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Today I visited a hard working hairdresser in East Durham. She outlined black and white
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terms, how difficult it is at the moment and why people who have voted Labour all their
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lives are now struggling to support. Talk to me about how difficult it is to employ
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people now. It is really difficult now compared to quite a few years ago you would have been
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able to take an apprentice on, train them up and keep them on, so that would lead them
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on into employment, but all of that seems to have really phased out now, especially
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here in the north. Apprenticeships in our local colleges seem to have died a death because
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employers literally can't afford to keep them on after training due to the rising costs
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of national insurance, taxes, contributing into pensions, obviously the minimum wage has gone up which is good for some things but for real small businesses it had a massive impact on being able to employ people So this kind of industry hairdressing beauty barbering people have had to go down a self route
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So for you to be able to build a team, they all haven't sort of worked for themselves
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because employers just literally are finding it so difficult. And the knock-on effect that this has to the local area
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I mean, I was driving from where we filmed the last bit of footage to here now, and I couldn't help but notice that a lot of places, unfortunately
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are shuttered up and it doesn't look like there's much activity there
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So do you feel as though this area is being a bit let down
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by politicians in Westminster, do you think? I do. I think the north always seems to get a little bit left behind
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when it comes to things like that. You know, rents, rates, everything will pay you for people
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which is so sad. Our local town and community has been massively impacted
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where businesses have had a clause, which you will have seen locally when you've drove around
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because we do get forgot about up here. I don't think they really realise how we live economically up here
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The cost of living really you know rose so high lately and people are struggling they are All small businesses are luckily like I say we are lucky because we a busy salon
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But you don't want to keep putting your prices up because that affects your clients and it has just a knock-on effect
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Prices of stock and everything's gone up. So we do get, I mean, London, I'm sure the prices of stock are the same down there
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to what they are up here, yeah. But we can't afford certain things the way they can in the south
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So, yeah, we do feel as though we've been let down by our government, especially when we've been Labour all of our lives
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and now this has happened, you know, in the north, it was a big Labour community, and now it's, you know, everything's changing
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Talk to me a little bit about that, if you don't mind. I wasn't going to get too political with you, but it's interesting because, yeah, it's a huge Labour area
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I mean, lots of vast swathes of the north in general. Wales as well, where I was not long ago
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Labour, Labour, Labour. And that seems to be changing a bit. Because we're surrounded by coloury areas, you know
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that where we were brought up and it was really a Labour area in the north now but I know just speaking to clients and speaking to different people people views have definitely changed because of what happening with the country and the government at the minute and everybody in this kind of environment of a business
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This is what's talked about a lot now when people are coming for the hair stone. Everybody's feeling the knock-on effect
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Everybody's disappointed with the way things seem to be working at the moment
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Just very lastly on this then, so what would be the most important issues for you
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So as a country, what are the most important issues for you? I think your taxes. Taxes, national insurance, pensions
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You know, people are paid into private pensions and they're being impacted with that
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I know, you know, I was teaching for a long time, so I got, like, a teacher's pension due to, you know, in a few years' time
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And I think everybody's has been impacted by the taxes. And, you know, we just seem to be getting hammered
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in certain areas like that, aren't we? Which is really quite sad and a bit deflating
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People are having to work a lot longer to be able to claim the pensions and stuff
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So things, changes like that should definitely be something they should listen to us about anyway
