"Oh No, What Terrible News..."

"...another shop closure in the high street."

The imminent closure of Blue Moon Trading will mean another empty property - at least for the time being - in a city centre street already hit by a number of retail closures.

Half a dozen premises were already standing empty in the middle section of Goodramgate yesterday, prior to Blue Moon preparing to shut its doors.

Local councillors and politicians must be tearing their hair out and...

Oh!

...York Central MP Rachael Maskell said yesterday it was ‘with little sorrow’ that she noted the closing of the shop, which she claimed had 'sold dangerous as well as fascist items’.

She said: “A few weeks on from Armed Forces Day, I am pleased that there will no longer be Nazi T-shirts on sale on the streets of York. Fascism has no place in our city or society.”

Wait, seriously?

Well, no. You'd have to be dumb as a sack of hammers to think so. Luckily, you don't get to be a politician these days unless...well, unless that's exactly what you are:

Former City of York Council leader James Alexander is another senior politician who has previously slated the shop.

The Labour councillor voiced his outrage on Twitter in 2012 over clothing it was selling, made to resemble T-shirts sold by rock bands when on world tours, which carried the slogan: “Adolf Hitler’s tour of Europe.’ Underneath it said destinations England and Russia had been “cancelled”, in reference to Hitler’s failed attempts to conquer both countries during the Second World War.

At the time Cllr Alexander branded the store “sick” and a “disgraceful shop’, saying it gave a terrible impression.

Mr Sykes said at the time that if the councillor had had the common sense to read the T-shirt, he would have seen it was not promoting Hitler but ‘making fun of him’.

If he'd had common sense, it'd unlikely he'd have been a councillor, though....