Residents in a Liverpool community have attacked a plan to build an Amazon warehouse that will create an estimated 1000 jobs.
Stonebridge Cross in Croxteth was once home to the Gillmoss estate. It has now been earmarked for a 1m square foot warehouse by Stoford Developments according to reports in the Liverpool Echo. The area was recently cleared, and residents moved, with the promise of 500 new homes, a replacement secondary school and a supermarket.
Quoted in the newspaper was Elizabeth Heard. She has lived in the area for 58 years: “We don’t want to be looking out over a huge warehouse. When the people who lived there had to move out, they were promised they could come back when the new houses were built. How can they come back when a warehouse is built?”
Another unnamed resident is quoted: “We don’t want Amazon moving to the area, they are not socially responsible, they don’t pay tax in this country. We want a public meeting with the mayor Joe Anderson because we know he’s behind the plans.”
Liverpool council say that interest from Amazon and the creation of jobs is too good to turn away and that the new homes and amenities can be rebuilt in another part of the city, as yet unspecified.
20 Responses
The headline of the article is misleading. The majority of Liverpudlians will be completely behind the plans. The chance to create up to 1000 jobs in an area in desperate need for employment opportunities cannot be opposed. Get it built.
12:43 PM on 19/8/2012
Sunday Times reported that staff at Amazon Marston Gate near Milton Keynes – were required to work seven days a week and “punished” for being ill (where staff with a sick note received a “penalty” point; six points meant dismissal). The quotas for packing – 140 items an hour, which is only slightly below the 5 items per two minutes of 2001. Collecting items for packing can mean walking up to 14 miles during a shift.
The break periods seem shorter too: one of 15 minutes and another of 20 minutes in an eight-hour shift. Amazon paid £6.30 per hour, 57p more than the minimum wage, but charged £8.50 for transport unless staff could arrange their own. They were also warned that there were surveillance cameras watching them at all times.
Perhaps Mr Anderson wants to put his prawn sandwich down , and understand what modern slavery is all about . and get out of bed with these Luxembourgers . while he still has some credibility. Joe socialist don’t think so .
.
Re; ‘ and the creation of jobs is too good to turn away and that the new homes and amenities can be rebuilt in another part of the city’.
Missing something here, am I?.
What is wrong with Amazon locating in;
‘another part of the city, as yet unspecified’.?
I do not know the area so have no idea what it looks like and whether it really would be a blot on the landscape but I have heard a lot about there being a real need for jobs in the area. As it is described, it sounds like a very good idea. Perhaps another location could be looked at, but I assume this location must have good access to major roads, motorways etc needed for Amazon to distribute the goods as effectively as possible. The excuse of
“We don’t want Amazon moving to the area, they are not socially responsible, they don’t pay tax in this country”
sounds like utter rubbish to me. The gerneral public don’t care two hoots about things like that unless it directly affects them, eg more money for benefit payments!
Of course there is a very simple answer. That is that Amazon and indeed other corporations look for a part of the Country where not only is their highh unemployment but that there is land available and the locals are looking for work.
Then areas such as Liverpool where the locals are happy living their lives on benefits would be shunned and other areas would be the ones to benefit from the developm ent.
Unfortunately Government money(you can bet your last pound that this scheme is attracting a lot of Grants)tends to direct such projects to areas of high unemployment without considering that the locals may be very happy living their lives on benefits.
“Then areas such as Liverpool where the locals are happy living their lives on benefits”. Is that what you think?
I’m sorry if anybody from Liveropool is upset by my comments but there are parts of the country who are crying out for development. Places such as Cornwall where I live where when schemes are put forward invariably find that the Politicians and Bureaucrats read the small print of some obscure rule or regulation(all written by the same Politicians and Bureaucrats) and say(as I have had said to me in the past). “If you were in Birmingham(or London or Manchester or Liverpool) this scheme would attract considerable Public Money. But it is clearly against the rules to allow such a project in Cornwall”
So in a country where there are many remains of Industry past the rules specify that there cannot be industry present or future. A classic example of this is the scheme to re-open a Tin Mine in Cornwall. Even the United Nations has seen fit to argue that it should be stopped. Why? because the remains of Mining’s History might be damaged if there was Mining Present or Future.
I’m sorry Mines have to be where the ore is. If there is Tin Ore under the ground then that has to be where the Tin Mine is. It is just not sensible to try to develop a Tin Mine in say Wigan because while historically there was Coal being Mined in and around Wigan there is no Tin Ore in the ground.
So if the people of Liverpool do not want an Amazon Warehouse then perhaps Amazon should be looking elsewhere in the Country.
Cornwall and the Cornish need jobs. We would welcome jobs. We might argue about the appropriate place to put the jobs but this is more a case of Yes we would welcome them. Is over there better than over here but we want them.
Unfortunately we have far too many jobs in Tourism. But on the whole Tourism jobs are not high paid and for many they are not 12 month a year. Tourism is predominately a Summer Industry. In the winter there is a bit of refurbishment and development. But Tourism is essentially Easter to the end of September with the main season July and August. A warehouse like Amazon is proposing is 12 month a year with peaks such as at Christmas. But it is 12 month a year and that is what Cornwall needs and would welcome.
But no doubt the Politicians and Bureaucrats have said to Amazon-“Here is a list of acceptable locations. We will give you maximum Grants only if you chose from this list. If you want to go to such as Cornwall then a) We will oppose you and b) We will stop you getting any Grants. Yet 1,000 full time 12 month a year jobs would do magnigficent things for Cornwall and the Cornish.