The Handmade Tale

I had a rather nasty shock earlier this month when, for the first time in a while, I ventured out into Huddersfield town centre on a Saturday night. And the shock was not that I was in Huddersfield town centre on a Saturday night, because, despite the town’s less than stellar reputation, I have - since moving here in 2019 - been very fond of it.

Partly because my benchmark is Stoke-on-Trent, perhaps - the urban conurbation from where I originate, and that was, in the year 2001, voted the worst place to live in the country - but I’ve always found Huddersfield to be rather grand and impressive, with its majestic sandstone buildings and award-winning train station (yes, really!).

When I first arrived here six years ago, this pretty Yorkshire town, where you can always see hills in the distance, was busy and bustling, full of interesting shops, pubs, and characters. Mr. AF, Mark, and I were warmly welcomed into the local community, and made many friends via our two favourite pubs, the King’s Head at the train station, and the Grove, a short walk away.

Then lockdown came, which inevitably hit these pubs, and many other local businesses, hard, but they did their best to recover once they were “allowed” to, and it seemed custom had mostly picked up by late 2022, even if they never did quite recapture the glory days of the pre-fake-plague.

But then, this year, they’ve been hit again: for months on end, Huddersfield train station had been closing every weekend, so works on the railway could be undertaken. For a train station pub like the King’s Head, particularly reliant on the train station pilgrimage “ale trail” business of Saturday night, this was a devastating blow - and, inevitably, reduced footfall to many of the nearby pubs and businesses, as well.

As if struggling on with a fraction of their weekend customers wasn’t bad enough, in the summer, it was announced to the King’s Head that Huddersfield train station would be closed for an entire 30-day period, and - for reasons that continue to elude me - that meant the pub (and adjacent onsite venue, the Head of Steam) had to close as well.

The train station reopened on the 29th of September, and a few weeks later, on Saturday November 1st - the Saturday night between Halloween and Bonfire’s, usually a big night for the nighttime economy - this is what I found when I ventured into the King’s Head (first photo) and the Grove (second and third photos):

These photos were all taken between 8pm and 9:30pm, on what is ordinarily a big night for pubs. Yet they were both virtually deserted, and the Grove (yes, I know their artwork is a bit weird) - which would have required three or four staff on bar duty on a Saturday night back in 2019 - was staffed by a sole individual (the landlady) who had so little to do, she had resorted to cleaning. Apart from Mark and me, there were just three other customers in there, elderly gentlemen who looked like they were soon to leave, which would have created the unfathomable situation of a popular town-centre pub having no customers on a Saturday night.

I certainly knew things were bad for pubs, and small businesses in general, but I had no idea they had become this bad... and then a few days ago, I read this post on Facebook.

The owner of a local craft shop, Handmade in Huddersfield, issued a heartfelt plea for support as his shop was about to go under: he’d already had to lay off all his staff (for a second time), and was now working 60+ hours a week, taking home less than £1 an hour, in a desperate bid to keep his premises open.

When I read his full story, I was appalled. The shop’s owner, Ant Gotts, had bravely opened his business in 2022, after fruitlessly applying for hundreds of jobs. He has a longterm disability, and didn’t want to just waste away at home on benefits, so he chose to start a business instead, selling local arts and crafts, produced by now as many as 70 local creatives.

The business was hugely popular, and quickly became a favourite amongst local shoppers.

Then the council got involved.

As Ant explains in his post, they enticed him into moving premises, promising all sorts of subsidies and grants if he did, and then - after he had made the move, necessitating far greater financial commitments - they renegaded on all their promises and he never saw any of the support he was promised. This left him over £10,000 down “overnight”, but he soldiered on, trying his best to keep afloat - but then, as he says, “the train station closed for a month”. The effects of this totally unnecessary imposition (it was to replace a bridge with which there was nothing wrong) on local businesses has - as I’d already seen - been devastating.

This, combined with a rise in antisocial and addiction-related behaviour - literally up to an including people “relieving themselves” in his shop - has led to a dramatic decrease in footfall, a need to lay off staff, and a full-on crisis situation.

I’m very pleased to report that Ant has had a phenomenal response to his post, and the good people of Huddersfield - and further afield - have truly rallied around to try and help. I went down to his (splendid) shop myself, and it was gratifyingly busy - I kept overhearing people say “I saw your post on Facebook, that’s why I’ve come in”, and he affirmed that he had seen many new faces courtesy of his appeal.

This power of community phenomenon was very touching, and I even got a tad emotional about it when examining the scented candles, but - moving as it all was - it should not have been necessary.

Mr Gotts is obviously a savvy businessman who was running a viable business: yet it has been run into the ground, just like so many other local businesses have (the list of small businesses that have shut their doors in Huddersfield over the last five years is very long), in a manner which, it is increasingly becoming obvious, is intentional.

It’s not incompetence (even though I did have to buy the mug the shop sells, stating ‘In Huddersfield we call our idiots ‘the council‘).

It’s not a result of poor decision making or mismanagement of funds.

They are doing this on purpose.

The sanitised name is “managed decline”, and it effectively translates as destroying a local economy - including many livelihoods and lives in the process - on purpose. The most famous known example is the government’s approach to the city of Liverpool after the 1981 Toxteth riots (although “officially”, this policy was rejected, Liverpool nevertheless received far less funding and resources than it required).

In other words, the social architects decree an area, and its people, to be worthless and useless, so they set about destroying them.

That is exactly what is happening in Huddersfield (and in other poor northern towns, like Stoke and Oldham).

As one of the many comments on Ant Gotts’ story said:

“Huddersfield is where businesses come to die! Nothing survives unless it’s a nail bar, vape shop or takeaway. It’s not dying, it’s dead.“

This is a far cry from the situation in nearby economies like Halifax and Brighouse, where business is thriving, because - despite only being a short drive from Huddersfield - they operate under a different council.

Huddersfield is run by the thoroughly hideous Kirklees council (who I have battled with many times), whilst Halifax and Brighouse operate under the Calderdale council.

Notably, one can park in Brighouse for just 70p an hour, compared to Huddersfield’s extraordinary £1.35, which is more than some major city centres charge.

There can only be one reason for such an extortionate rate, and that is to further drive people away from the town centre.

After months of rail disruptions and station closures especially, the council should be doing everything possible to entice people back into the town centre, but instead, they do the opposite.

After the catastrophe of lockdown, they should be investing every possible penny in supporting and regenerating local business, but instead, they fritter the money away on all sorts of unnecessary, idiotic, and downright immoral things, including paying teenagers to promote the Covid vaccine on their Instagrams.

Of course it’s tempting - comforting, even, to a degree - to blame this on “incompetence”, but it isn’t that. The people behind the “managed decline” of certain parts of the UK are ruthlessly competent, and know exactly what they are doing.

It appears clear that certain parts of the country were targeted throughout “Covid” with hot lots of the vaccine - that is to say, batches known to be more dangerous and disabling than others. The areas targeted were the poorer areas, where families are far less likely to have the wherewithal to follow up on vaccine injuries or deaths via legal means.

I knew this was likely to be the case, and that my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent would almost certainly be targeted, so when it was announced the nation’s schools would be giving the vaccine to their pupils, I wrote to every school in the area to warn them against this (many others sent this letter, or a version of it, to their local schools too).

One school I wrote to was St. John Fisher in Newcastle-under-Lyme, a school I knew well, as I had walked past it every day when I attended the neighbouring FE college to do my A-levels.

In October 2021, and just weeks after the vaccine became available to that age-group, it was reported that two boys from St. John Fisher had “died suddenly”.

One is said to have “died from a stroke and cerebral oedema as a result of COVID-19”, and the other is said to have died from other unspecified complications of coronavirus.

Even if one believes every word of the “official story” about Covid (which I certainly do not), there is no way in any number of parallel universes that a cold virus causes healthy teenage boys to have strokes, develop cerebral oedemas, or die.

We all know what does.

Although the boys’ school had yet to dispense Covid vaccinations, vaccine centres existed in the area which they would both have been eligible to attend, and, as per the “Gillick competency” ruling, would not have required the knowledge or consent of their parents to receive the injections.

So, although press reports state that “it is believed the boys were unvaccinated” (since they hadn’t been vaccinated at school), in reality, there is every chance that they had been, and that they may have chosen not to inform their parents about it (or their parents may have chosen not to disclose that information to the press).

Put simply, it stretches credulity to breaking point, even for Covid “believers”, to imagine that healthy teenage boys developed these fatal, vaccine-related conditions just days after they became eligible to receive the vaccine, and not for the preceding time period when they were ineligible for it. That is to say, they survived just fine when no alleged “protection” via vaccine was available; as soon as it became available, they died.

As well as these tragic increases in sudden deaths, we have also seen a huge increase in chronic sickness and disability in the populace since the launch of the “vaccine”. Again, we will likely find if we look that this is more concentrated in certain areas - where thousands of people, often already struggling with health issues, have seen a deterioration in health since receiving the Covid injection.

And, just like the collapse of the country’s small towns, this, of course, is entirely on purpose.

New disabilities, exacerbation of old ones, and all sorts of chronic complaints are not “side effects” of this injection - they are the intended effects, and are all part of the same “managed decline” operation, which is being applied to people just as much as it is to businesses.

What is particularly obscene about this situation is that the insidiously evil “elite” orchestrating all this manipulated people’s compliance in their own demise by exploiting the same altruistic and empathic tendencies that I’ve seen in Huddersfield this weekend as people pull together to save a shop.

Small business owners who willingly shut their doors for months, who eagerly enforced mask and temperature-taking requirements when they re-opened (I walked straight out of a local pub back in 2021 when I was greeted at the door by a lady sticking a temperature gun in my face), and participated in all the other nonsense (no pint without Scotch egg... no standing at the bar or sitting outside your “bubbles”) - as well as literally tracking their patrons’ movements and sending the details to the government - did so because they thought they were helping. They thought they were protecting each other - saving each other, even.

But now, as the pubs lie empty, the restaurants shut down, and the small businesses lay off more and more staff, the real effects - the intended effects - of this deviously cruel operation become plain.

What’s happening all across our country should be all the evidence we need that the most terrifying phrase in the English language really is, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

Fortunately, more people than ever before have become awakened to that fact, and the one positive takeaway from the struggles of the local Huddersfield shop is that more and more people are dismissing the idea that you can ever rely on the government to help you - and, more and more, they are helping each other, instead. If that shop survives (and I really think and hope it will), it has everything to do with the power of community, and nothing whatsoever to do with the government and its subsidies or taxes.

It’s a wonderful reminder that we have more power than we think, and it shows just why the overlords fear quite so much the prospect of our coming together. Because when we do, it becomes indubitably clear that we have the resources to succeed - and to, ultimately, win this very, very old battle.

Thanks for reading! This article was originally published at miriaf.co.uk, which is entirely reader-supported, with no paywalls, adverts, or wealthy corporate backers, meaning your support is what powers this site to keep going. If you enjoyed this article, and would like to read more in the future, please consider…

1. Subscribing monthly at Substack or Patreon (where paid subscribers can comment on posts)

2. Making a one-off contribution via BuyMeACoffee

3. Contributing in either way via bank transfer to Nat West, account number 30835984, sort code 54-10-27, account name FINCH MA (please use your email address as a reference if you’d like me to acknowledge receipt).

Your support is what allows these articles to keep being created and is enormously appreciated. Thank you.