1999 to provide impartial advice to the government “on architecture, urban design and public space“, and the developers had made minor changes which made it even less acceptable to the local objectors.

Solum Regeneration was set up by Network Rail and Kier Property to redevelop land around railway stations, including Walthamstow Central. One of their other plans was for a huge redevelopment at Twickenham station, now completed after some years of considerable inconvenience to station users. Richmond Council had initially turned down this scheme.

Despite the pillow fight and the other activities of local campaigners, the Walthamstow scheme also got the go-ahead, with building work beginning in 2012. Other high rise schemes have also been approved in the surrounding area, the character of which has changed considerably.

Pillow Fight Against Solum Walthamstow


New Cross – Shops, Closed Pubs & Baths

Thursday, September 1st, 2022

The previous post on this walk in New Cross on 18th December 1988 was A Mattress, Pub, Cinema, Listed Pipe & Naval Baroque

New Cross Rd,  New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-35-Edit_2400
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-35

New Cross – Shops, Closed Pubs & Baths: The four shops at the left of the picture are still there on New Cross Road at 257-263, but the buildings at right have gone, replaced by a grassed area on the road leading up to Sainsbury’s petrol station and three shopping warehouses. The antiques shop still looked much the same until around 2017.

Before the site to the right which stretches to New Cross Gate station was developed for Sainsbury’s most was a railway goods yard and works. Planning permission was granted for the development in 1995. Old maps show this site was a public house back in 1914 and it was The Railway Tavern which was still open in a picture from the 1940s which clearly is this same building.

New Cross Rd,  New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-21-Edit_2400
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-21

This large detached house at 288 New Cross Road next to Deptford Town Hall is now a part of Goldsmiths University. It was built in 1842 as Hope Cottage and at least from 1914 to 1940 until later was the District Postal Sorting Office.

Unfortunately the long text on the door is impossible to read, but I suspect it told you to ro round to the back instead.

New Cross Baths, Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-23-Edit_2400
New Cross Baths, Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-23

A fine Victorian swimming baths, slipper baths and laundries provided by St Paul’s Deptford vestry in 1895-98 using their powers under the 1846 Public Baths and Wash-houses Act, designed by local architect Thomas Dinwiddy and well described in its Grade II listing text.

New Cross Baths, Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-26
New Cross Baths, Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-26

The baths seemed to me rather overegged with those little turrets and the wall with its rather ornate and substantial piers was a temptation I could not resist, outlining its rather phallic profile with the darkness of its doorway behind.

The premises were firmly divided into two halves for men and women, and of course I chose a post with the word ‘MEN’ in a rather fancy font for this picture.

Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12c-51-Edit_2400
Laurie Grove, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12c-51

These rather solid and heavily built houses are opposite the baths in Laurie Grove and I think probably were built around the same date.

New Cross Rd,  New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-12-Edit_2400
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-12

These shops at 297-309 New Cross Road are apparently still there, though restored or rebuilt in a way that removes both the various signage and the individuality of the units, producing a long coherent terrace extending from to 289 to 321 (287 still seems a little different.)

There was more character when I photographed the row, with what I think is an unlit neon sign ‘GREY FOR HMV’ and ‘EATWELL’S THE REAL BUTCHER’ who had declared war on rising prices and were you could save money. A cooked meat and sausage specialist, they supplied hotels, canteens and shipping.

New Cross Rd,  New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-16-Edit_2400
New Cross Rd, New Cross, Lewisham, 1988 88-12b-16

Some way along New Cross Road was the London Tyre Warehouse, its adverts covering the side of The Fox public house at No. 62. In business here since at least 1851 it closed around 1997 and planning permission was granted to change the pub and the warehouse to a place or worship including a free food distribution centre.

It is now the Bethesda Building owned by Christ Faith Tabernacle International.

This walk will continue in a later post.


TQ30 Covent Garden

Friday, June 5th, 2020
Legs, Great Queen St, Covent Garden, Camden, 1987TQ3081-017

Continuing the one kilometre wide strip of London TQ30 north from Westminster leads to Covent Garden, which by the time I took these pictures around 1989 had already become a tourist Mecca. The market had closed and moved to Nine Elms a dozen years earlier in 1974 and many trendy businesses had moved into the area.

Cactus, Entrance, Russell St, Covent Garden, 1991 TQ3081-042

Among them were many clubs and eateries joining those that there already in an area of theatres and of course the Opera House. Opposite that was Bow Street Magistrate’s Court, still in business (it closed in 2006), one of London’s best-known legal landmarks, where many famous and infamous had come to trial.

Young Dancer, Enzo Plazzotta, Broad Court, Covent Garden, 1991 TQ3081-041

Just to its north is a wide alley, Broad Court, with a fine row of red telephone boxes and a statue of a young dancer, though I’m not sure why facing the Opera House was thought to be an appropriate position for her.

Elvis, Great Queen St Holborn, 1991 TQ3081-043

Elvis was not far away, in Great Queen St. It was had to tell from many of the shop windows exactly what business they were in, but one of the strangest was in Betterton St – The Albanian Shop, where you could buy the thoughts and probably a bust of ‘The Iron Fist of Albania’ and which doubled as ‘The Gramophone Exchange’. It is alas no longer with us.

Albanian Shop, Betterton Street, Covent Garden, 1991 TQ3081-052

Doubtless there is still much of interest in Covent Garden, if in normal times you can see any of it for the hordes of tourists. It’s an area of London I now tend to avoid, but back then was always an interesting and often surreal experience.

Gloves, shop window, Judd St, St Pancras,1986 TQ3082-015

More pictures mainly on the second page of TQ30 London Cross-section.


All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.