Dec 27 2008
Gloom again at the shops
Locally yesterday’s spree looked like a one day wonder this afternoon. In Wokingham there were long queues in Woolworths to pay small sums for items that are now heavily discounted and well thumbed through, but not a lot else going on. In Bracknell the furniture sheds were short of paying customers and the electrical and DIY shops far from busy. The MFI store looked forlorn. The car parks were half empty, which looks poor by Saturday standards.
It is true, as some have remarked on this site, that the big cuts in mortgage rates and the fall in petrol prices is helping those with the larger mortgages. At the same time the big reductions in interest rates is hitting many retired people who looked to the interest on their savings to supplement their pensions. What the shops might gain from the former they are going to more than lose from the latter, especially as many of the younger families are worried about job security and feeling they have to repay some of the debts.
7 Responses to “Gloom again at the shops”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Hey Ho, I live within my means and live within my savings . I have just been royally rogered with low interest rates.I dont intend to help any more.I will not spend. What are you going to do about that ?,I am the only one with money.
JR: “especially as many of the younger families are worried about job security and feeling they have to repay some of the debts.”
UK GDP -0.6 this year. I dread to think what next year will bring.
We should all be happy happy happy, though. With our disintergrating economy, we can all be GREEN. Each job lost is a fraction of a % point toward meeting our Koyoto targets.
Onwards Comrades to the sunlit uplands of Environ – mentalism!
I wonder if the Bracknell and Thames valley economy will be particularly susceptible to I.T/tech outsourcing. If it can be outsourced it will.
Gordon Brown is urging us to display the same spirit as our predecessors did in WW2.
I guess having set the scene with money rationing,ID Cards and draconian laws, Gordon now wants us all to play out his fantasy.
Obviously not content with being labelled ‘Superman’, Gordon is now trying to bring us altogether in the Spirit of Dunkirk and thus bond us as if he were some sort of Super…….glue.
Well I’ve got news for you Gordon…you’re plans are going to come unstuck.
But,I for one, will be ‘digging for victory’;
a Conservative victory at the next General Election.
Yes, some of the worst post boxing day sales figures. Those retailers who’ve cut their margin to shreds with heavy markdowns and Woolworths firesale are sucking out a lot of the spend available to the detriment of more viable businesses. The first tranche of Woolworths closed yesterday and were running a genuine 90% off everything this had a particularly negative effect in the small market towns.
I see product growth areas in wheelbarrows, so we can get our quantitive easing to the shops, and, for when people finally get fed up of the government making them poor and oppressed, pitchforks. Shops in Westminster might find a surprise demand for streetlamp to gallows conversion kits.
I am one of the pensioner mob. OK, I have lost a few hundred on the family savings, but I live within my means generally and have no intention of splashing out much. My wife shops carefully wherever there are bargains and she is just as happy in OXFAM shop as she is in Lidl or M&S with a voucher for a Christmas present. I scratched the car yesterday and she briefly mentioned that it was time we bought a new one. But then she dropped the subject.
Most of my friends live in just the same way. We walk round the shops when we have to, but we don’t buy much. And that goes for the richer ones too. That is why they are rich: they are careful with their money.
The people who spend, spend, spend, in my family live abroad nowadays.
We have been brought up to live like that, so I suppose we always will.
As an individual I now feel that job security has gone right out of the window and as a result I am prepared to spend as little as possible on anything at the moment as even with low interest rates I want to ensure my safety net is as safe as it can be.
What probably makes the situation even worse is that I am now actively looking at overseas investments/banks to try and make the most of any return on the little we have to invest