Archive for the ‘economics’ Category
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
Watching capitalist corporations fail is a groove sensation, and it takes me right back to everything from the three day week to the ‘winter of discontent’ in the 1970s. All those who love power cuts will recall that the mid-1970s was a real peak for this type of fun in London. As a long-term fan of this great anti-tradition, you can’t keep me out of shops that are closing down. The last 12 months has been a real bonanza for entertainments of this type: first there was the closure of Woolworths, then there was Zavvi, now there is Borders (UK)! Okay, so the flagship Borders store in Oxford Street has already gone, but the sense of chaos and anti-climax in the still just hanging-on-by-a-thread Charing Cross Road branch really gives me the horn. The stock is in disarray, with books and DVDs spilling off half-empty shelves, the toilets (for me what was once the main attraction in the shop) are closed, and there are mugs and other breakable crap – rather than bestsellers – at the front of the shop. The place looks like the set for a disaster movie, which is why for as long as it remains open I’ll continue to goof around in this wrecked ‘retail’ space…
That said, now Borders is closing I only go for the ambiance (rather than ‘Toilet Love’), and to laugh at those buying goods that after being marked up to more than twice their market value are currently being sold at between 20% and 50% ‘discount’. One of the things that caused me to chuckle on the ground floor of Borders while I was enjoying the chaos there on Friday was a display of Redemption DVDs. These were priced at £7.99 minus 30% discount (i.e. £5.60), and there were some Eurosleaze classics among them including a whole bunch of Jean Rollin lesbian vampire movies… But you can buy many of these on Amazon Market Place for around £4 (including postage), or if you can’t wait for them to arrive by mail, all the titles in Borders and many more are sold in Lovejoys a couple of minutes walk down Charing Cross Road at £6.99 each or 2 for £12 (i.e. £6 each when you buy two – not greatly more than the Borders sale price). Likewise I’ve seen these Redemption titles around in secondhand shops at about £3. Which means, of course, that even in the Borders sale, these items (like most of their discounted stock) still pan out as being more expensive than picking them up elsewhere. So don’t bother with the sale, just dig the collapse…. or go in dressed in an over-sized coat….
And talking of Redemption, I read a truly bizarre story by Lucy Tobin about this company in The Evening Standard on Thursday 10 December, entitled Film firm that made Koo a star collapses: “The cult movie empire whose back catalogue includes the risqué films of Prince Andrew’s former lover Koo Stark has collapsed into administration. Redemption Films, based in Wigmore Street, Soho, was set up by Nigel Wingrove, Britain’s answer to Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. Administrators were called in today at the distributor of gothic horror movies, whose past titles range from Sinful Nuns Of St Valentine to Ms Stark’s cult 1977 hit The Marquis De Sade’s Justine….”
There is a lot of misinformation to unpack in this story, but let’s start with the headline, since Redemption Films did not make Koo Stark a star. Redemption was set up in the 1990s and Stark became a minor starlet on the back of a couple of mid-seventies movies - Emily (1976) and Cruel Passion AKA De Sade’s Justine (1977) – and then briefly a media celebrity in the 1980s when she dated inbred British royal brat Prince Andrew (“The Duke of York”). All Redemption did was acquire some of Stark’s back catalogue as a film actress and issue it on VHS tape and then DVD long after she’d become a household name in the UK.
Likewise, I find the idea of Redemption being a soft porn ‘empire’ on the same scale as Larry Flynt’s American Hustler operation risible (it is about on a par with suggesting that ‘Boris Johnson is Britain’s answer to Barack Obama’). During the 1990s my friend Nik Houghton worked for Nigel Wingrove and I went into their office on the odd occasion; at that time the business consisted of Wingrove and his part-time assistant Nik in a moderately sized room. Wingrove’s operation may have grown a bit since then, and it has definitely moved to a slightly more upmarket address, but it is still closer to a cult-film one-man band than a porn empire! However, as ever with The Standard, the point of the piece seems to be to pack in as much gossip as possible, rather than to report news. Therefore it should surprise no one that Wingrove’s professional involvement with Georgina Baillie – ‘the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs who was at the centre of the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand telephone scandal’ – gets a passing mention too.
For anyone who has looked into the ways cult films and music are milked for profits, I’d see Redemption going into administration as business as usual within this sector of the culture industry. Cult means niche and there are usually very few buyers for operations in really specialist areas like Oi! music or Eurosleaze films; therefore a businessman (or woman) who knows their way around one of these ‘cult’ areas will often run their limited liability company into bankruptcy while paying themselves a hefty salary. This is a way of writing off debts, because the ‘former’ owner can buy up the assets of the concern they’ve deliberately run down for less than a song: they use another company they’ve set up for this purpose and then proceed to do the same thing again, and again, and again! And what’s more, given that we live in a capitalist society, this is more or less legal! It is precisely the sort of thing so called ‘wealth generators’ do for ‘a living’ and illustrates why businessmen and bankers should not be allowed to reward themselves with anything above an average workers’ wage, let alone ‘bonuses’. I don’t know if this is how Nigel Wingrove operates, but I am familiar with other individuals working in the cult sector of the culture industry who do business this way.
If Wingrove was planning to write off his debts by buying himself out, The Standard story could be bad news for him, since it might stir up interest from other ‘wealth generators’. That said, Wingrove is also a film-maker himself, so perhaps he just wants out…. Moving on, if you believe what you read in The Standard, you may well have been hoaxed into thinking I wrote the Belle de Jour blog and books, so it isn’t exactly surprising their Nigel Wingrove and Redemption Films story is so inaccurate!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Amazon, Andrew Sachs, Barack Obama, Belle de Jour, Borders, Boris Johnson, Charing Cross Road, Cruel Passion, Duke of York, Emily, Eurosleaze, Evening Standard, Georgina Baillie, Hustler, Jean Rollin, Jonathan Ross, Koo Stark, Larry Flynt, lesbian vampire movies, London, Lovejoys, Lucy Tobin, Marquis De Sade, Nik Houghton, Oi!, Oxford Street, Prince Andrew, Redemption Films, Russell Brand, Sinful Nuns Of St Valentine, Soho, The Marquis De Sade's Justine, three day week, Wigmore Street, winter of discontent, Woolworths, Zavvi
Posted in culture gossip & parties, economics, porn | 37 Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Although it is only a matter of time, capitalism hasn’t collapsed yet; but even so, right now the way it is going backwards is still a groove sensation – empty retail units and what only a couple of years ago would have seemed like really unlikely pop-ups in place of tedious corporate chains.
As a teenager in the 1970s I always loved exchange bookshops and there were plenty of them in London, even in the centre of town… you’d buy a paperback and if you didn’t want to keep it you could trade it in at half price for something else. The selection was always radically different to the local library, far more trash for a start… I found exchange bookshops a great source of cheap crime novels, fantasy, sci-fi and horror.
Like so many of the classic family owned cafes in London, exchange bookshops disappeared at a fantastic rate during the eighties and nineties. The last one I used with any regularity was on Eldon Street, just west of Liverpool Street station, it was there through much of the nineties, and I often combined a visit to it with a meal in The Copper Grill a couple of doors down; the cafe closed down in 2004, the bookshop some time before.
I haven’t noticed any sixties-style cafes springing up around London recently, but I have clocked a ‘brand new secondhand’ shop just east of Liverpool Street station called Bob’s Book Exchange (which opened this summer). Bob is a friendly geezer who promotes his activities with the following blurbs: “Buy used books and save trees. Save money when you exchange a book. Massive range of fiction & non-fiction books in stock. Books bought for cash. 11 Devonshire Row, London EC2M 4RQ.” And aside from finding the place open well outside its advertised hours, I’ve also overheard some really groovy conversations. For example:
Customer: “Have you got a copy of The Gorse Trilogy by Patrick Hamilton?”
Bob: “No, but you can buy it new.”
Customer: “Some people think I’m strange but I don’t like new books. I only like secondhand paperbacks. When I open a new book I worry I’m going to break the spine. They’re too clean. I won’t buy a new book. I just don’t like them.”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Bob's Book Exchange, City of London, Copper Grill, Devonshire Row, Eldon Street, exchange bookshops, Liverpool Street, Liverpool Street station, London, Patrick Hamilton, The Gorse Trilogy
Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, economics, humour | 20 Comments »
Sunday, July 12th, 2009
It’s been interesting to watch CDs piling up in bargain bins this year. Right now the compact disk feels as obsolete as VHS tapes did a few years back. Throw in a major recession and there’s a lot of great music out there being flogged off ‘for a song’.
While three quid albums by the likes of Can and Augustus Pablo more than pique my interest (and there are plenty of them around), what really amused me last time I was in FOPP were the bargain bin copies of Keep Reachin’ Up by Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators.
As far as I can recall, I first heard tracks from Keep Reachin’ Up while listening to The Robert Elms Show on Radio London. Nothing surprising there, it is vaguely reminiscent of material by Elms’ songbird ‘ex’ Sade. However, much as I enjoyed the album when I first heard it (in I guess 2006, it was recorded the year before), there was no way I was gonna part with eighteen knicker for a copy imported from Finland. Apparently 3000 copies where sold at this price before the album got a British release in 2007.
I don’t listen to Radio 2 but I’m told Keep Reachin’ Up was championed on that station by Mark Lamarr. In his sleeve notes for the British release, Lamarr writes of this album: “one play will tell you it’s never going to end up in a bargain bin or secondhand shop.” Despite Lamarr’s outlandish sleeve note claims, copies are now being scooped out of bargain bins. Never say never!
Incidentally, the few branches of FOPP that remain open are now owned by HMV. Some commentators got excited by the fact that recently reported HMV profits are up, and supposedly bucking the credit crunch. Actually, since HMV’s two major competitors Woolworths and Zavvi went out of business a while back, profits would need to be up far more than they are if they were really bucking the downturn trend (not to mention the demise of the high street record shop). On top of which, a chunk of those increased HMV profits were made flogging off bankrupt stock picked up cheap for two and three quid a pop, and there aren’t too many UK record chains left now to go bankrupt (excepting HMV itself, of course), so this particular source of revenue will in time dry up.
Don’t forget kids, the credit crunch is a groove sensation! Capitalism can only go backwards, it has nowhere else to go! It’s suffering its death throes!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Augustus Pablo, Can, Fopp, HMV, Keep Reachin' Up, Mark Lamarr, Nicole Willis, Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators, Radio 2, Radio London, Robert Elms, Sade, Woolworths, Zavvi
Posted in economics, music | 22 Comments »
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Having blogged about click thru ad busting and related issues in the recent past, I’m now moving along to take a look at so-called ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites. The bottom line with these frauds is that a bunch of suits use content you create to attract an audience for click thru ads. There are many different companies running scam sites of this type, and among the better known are Triond, Helium and Associated Content. It should go without saying that the sweated labour which monetizes such rip-off schemes is conned into thinking they’ll be ‘rewarded’ for their graft; but if they see any money at all, they only get a tiny percentage of the click thru income they’ve generated for the swindlers raking-in the real profits. The idea is that other people get rich at your expense!
If you really want to try to make money from producing content that generates click through advertising, it is obviously more sensible to set up your own websites and blogs on which you run Google AdWords. While most of those doing this report very low earnings, their income is nonetheless far higher than if they’d allowed a third party like Triond or Associated Content to rake-off the lion’s share of this advertising revenue. My own view is that only a fool would try to make money from producing click thru content, but you’re an even bigger fool if you chose to work in this way on other people’s sites rather than your own. I regularly receive emails asking if I’ll accept click thru on this site, and I ignore them all because click thru screws up the web.
There are a lot of articles online advising you how best to write copy for sites like Triond and Associated Content. One of the key pieces of advice most of them contain is that you need to dumb down. Looking at them, I frequently came across rhetorical questions like ‘when was the last time you clicked on an ad?’ The proffered ‘advice’ then usually proceeds along the lines of: ‘since you’re obviously not dumb enough to think ads offering you the chance to meet Russian girls are worth investigating, and you only make any money if people click on the ads, you need to tailor your content for idiots.’ But then only someone with their brains housed in their asshole rather than their head could be fooled into thinking that generating click thru content for idiots, and further cretinising themselves in the process, will be financially remunerative. This is very definitely a case of dumb meets stupid.
Another piece of advice you’ll find in many web articles about ‘making money’ from ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites is that you should favourite your own efforts on Digg, Delicious and Stumble Upon etc. So you’re not only working for peanuts, you’re also on the case 24-7 generating traffic for the likes of Triond or Associated Content. Obviously you’d do much better putting all that effort into a blog you actually control, and why not help raise the general level of human intelligence and knowledge instead of actively playing a role in lowering it? Basing what you produce on the search engine optimisation (SEO) rules that ‘get-paid-to-write’ sites drum into their ‘content providers’ is a sure-fire way of diminishing both your own humanity and that of your readers.
According to James Boswell, Samuel Johnson once quipped: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Today this line should run: “No one but a blockhead ever wrote a hundred articles a year and spent several hours a day generating traffic for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites in return for the price of a cup of coffee.” The stark truth is you’ll spend more on the electricity to run your computer as you generate content for ‘get-paid-to-blog’ sites than you’ll earn for your efforts! So remember kids, if you want to have fun on the web only favourite and link to sites that don’t carry click thru ads!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: ad busting, Associated Content, blogging, click through, click through advertising, click thru, click thru advertising, con, Digg, get paid to blog, get paid to write, Google AdWords, Helium, James Boswell, make money from the internet, meet Russian girls, rip-off, Samuel Johnson, scam, search engine optimisation, SEO, Stumble Upon, Triond
Posted in advertising, economics, Web 2.0 | 26 Comments »
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
Waitrose is a chain of 200 UK supermarkets flogging high-quality nosh at extortionate prices. The company is run as a co-op and prides itself on its image of ‘corporate social responsibility’, despite its core client base being the over-privileged English white middle-class. Its branches are concentrated around London, there are only four in Wales and two in Scotland. Some readers of this blog will recall that way back in January we got into a discussion of Waitrose in the comments to my Anti-Capitalist Shop Closure Wish List. I made my feelings about Waitrose clear then when I wrote:
“Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership but I object to their client base. Watching the mega-rich residents of the Barbican complex in the City of London campaign to get the supermarket that had been Safeway and more recently Somerfield on Whitecross Street turned into a Waitrose was pretty horrible, but all part of the (anti)-”social cleansing” of the area. When it was a Safeway, and latterly a Somerfield, this supermarket used to have a lot of working-class customers from nearby Peabody and council flats (social housing) but they’ve all pretty much disappeared. Instead middle-class Barbican residents shop at Waitrose, rather than having to trail all the way to the M&S Foodhall on Moorgate! These days it’s the poor who have to trudge further for their food, they’re not jumping in cars and taxis like the owners of flats in the Barbican would. Scumsuckers!”
This comment floated back into my mind as I was cruising for Waitrose reduced price bargains (food that had reached its sell-by date) in the Canary Wharf branch yesterday. While doing this, I noticed the stupid slogans on a line of Waitrose “Cooks’ Ingredients”. One thing that particularly offended me was the strap-line “Discovered by Columbus” on their red chillies. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover the Americas, there were indigenous civilisations and peoples on the continent for thousands of years before he arrived. Columbus was an imperialist! Which leaves me wondering whether or not Waitrose care that the fraudulent claims carried on its chillies will piss many people off (mainly those too poor to do their main shopping in their chain). And just how much did the idiot who came up with this offensive piece of marketing spiel get paid for the inanity?
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Canary Wharf, Christopher Columbus, City of London, council flats, east London, imperialism, John Lewis Partnership, London, M&S Foodhall, Moorgate, Peabody flats, Safeway, Social Cleansing, Somerfield, The Barbican, Waitrose, Whitecross Street
Posted in economics, politics | 42 Comments »
Friday, May 29th, 2009
This week a lot of people in the UK were subjected to David Cameron’s pug-ugly mug dropping onto their doormat. There he was, looking like a complete creep, on the the front of a bulk-mailed Conservative Party ‘election communication’. Under the banner ‘It’s time for change’, this prime example of absolute twattery advised readers to ‘Vote Conservative on 4 June’ (the date of the European elections). Clearly, voting for a party headed by an over-privileged arse-wipe educated at Eton and Oxford is not going to change anything. There is no more traditional route to political power in Britain than the exclusive education Cameron received. If the UK anti-discrimination laws were more coherently enforced, then they would be used to prevent anyone who attended Oxford or Cambridge University from holding public office or working in publicly funded institutions. Anti-discrimination necessitates attacking and undoing privilege.
As your granny no doubt told you, if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal; which is why I’ve never voted in a local, general or EU election, in my entire life. I have a 100% record of never voting and I’m certainly not going to spoil it now. The world clearly is changing, the information explosion caused by the internet is part of that. But rather than moving with this change, Cameron (like every other reactionary scumbag capitalist politician) wants to curtail and contain the transformation of the world, instead of going with it. The so-called British MPs expenses scandal is a joke, but nonetheless Cameron is positioning himself as Mr Clean in relation to it. British MPs diddling a few hundred thousand quid here and there is small change when measured against the billions ripped-off by the bankers. It’s a diversion that isn’t worth addressing but that hasn’t stopped the British media boring me to death with it for weeks.
Rather than voting, we should join together in roving bands of class warlocks and witches, using occult means to foment industrial unrest. Let’s use spells and curses to bring factories and calls centres out on strike against pay cuts and speed-ups. Let’s deploy magick to make it clear we’re not gonna pay for the bankers’ crisis! Stockbrokers and their banker friends are possessed by the demonic elemental money, therefore we must exorcise them! Out demons out! Class warlocks and witches of the world unite to cast off your spells!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: banking crisis, Cambridge University, class warlocks, Conservative Party, David Cameron, Eton College, EU, European elections, information explosion, internet, magick, MP expenses scandal, Oxford University, witches
Posted in economics, politics, True crime | 24 Comments »
Saturday, March 7th, 2009
I find it really strange that so many people view the credit crunch and recession as a curse. Personally I consider them a groove sensation! Over-consumption stinks up the planet and wreaks ecological havoc. We don’t need more plastic junk, and we should let the car industry go out of business: replacing it with free, fast and frequent public transport. Likewise, many people perform boring and meaningless jobs. Admittedly it is tough being without work in a capitalist society because even basic necessities like housing and food are treated as commodities from which the bourgeoisie can turn a profit. But there is nothing noble about work, no dignity in alienated labour, and we need less not more of it. So let’s start talking up the current crisis of capitalism as something that is making the world a better place whether the rich like this or not. One of our provisional demands must be for progressive unemployment; where those who don’t want to work are paid a decent amount of wedge not to work! Although ultimately money must be abolished, paying for progressive unemployment in the short term is no problem – we can start by expropriating the bankers and then move on to the rest of the bosses. There is no reason why we should pay for their crisis!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: abolish money, bankers, capitalism, credit crunch, free public transport, over consumption, progressive unemployment, recession, the indignity of labour
Posted in economics | 21 Comments »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
I was walking around the west end yesterday and it struck me how much recession and winter suits London. For the first time in decades London feels once again like the city I knew as a teenager in the 1970s. It was wet and everything looked dirty and shitty, not much snow left but plenty of muck where the white stuff had melted. I dived into Zavvi coz being in shops that are closing down grooves me. This particular retail chain was never very well stocked, not even the ‘superstore’ I checked out on the corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, and not even when it was called Virgin Records. My ever dimmer recollections are that the Virgin store was originally on New Oxford Street but I can’t remember when it moved to the present currently being closed down site. I think Forbidden Planet was on Denmark Street at that time. But then back in the 1970s I preferred to spend my loot at the Rock On Record Stall in the long ago vanished Soho Market, or at Dark They Were And Golden Eyed in St Annes Court. Although actually what I really dug was to get a cup of tea in The Court Cafe, then head round the corner to the Marquee Club on Wardour Street to catch bands like Neon Hearts, The Vibrators, Goria Mundi, The Drones and Ultravox – with DJ Jerry Floyd at the decks before the bands of course!
Anyway, back to the noughties and Zavvi. I’m enjoying watching this chain shut a few stores at a time. I haven’t seen any closed Zavvi stores yet, the only two I pass with any regularity are the ‘megastore’ on the corner of Oxford Street and the small branch on Bishopsgate. I heard a report on the radio, possibly at the beginning of the week, saying another 15 Zavvi stores had been closed nationally that day; but I’ve yet to savour the treat of seeing one of them boarded up. Since the Bishopsgate branch is a dead loss, hopefully I won’t have to wait long to see that one stripped of its fittings. In its window on Tuesday there was a sign saying they had new stock in store, and this was true but it turned out to be multiple copies of a handful of bestselling DVDs and games. And the discounts aren’t great either: 25% off CDs, DVDs and games; 50% off books and other merchandise. So if there was something you actually wanted to buy you’d almost certainly be able to get it cheaper online. There isn’t much worth purloining in the Oxford Street branch of Zavvi either, but the way it is being run down really sends me. Parts of the top floor and the basement have been shut off, in fact every time I go in there is less publicly accessible space. Likewise, on the ground and first floor the merchandise is increasingly spread out. While I was there yesterday they were playing old Motown hits like Nowhere To Run and those northern soul ‘obscurities’ that were used on Kentucky Fried Chicken adverts a few years ago; i.e. Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frank Wilson. Nice!
So to sum up, recession is a groove sensation and it will be even better if this is the one that proves fatal for capitalism! So kids, it’s time to get Dancing In The Streets…
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Court Cafe, Dancing In The Streets, Dark They Were And Golden Eyed, Denmark Street, Do I Love You, Forbidden Planet, Frank Wilson, Gloria Mundi, Jerry Floyd, Kentucky Fried Chicken, London, Neon Hearts, New Oxford Street, No Where To Run, Oxford Street, Rock On Record Stall, Soho, Soho Market, St Annes Court, The Drones, The Vibrators, Tottenham Court Road, Ultravox!, Virgin Records, Wardour Street, Zavvi
Posted in economics | 34 Comments »
Monday, January 5th, 2009
After 806 Woolworths shops closed their doors in the UK over the past few days, which British high street chain will be the next to go? According to “The Times” of December 29, 2008: “Begbies Traynor, the insolvency expert, predicted only days before Christmas that up to 15 retail chains would crumble by the middle of January… PwC has already calculated that 4,000 empty shops will appear on Britain’s high streets if only 10 per cent of the nation’s retailers hit financial problems over the next 12 months.” What would you like to see go first? Here’s my anti-capitalist top ten wish list!
1. MacDonalds. Consensus means that inevitably this has to top the list of chains anti-capitalists would like to go bankrupt! Unfortunately its franchising system makes this unlikely. But junk food is ruining both children’s health and the planet. Alongside MacDonalds, I’d also be very happy to see Burger King and Starbucks go to too.
2. Countrywide. This is the UK’s biggest estate agents with about 30 different brands under its umbrella including Gascoigne Pees and Bairstow Eves. Economists are suggesting that house prices haven’t started falling properly yet, based on historical precedent it looks like they ought to fall 30 percent before long. It would be great to see even more estate agents going out of business and ordinary people getting access to decent housing.
3. Somerfield. A big supermarket chain going bust would really send out the message that capitalism doesn’t service our needs. The Icelandic banking crisis seems to have left the Co-Op take over of Somerfield in limbo. Loosing Waitrose, food retailer to the middle-classes, would be a groove sensation too!
4. Marks & Spenser. You can only rely on the elastic in M&S underwear as long as the retailer is in business; the closure of this chain would really put middle-class knickers in a twist.
5. Barclays Bank. It ought to be number one with a bullet, but down at number 5 because of the bail outs. And I only choose Barclays rather than another banking chain because of anti-apartheid campaigns against them in the past and the fact that Barclays (Bank) is Cockney rhyming slang for wank. The closure of all banks and the abolition of money is what I actually favour. According to Wikipedia: “Barclays PLC is ranked as the 25th largest company in the world according to Forbes Global 2000 (2008 list) and the fourth largest financial services provider in the world according to Tier 1 capital ($32.5 billion). It is the second largest bank in the United Kingdom based on asset size.”
6. Waterstones. This book chain is a typical example of the pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap mentality. In terms of prose fiction in the UK what makes money is what big publishers pay to push in the windows and on the front tables of this chain. Getting rid of Waterstones, and hopefully W. H. Smith at the same time, would do a great deal to create a more level playing field amongst novelists, instead of everything being so over-loaded in favour of the literary establishment’s lackeys. Additionally many branches of Waterstones also host Costa Coffee or Starbucks coffee shops, so you’re not just getting rid of a book chain, you’re also nailing corporate cafes at the same time!
7. Blockbuster. This video/DVD/game rental store holds such a dominant position in the market it has been able to get the movie business to self-censor itself. With the rise of the internet any retail outlet specialising in games, DVDs and CDs is potentially in trouble; viz the demise of Tower Records, MVC/EA Music, Music Zone, Fopp (although seven flagship stores are still trading under HMV ownership) and now Zavvi (formerly Virgin Records).
8. Argos/Homebase (both owned by Home Retail Group). Go to Argos and you have to queue twice, once to order the product and again to collect it from a counter. Absolutely pointless, especially in an age of internet shopping. Meanwhile Homebase is every bit as bad as B&Q, but a little bit more expensive.
9. JJB Sports. This company has indulged in price fixing and sells overpriced branded sportswear, so if they disappeared from the UK high street, the loss would be to their shareholders.
10. Tie Rack. This chain retails ties, scarves, cuff-links and other disgusting looking shit you’d never want to own. Their stores are small but always irritating, especially when you see one in a train station or airport, where somehow they annoy even more than on the high street. The closure of Tie Rack would definitely make the world a better place!
So this is my top ten shop closure wish list. Use to the comments below to let us all know where you’d like to see the credit crunch bite next in the retail sector!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: anti-capitalism, Argos, B&Q, Bairstow Eves, Barclays Bank, Blockbuster, Burger King, Co-Op, Costa Coffee, Countrywide, credit crunch, EA Music, financial crisis, Fopp, Gascoigne Pees, high street closures, HMV, Homebase, JJB Sports, MacDonalds, Marks and Spenser, Music Zone, MVC, recession, Somerfield, Starbucks, Tie Rack, Tower Records, Virgin Records, W. H. Smith, Waitrose, Waterstones, Woolworths, Zavvi
Posted in economics, humour | 36 Comments »