Last remaining Plymouth fish market assets go to auction
More than 100 lots are up for auction, ranging from vehicles to processing equipment and thousands of branded fish boxes.Viewing took place earlier on the fish quay at Sutton Harbour, with potential buyers circling ahead of Thursday's sale.Luke Netherton, of Brixham Trawler Agents, said: "It's sad times but we'll try and make use of the stuff we can."
Alison Pessell, former owner of PTA, agreed it was a "sad day" for the fishing industry. "The story for the fishing industry is pretty grim at the moment," she added."The latest EU news hasn't helped. We'd held out for a glimmer of hope that 2026 might bring some hope to the industry, but it's not looking very good."Labour ministers recently agreed a 12-year deal which extends existing access for EU boats in exchange for reduced checks and restrictions on food exports.The agreement was described as "disastrous" by the Scottish Fishermen's Federation (SFF).
But despite dwindling belief Plymouth's fish market could be revived, Mr Goodacre said there was still cause to be optimistic. "We're optimistic that we can stay here and make this a centre for fish... where fish is still being landed, even if it's being sold a little way up the road," he said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
This high street giant is leading the fight against foreign raiders
Britain has long been crying out for a corporate chief with the courage to fly the flag for independence when an opportunistic foreign raider swoops in. The overwhelming tendency of the vast majority of PLC boards is to wave a white flag the minute a takeover attempt lands. Hiding behind feeble claims that they have a 'fiduciary duty' to recommend any offer pitched at a mild premium, these handsomely paid custodians of Britain's brightest and best companies nearly always take the money and run. Presented with a rare opportunity to cash in shares and stock options – often running into the many millions of pounds – that might take years to vest, pure greed all too often quickly takes over. The hollowing out of the stock market is undoubtedly a bona fide national crisis, and the reasons for it are many. But if the UK wasn't possessed with a bizarre predilection for allowing overseas predators and private equity barons to pick off the jewels of British business at will, not to mention nearly always on the cheap, the problem wouldn't be nearly so pronounced. It is the elephant in the room that nobody in power seems remotely prepared to even acknowledge, never mind tackle, for fear of being branded anti-foreign investment. Yet the idea that this long-standing habit is even remotely in the national interest really is one of the great lies of our time. Three cheers then for Alex Baldock, boss of electricals chain Currys, for demonstrating that there is a genuine alternative to all those lily-livered surrender monkeys out there, which is, of course, to have faith in your standalone prospects and to send the vultures packing. In fact, Baldock has done it with such aplomb that it should really pave the way for a bold new era in which corporate Britain is prepared to stand up and fight for its future. After spurning not one but two takeover attempts from activist investor Elliott just last year, Currys is riding high. Share prices often crash when suitors walk away, but not at this high street giant. Having slumped to an all-time low of just 43p in late 2023, its shares are currently trading at a three and half-year high of 126p. What's more, that's more than double the 67p-a-share that Elliott was dangling in front of the Currys board as a final offer. This is money in the pockets of shareholders, many of them pension funds managing the retirement savings of people up and down the country, not to mention staff whose hard work behind the tills and in the aisles has helped to drive its impressive revival. More than 30,000 Currys employees have been awarded stock through the company's 'colleague shareholder scheme' since it was introduced in 2019. It's a stark reminder of what can be achieved in a relatively short period of time by managers who are prepared to take risks. Annual profits are up 37pc to £162m, beating expectations again, despite raising targets three times this year. The chain is also sitting on a hefty cash pile of nearly £200m – a sharp turnaround for an outfit that not too long ago looked to be carrying too much debt. 'The balance sheet has not been this strong in a decade,' analysts at Panmure Liberum said.
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
High street stores to ban serial shoplifters
Prolific shoplifters are to be barred from stores and prosecuted under plans for the first national database of repeat offenders. Stores including M&S, Morrisons, Boots, Tesco, Primark, and Greggs are submitting CCTV, photos and personal data on all their repeat shoplifters to the database, which is shared with police. Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has announced that extra officers will be deployed on the streets of 500 towns in a summer blitz to crack down on shoplifting and anti-social behaviour by 'thugs and thieves'. Just 5 per cent of shoplifting is reported to police, meaning thousands of prolific thieves are currently dropping below the radar and escaping prosecution amid record levels of store theft. Investigators believe that targeting the top 10 per cent of shoplifters could cut store thefts by as much as 70 per cent – the amount of offences for which they are responsible. The shared data enables all the stores and police to 'join the dots' to identify prolific offenders, gather evidence for prosecutions and provide security staff on the shop doors with photo watchlists to bar entry. The intelligence-sharing system, known as Auror, was pioneered in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister. Now deployed by 98 per cent of New Zealand stores, the system is credited with slashing rates of shoplifting and saving so much police investigation time that they could employ the equivalent of an extra 450 officers. One senior UK supermarket executive described it as a potential 'game-changer'. More than 500 towns across England and Wales have signed up to the Home Office's Safer Streets summer initiative, which will run to Sept 30, with more visible policing and stronger enforcement to 'restore confidence in policing'. Ms Cooper, who was briefed on the Auror shoplifting system by Boots on Thursday, said: 'We want more retailers, more organisations, working together on schemes like this so that we can have that partnership, so that you're tackling the crime but also getting the neighbourhood police and the reassurance in local communities. 'This hasn't happened for too long, too often. People have just been working separately, in silos, and also this sort of crime has been treated as low-level. It's not. It has a huge impact on local economies and on that sense of safety at the heart of communities.' Paul Fagg, Auror's director of law enforcement, said the crime intelligence platform enabled retailers to record everything that happens in their stores to tackle the 'huge under-reporting issue.' 'Police have access to Auror so that incidents they did not see before are now visible for them,' he said, adding that this enabled police and retailers to identify prolific offenders with CCTV and photographic evidence. He cited one recent case in which a repeat offender who had targeted 18 stores, all of them operated by different retailers, was caught as a result. He was jailed for a year and handed a criminal behaviour order that banned him from stores across the UK, with a potential jail term of five years for any breach. Ben McDonald, the head of the Morrisons corporate protection team, said Auror was a 'game-changer' as security staff could now identify prolific offenders and turn them away. Bans will avoid confrontation with thieves 'If you can stop them before they come into the store, they will leave but once they steal something, they think it is theirs and it becomes confrontational,' said the former police officer. Stores use face recognition technology to cross reference faces with thefts and at least one supermarket is considering live facial recognition cameras which could identify offenders from the database automatically and instantly. Ms Cooper urged police to make greater use of facial recognition technology, saying: 'It is a really important tool for policing to be able to use, and particularly on trying to identify criminals, looking at the CCTV. 'We do think there is more scope for using facial recognition more widely, and we're going to set out more ways in which that can be done as part of a proper framework.' A record 516,971 shoplifting offences were logged by forces last year – up 20 per cent from 429,873 in 2023. Stores logged 20 million faces of suspects in the same period.
Daily Mail
42 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
One year of Labour: City's patience fades as bond market signals damning verdict
Labour swept to power exactly a year ago armed with a sizeable majority and pledge to revive an increasingly frail British economy. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and cabinet colleagues immediately launched a City charm offensive in the wake of their July 2024 victory, hoping to persuade businesses and investors to back Labour's economic strategy. But while many appeared cautiously optimistic after several years of uncertainty under multiple Tory leaders, patience is rapidly wearing thin. Economic growth remains tepid, business and consumer confidence are increasingly weak, and UK inflation expectations continue to surpass those of global peers. The watering down of welfare reform and the winter fuel allowance U-turn, while welcomed by activists, has eroded the policy certainty associated with a large parliamentary majority and damaged hopes Labour can get a grip of an increasingly fragile fiscal position. And while Reeves appears to have the Prime Minister's confidence for now, the market response to this week's dramatic PMQs demonstrates market anxiety over Britain's ability to get its house in order. Higher employer national insurance contributions and a living wage hike since April have only exacerbated the dilemma, with higher labour costs simultaneously weighing on economic output while ramping-up broader inflation. The result has been to see double-digit increases in longer-term gilt yields – the interest on government debt – with 10- and 30-year yields up 36 and 67 basis points, respectively, over the last year. There is also now a huge gap between the yield on UK government bonds compared to global peers. Market veteran Michael Browne, currently an investment strategist at Franklin Templeton, told This is Money: 'The markets are telling you that there is a persistent inflation concern in the UK, which is approximately two-to-three times that of Germany. 'It's telling you there is a lack of confidence in the bond market at the moment about our inflationary position.' Playing a tough hand While Labour's complaints of a 'fiscal blackhole' left by the Tories appear to have been met with limited sympathy among media and voters, market participants are aware the UK's economic woes are not a new phenomenon. '[Labour inherited] a debt-to-GDP ratio of 95 per cent, rising interest rate costs occurring in a period where growth rates were extremely poor and were likely to remain pretty poor,' said Browne. 'Inflation was also running at 3.5 to 4 per cent, so the Bank of England were never going to cut rates very much to help you out.' He notes Labour have yet to 'disrupt markets' since coming to power, 'especially relative to some of their recent predecessors'. Browne also praised 'really sensible' efforts to separate day-to-day spending from capital expenditure, and adjustments to the Government's fiscal rules to allow for headroom earmarked for capital projects spending. Similarly, chief economist at Panmure Liberum Simon French said governing an advanced economy 'with an ageing population, underinvested infrastructure, fiscal liabilities designed under more favourable cost of capital conditions… and almost 20 years of sluggish productivity growth is not an easy task'. 'Overlay this with a generational shift in defence spending and threats of unprecedented international trade disruption and that task begins to look insurmountable,' he added. French also noted UK GDP is still 'closely tracking' the G7 median since the election, up 0.8 per cent on a compound basis over the three quarters of available data, despite an economic slowdown being a common symptom of a 'change election'. He said: 'A slowdown in activity as the private sector responds to a new regulatory and taxation counterparty, and as the public sector reprofile their activity to new ministerial priorities, is the experience of previous UK change elections in 1979, 1997 and 2010.' The deterioration of the geopolitical environment, as well as the imposition of damaging trade tariffs, have not helped. However, French scores Labour's economic track record as 'a modest six-out-of-10 – clear room for improvement'. 'That score acknowledges the context of a challenging domestic and international backdrop, soft economic trends that were entrenched pre-election, but also some own goals,' he said. Labour's job tax hikes weigh The Consumer Price Index was at 3.4 per cent for the 12 months to May, according to the most recent Office for National Statistics data. Though this was down from 3.5 per cent the previous month, CPI is not expected to fall back to the BoE's 2 per cent target for some time. Economists point to above inflation increases to public sector pay, as well as the living wage and NI hikes, as driving a decoupling of UK CPI from peers in the G7 and ending a trend of parity that had persisted in the run-up to last year's election. At the same time, higher labour costs have already started to hit the jobs market with unemployment inching higher from historic lows and the vacancy rate shrinking. Chief economist at the Institute of Directors Anna Leach said Labour's tax increases on business 'have already undermined' its industrial strategy's ambition 'to make the UK the best country to invest anywhere in the world'. She added: 'The reality is that the government has been much more radical in taxing business than it has been in removing blockers to growth. 'We need to see faster progress and greater ambition on de-regulation – particularly planning reform – and a reconsideration of the tax landscape for business if we're to change the UK's economic fortunes.' Economic momentum also faces battered consumer confidence, which has seen Britons prefer to crowd cash into savings rather than spend. The Office for Budget Responsibility slashed its full-year forecasts for GDP growth from 2 to 1 per cent for 2025 in March, with the economy expected to expand by around 1.5 per cent over the next five years. But the BoE is reticent to come to the Government's rescue to avert further economic deterioration with bumper interest rate cuts. The central bank has consistently signalled a slow-and-steady approach to keep inflation under control. The BoE is still expected to cut rates twice more this year, taking base rate from 4.25 to 3.75 per cent. While the US Federal Reserve is also cutting slowly, the European Central Bank has already reduced its key policy rate to 2 per cent. Franklin Templeton's Browne said: 'If you have an imbalance - if monetary policy and fiscal policy are out of sync - then that's going to remain the case for a long time.' Bond market demands: Cuts or tax hikes? A slow-and-steady approach to interest rate cuts amid higher inflation is likely to keep long-term government borrowing rates at already painful levels, even as the UK issues even more gilts. 'Gilt market spreads signal concern over a deterioration in both the current budget balance and total government borrowing aggregates,' said Panmure Liberum's French. The passage of the Government's welfare reforms was intended to save as much as £5billion, but their dilution still leaves the Chancellor facing a multi-billion pound hole to fill if she is to maintain her fiscal rules. Reeves had hoped that improved economic growth would free her of the need for further painful spending cuts, or for her to break the Government's pledge not to hike taxes on individuals. In absence of any material growth, however, tough choices loom this autumn. Browne said: 'Her options are now [are]; one, tax more, no doubt focused on companies and wealth. Two, not care by pretending it's not a problem and lose all credibility, [or] three, find cuts elsewhere. 'Option one pushes the economy towards the doom loop of tax and spend. Option two scares the bond market as did Truss during her 44 day Premiership, [and] option three we know won't happen. Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, added: 'While Reeves' policies may be flawed, the real concern for investors is that a potential replacement could push the party further to the left at a time when markets are desperate for signs of credible fiscal leadership. 'Without a clear pivot towards tough decisions, the risk is this discomfort could spiral into a broader crisis of confidence in UK debt.' The large gap between yields on longer-term UK government debt compared to G7 peers demonstrates bond investors' inflation concerns
