Empty shops

DOES the Welsh government care any more about high streets than Westminster? It doesn’t look like it to me. The problem is more acute in Wales than in England, with one in eight high street shops lying empty.
 Unless business rates are comprehensively overhauled, more high streets will die. 
Just look at Newport – streets of empty shops.
The proposal by Mark Drakeford of the Welsh government to buy off small shops by offering them a temporary £1,500 bribe to keep them quiet must seem like a sick joke. 
I know of one small shopkeeper in Monmouth who will still have to pay 90% more in rates, even after the £1,500 reduction, and his neighbour is going to have to pay 130% more. I run a small shop in Monmouth, and over the last few months I have seen several shops close down.
 If politicians bothered to ask those that are still trading they would find that most of us are only just surviving – and we work long hours, resulting in many of us working for less than the minimum wage, with no holiday entitlement or sick pay, and being unable to afford to contribute to a pension. If the argument goes that budgeting does not allow the extension of Small Business Rate Relief to businesses like mine, why can’t the retail parks, hypermarkets and internet traders make up the difference?