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Peacocks owner facing administration, threatening mass redundancies
Edinburgh Woollen Mill – the owner of Cardiff-headquartered clothes retailer, Peacocks – is reportedly on the brink of administration.
While all stores continue trading as normal for now, many have started closing down sales. The Edinburgh Woollen Mill group – which despite the name is based in Carlisle – employs up to 24,000 people across its subsidiary chains, which include Jaeger and Peacocks.
The group said they “always traded with strong cash reserves and a conservative balance sheet but….the reduction in credit insurance – against the backdrop of the lockdown – and now this second wave of Covid-19 and all the local lockdowns, have made normal trading impossible.”
Peacocks was bought by Edinburgh Woollen Mill in 2012 when it went into administration itself. It was recently subject to rumours of potential investment from, or sale to, interested parties in the United States.
Child poverty rate falls slightly in Wales, but increases in rural areas
According to recently-published figures from the Child Poverty Action Group, 28% of children in Wales lived below the poverty line in 2018-19 compared to 30% across the UK as a whole.
Despite the overall average drop, there were sizable increases in child poverty in Ceredigion (30.3%), Pembrokeshire (31.3%) and Powys (29.3%) since 2015, while rates fell in Cardiff, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf.
Development manager, Ellie Harwood said: “Whichever way you look at these figures, they show that child poverty exists in every corner of Wales….With the pandemic threatening to push many more families into hardship, we need the Welsh Government to commit to a new child poverty strategy that sets out ambitious and measurable targets for eliminating child poverty.”
Councillor faces homophobic abuse after expressing support for refugees
Pembrokeshire County Councillor, Cllr. Joshua Beynon, faced homophobic taunts after expressing support for refugees being housed by the UK Government at a military training camp at Penally near Tenby.
Protests have been regularly held outside the camp by refugee supporters and those opposed to the camp and immigration since it was selected to house refugees by the UK Home Office at short notice.
Cllr Beynon told BBC Wales: “I understand people do have genuine concerns who live in the local area, but I strongly object to these racist remarks that they automatically assume that they are murderers, or rapists or thieves, there is no proof of that, it’s just stirring up hatred online.”
Unemployment begins to creep up
The unemployment rate in Wales rose to 3.8% in the three months to August 2020, while across the UK as a whole the figure increased to 4.5%.
These figures don’t count workers taking part in the UK Government’s furlough scheme, who are counted as employed.
The economic inactivity rate in Wales also increased to 24.4% compared to 20.8% for the UK.
