While I never like to see people losing their jobs, I've just caught the headlines on ITN news this evening. MFI has gone out of business. The collapse of the furniture retailer will result in "almost 1400" job losses.
There was thread on CL recently regarding all the pubs closing down and over the past couple of weeks it looks like Woolworths is preparing to bit the dust. As far as ITN are concerned, this is further evidence of a deepening recession. I disagree. Woolworths has been crap for ages. A dreadful place to shop. MFI is a company synonymous with producing low quality products and terrible customer service. If MFI are doing so bad then how come IKEA are doing so well?
There is no recession, it's all just a protracted market correction.
0
Comments
You not noticed its not only pubs and 2 shops???
VFR stop taking the drugs
Yep, shit shops have gone to the wall, they were barely making a profit even before the slowdown. The fact is that value is simply returning from the over inflated prices of a year ago.
As for the "pubs and 2 shops", are you seriously talking about a national (once global) chain, employing 60000 people? Not exactly two shops is it?
"It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked", though we had a pretty good idea that Woolies & MFI were skinny-dipping.
unless your looking for a low payed job in the new year
"For ten years, too many people working in Asda earning 12 grand a year managed to get mortgages on six times their salary for houses that were actually worth half what the mortgage cost"
How's that?
If you're lucky enough to have a couple of nurses in your bedroom, then you ought to be paying more ;-)
Good God I'd better not let my missus see that VFR! Might end up with the laptop through the window.
We came out here to France in the summer of 07 with dreams of a better quality of life (just like everyone else does I know). We'd done our homework on the swimming pool industry and 5 years of French lesson too. Yes the exchange rate was much better but not near record levels.
BANG - the week we were legally commited to bying our house was about 2 days before Northern Rock went cap in hand to the Treasury to bail them out with a loan. Cue an overnight fall in the rate costing us £1000's on the carefully budgeted cost of the house and because (we thought!) we were financially careful ALL of our now reduced remaining savings, held in high interest stirling account, fell £1000's overnight as well. Of course it's just got better and better since then hasn't it? Our business plan was based on the increasing numbers of ex-pats coming to this particular region and wanting pools. Guess what? Your "market correction" has ripped the guts out of that particular market and property prices, generally vary stable in France due in part to prudent lending, are now falling here too. Hence the whole country is sitting on what little money it has left waiting it out.
So yeah, VFR, I'd like to think that maybe the fact I've lost £10,000's and gave up my career on a premise that there probably wouldn't be a worldwide "market correction" as you call it makes me a victim of the current climate don't you?
Not to mention the amount of people who live with mum & dad (insert step if you do so desire) and are able to rack up tens of thousands of pounds of unsecured debt with no intention whatsoever of paying it back and also in the knowledge they can be declared bankrupt and not have to pay anything back and as they do not have a home to lose they therefore have nothing to lose.
I know of at least 3 people who have done that. Thats the financial black hole there. Also the must have ideal of the last few years whereby the chap/chapess earning £18,000 a year seems to think he is entitled to have whatever they want now and not have to earn/save enough to possess something.
For years it was a total false economy and if a muppet like me could/can see it then we are in real dire straights
Someone put up a thread recently called "How's business" or something similar. Many responses were along the lines of ok at the moment but grim for 2009.
The almost unprecedented thing about this recession (yes I know it isn't officially yet) is that the taxpayer appears increasingly to be subsidising losses but private enterprise have kept and probably will keep profits.
Either Nationalise or Privatise but don't leave the taxpayer in a position where (s)he is paying out with no hope of any returns on that investment.
Anyone thinking we are at the bottom now is seriously, seriously misguided. I predict about 4 million unemployed by the end of 2009/beginning of 2010. At the moment its agency staff and contractors that have borne the brunt of the pasting - they have no rights, so can easily just be pumped whenever the firm wants/needs to - but halfway through next year we'll see all the other industries that rely non-transparently on the finance and construction sectors start getting it in the neck - and laying off 'real' staff as well. Our problem as a whole will be exacerbated greatly by the fact that we don't 'make' anything any more - the tories destroyed our manufacturing and industrial sectors (ably aided and abtetted by Blair and his turds) and damned us into being a service economy - but there's not much point in that when no-one's got any f***ing money is there?
the problem is, irrespective of what anyone thinks, says, or does about recession there is nothing we can do to avoid it, nothing we can do to lessen the impact and nothing we can do to hasten our emergence from it. The financial sector has, for years, been able to get away with absolute murder - the only way we could ever hope to do anything about it is something draconian like asset seizure and wealth redistribution from the thieving scumbags who have run roughshod over financial prudence for the past twenty years, played fast and loose with money that not only don't they HAVE, but didn't even EXIST and have done nothing less than perform an organised mugging of the taxpayer over two decades. Unfortunately, partly due to the apathy of the average citizen - who's more interested in the results of Strictly Come Dancing than they are about an American tosspot who has been running a pyramid scheme with their money to the tune of 30 billion - THIRTY BILLION dollars - and partly due to the fact that redistribution of wealth is an uncomfortable concept that seems close to Socialism (a dirty word in Britain for about 30 years now) nothing like this will happen.
What sets this recession apart from others is the sheer scale of the problem. There are lots of contributory factors and reasons why this will be a very, very bad one, including (but not limited to):
The 'all eggs in one basket' nature of our current economy
The fact we should have had two recessions in the past ten years but have gotten away with it - through wholesale fraud and the nonsense of the dot-com bubble
Complete lack of realism regarding employment laws - simultaneously sneaking in policies and laws which not only allow firms to create an almost completely expendable workforce but positively encourage it, whilst using ridiculous examples of industrial tribunals to 'prove' that this is a fair system
The media not pouncing on the nonsense of Gordon Brown trying to bring back Keynesianism when the country is not only destitute, but devoid of any assets! How the f*** can he expect us to come out of a recession quicker by spending more of our bloody tax on building roads and railways that no-one needs, and houses when there are already 3/4 million empty homes in the UK!!
The pathetic 'I want everything and I can have it whenever I want' celebrity obsessed culture that is all-pervasive nowadays. Nothing like a thick f***witted slapper sat daydreaming in class about being the next Beyonce when she should be learning something useful, like how to balance her bank account, and why paying for things on a credit card without eliminating the balance every month is bad - or a stupid rudeboy twat dreaming about being a rapper when he should be learning how to plaster a wall, program a computer or what uses inert gases have in the real world.
The fact that no-one in the financial world will ever be held to account for any of the misdeeds of the past twenty years. this country has been absolutely robbed blind by people for whom the word 'greed' doesn't even begin to describe their crimes. -Nobody - NOBODY 'needs' more than £100,000 per year to live on. Anything 'earned' over that should be taxed at 80% - if we did that we could knock down the income tax rate for anyone earning UNDER that amount. Simple mathematics. Stop them siphoning it all out of the bastard country to somewhere they pay zero tax on it and tell them if they don't like it, to f*** off completely - no excuses, no exceptions. And don't give me that shit about it being 'bad for the economy' to lose these 'high fliers' - they're parasites - nothing more, nothing less, and most of them would never actually leave the country because even with that level of tax, they'd still 'earn' more here than they would in most other places.
The enormous underclass that has been created in the past thirty years. I don't think anyone actually appreciates the scale of this problem. There are around 6 million people in this country who are not 'actually' unemployed - they just don't register on official statistics as 'actively seeking work'. 50% or so of these people are almost feral in nature - unemployed and unemployable. Something seriously needs to be done about it - a society where people are better off not working has failed completely.
The world is absolutely, irreparably f***ed.
I'm a Self-Employed carpet-fitter and I have NO work lined up for the new year. People are saying that carpets are luxury items and are making do with the old ones saying they'll do "for another year".
I know of builders who are down 75% on their usual work-loads, and even a plumber who is struggling (he says the cold weather is normally an upturn in his business).
Apparently some pubs are going to be shutting on Mondays and Tuesdays as the costs of running them outweighs the amount of custom coming through the doors.
A choice of redundancy (2 weeks before she clocks up another years entitlement) or a 50% pay cut.
No recession my arse!
Any lieu of notice counts as service, not much I known, but every little helps.
Brown will put millions and millions of our tax monies to "retraining" as what FFS as what ? just so it gets people off one statistic pile and hidden.
The requirement for HIPS is a big factor in killing the property market according to people I know in the game.
What might not be generally known is that HIPS were primarily introduced to comply with EU requirements (specifically energy performance) and thus there is bugger all or very little our Government can do about it as it is now an EU competence.
What makes it worse is that despite the requirement to have the accursed things prospective purchasers rarely if ever ask for the HIP.
................
Yep, we are in a very severe "market contraction" that will result in at best economic growth standing still over the last quarter of this year and most of next year. I say at best, when I think we'll slide into recession, but that's the optimist in me speaking. Part of the problem that I can see is the psychology of recession. It's clear that people just aren't spending money - either commercially or personally (and who wants to go into debt when the axe may be hovering over their heads?), consequently that creates a problem in itself.