Discounts fail to lift July sales

dudleyboy

harbinger13 wrote: »

Naivety - DFS stands for .... ?

Discounted Furniture Store? Dreadful F' Sofas? I've no idea TBH.

http://www.dfs.co.uk/

Oh, look: a sale!

Hurry though. I suspect it ends this weekend... :rolleyes:

WTF?_2

harbinger13 wrote: »

Well Said!
The Govt is by the people and Govt makes sure the people get it back. Everybody in the market knew the big ones will NOT be left to fail - esp Fannie and Freddie. Bear Stearns was another mess - where the tax payer was punished - for the banker's fault. The big guy, I guess Charles, was playing bridge in some resort when the Fed was brokering the deal. Probably he got a hefty package as well! Fortunately in US one gets quite a few tax breaks but in UK one is stiffed.

Alistar Darling is saying in the name of economics, the companies should resist the rise of wages! When he and his friends increase their John Lewis fund (is that correct?) without any reason, he asks us to desist. It does not matter which party it is - both Labor and Conservatives are out to get the common man. Sad state of affairs.

The whole hypocrisy of the sitiuation makes me feel queasy if I think about it too much.

Plenty of people in the financial industry were getting rich off the back of an unsustainable boom, winning massive bonuses or even awarding themselves massive pay rises because of their 'success' in peddling shonky loans that were stupidly risky.

When it all goes 'Tango Unicorn' they get bailed out by the government with public money .. which they promptly punt onto the commodities markets pushing up the cost of living for the public.

Then the public are told that even though years of govt. mismanagement of fiscal policy and the irresponsible antics of the banks (which are now being bailed out) have lead to inflation and subsequent price rises in the cost of living, they have to show 'restraint' lest their salary increases 'cause inflation' :mad:

This is nothing more than a pure and simple money grab from the pockets of the population into the capital reserves of the banks. The Govt. knew they couldn't get away with direct taxation so they go for the ultimate 'stealth tax' (inflation) instead - which has the bonus of not only grabbing money from everyone's spending power but also leeching from the savings of the prudent who had nothing to do with creating the mess.

No ****** way am I going to be a good little prole and show 'restraint' for the so-called greater good when I've been shafted all the way down the line to bail out the greedy financiers and incompetent over-spending government. Thanks to those money grabbing gits taxing my savings, the interest on the cash that I've already earned and paid tax on won't even compensate for the chronically under-estimated official **CPI** figure!

Why on earth should I accept also being made poorer by sapping the earning power of my monthly wages?

dudleyboy

!!!!!!, if I could thank you twice I would.

dopester

!!!!!!? wrote: »

If you use your credit card, this is all a non-issue. It's not your money at risk, it's VISA's or Maesto's.

True to some extent but not (as far as I am aware) the whole story.

Unless you've paid an extra premium on your credit card for protection, I was always under the impression this is the case:

if you've paid by either a debit card or a cheque then there's really no point in going against the bank, because it's exactly the same as paying by cash.

The limit on claiming on your credit card is that the cash price of the goods or services must fall between £100 and £30,000."

And even if some credit-cards will refund under a £100 minimum, there is general pain-in-the-neck form to fill out and I presume a reviewing wait. It is not instantaneous. I still think it is a good time to use more care and thought in which retailers you use for purchases.

WTF?_2

dopester wrote: »

True to some extent but not (as far as I am aware) the whole story.

Unless you've paid an extra premium on your credit card for protection, I was always under the impression this is the case:



And even if some credit-cards will refund under a £100 minimum, there is general pain-in-the-neck form to fill out and I presume a reviewing wait. It is not instantaneous. I still think it is a good time to use more care and thought in which retailers you use for purchases.

Fair enough - but if it's less than a hundred quid probably not the greatest financial disaster ... although still galling to lose the money.

I've used the protection offered by my card in the past and was very pleased to find that once I'd notified VISA and sent them the details, the disputed balance (faulty goods) was refunded on my next statement.

fc123

dopester wrote: »

Money spent of clothing, accessories and jewellery plunged by more than 50 percent in the 1930s. Personal spending today for clothes is many times higher in 1929. Spending on personal care items fell by 40 percent in the 1930s - another area which is hugely multiplied in today's terms. Same for gadget and gift items - which won't be a good business to be in.

Restaurants will be hit much harder in the near time to come. Brand loyalty at a premium price evaporates (although we're seeing this with more and more people heading to Lidl ect and proud of it).

And when demand falls in a recession/depression the competition for remaining customers intensifies (although this time with deflation ahead - it would seem likely to strain the system to near breaking point).

We gave up eating out 3 yrs back, what once was a treat often became an expensive disapointment......

Less customers means working harder with the ones that are left.

My arabs are from Kuwait and Saudi, not the Dee + Gee (or Der and Ger in fashion speak) / luxe items types but ordinary, middle class ones who like a funkier look. They come every year for garments not found in chain stores.

I have never catered specifically for them but am going to address it for next year; covered arms etc.

Just found out today one batch are neighbours; own a stonking great house a few doors down from us (million +) plus 'own' a flat in The Metropole (but it's a hotel) and they use both for 1 month pa. They have owned the house for 20 years.
Wonder if we could rent it cheap for the other 11 months?!

PS our rental is the smallest, most derelict house on the St.

fc123

This caught my attention in The Sunday Times. The downturn in consumption is going to hit China hard ...seeing as they are the ones who make most of the stuff we fill our lives with. I don't fully understand export subsidies but guess that prices of exports will be kept low.


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4492816.ece

That may be one reason why manufacturing in China contracted in July for the first time since a purchasing managers’ survey of more than 700 firms began in 2005. New orders also fell.
Production is weakening fast and the government has hastened to raise export subsidies to give a break to makers of textiles and clothes.
More than 5,000 small companies have gone bankrupt this year in the world’s biggest commercial town, Yiwu, according to the China Business Daily.
Zhang Jixiong, chairman of the city’s Taiwan Business Association, blamed deflationary monetary policies and an abrupt reduction in visas for buyers from the Middle East because of the fear of terrorism at the Olympics.
In Hong Kong, a manufacturers’ group has warned trade leaders that 20,000 factories in southern China — mostly makers of cheap toys and sweatshops turning out plastic junk — will shut up shop by the end of this year.
That will come as no surprise to experts at China’s own ministry of commerce who found in a recent survey that furniture factories, a key export earner, were operating on profit margins of only 1.1%.

.

harbinger13

fc123 wrote: »

This caught my attention in The Sunday Times. The downturn in consumption is going to hit China hard ...seeing as they are the ones who make most of the stuff we fill our lives with. I don't fully understand export subsidies but guess that prices of exports will be kept low.


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4492816.ece

.

Not to be disputing the economists and their analysis - but in 'principle' truth - the Chinese govt will 'balance' its accounts so that the growth remains.

If you need a clue - just rewind your olympics opening ceremony tape to see how the kid was forced to mime!
Of course it is valid - dont we support the blonde blunt blundering Britney when she mimes. Hell even the Spice girls mime - it is just that these were individuals but in China as they say - 'One Govt for All and All for One Govt'.

lostinrates

dudleyboy wrote: »

I can't help but think that some of the domestic food inflation is down to the dreadful summer (i.e. floods) we had last year as well as the speculative investment in food as a commodity following the collapse of property.

This summer, well, it's wet... but the crops like that in moderation. It might eventually become more expensive to import peppers and olives from abroad, for example, which explains why I never ate any as a kid - parents probably just couldn't afford them, but there was no shortage of potatoes and carrots on our plates.

The UK will survive the food inflation, we'll just have to get used to simpler, more local ingredients.

Did try and reply to this before...but...

I live in a farming community, mainly livestck, but in this little pocket of mainly livestock farming there is a predominance bucking the local trend and my commubnity is heavily arable.

The grain crop five feet from bedroom my window has failed. Its wet and widswept and as a result rotting on the stem.. Modern grains have shorter stalks, I was surprised that these short salks could get as brought down as they have been. Even if the crop hadn't rotted it is 'ready now' but the ground is too wet to do anything about it. For the little salvageable grain the farmer would get its not worth it. Off the hill top the same crop grows, and is not yet rotting, and has probably a week/fortnight lag behind the field next to us (planting later and land effect) but the farmer will need a serious drying out to get machinery on there.

Broad beans have been a popular crop locally. They have had a disappointing return and many pods contain no or few beans. Plums likewise have been very poor though apples and pears are doing well. There was some fruit farmer on tv putting the poor plum crop down to the flooding, but there was no flooding here: its just a bad plum year (
late frosts, no bees etc etc )

I'm a bit out of the loop this week and have been unable to keep up with either local or national news (farming or house prices:o ) so these are mainly my own observations and very local (literally a coupe of miles). I hope this is not the national trend this year.

The flooding was very dramatic, but this year, locally at least, has been very bad for farmers, as bad as last year at least. They poor grain return locally will be an issue for at the very least animal feed, pushng the supply price up further up the chain. There was a good spell where a few people got good forage cuts in. The grass has been good or outdoor grazers, but i the rain keeps up it will shorten the outdoor grazing season as the ground becomes poached in this weather.


ETA (now I'm less tired) that I do know things have been mixed rather than bad for farmers. Some crops and grains did amazingly well price wise last year, meaning the 'shortage' left many arable farmers extraordinarily well paid. My concern is that a world good global harvest with a poor domestic one means we will be paying a premium with returns to very few domestic farmers this year....not saying it will happen but that would be my concern if I were in farming this year.

olly300

lostinrates where abouts in the country are you?