Failure to pocket a profit

Not being one of the world’s natural shoppers, I probably don’t contribute much to the health of our great nation’s high streets or to the level of GDP, which seems to be an indicator of how we are doing in terms of national prosperity and all that kind of thing.

“Shrinking” seems to be the term most frequently used in this context these days, which somehow rather neatly goes along with how most of us are feeling about the contents of our wallets/bank accounts. But there you go. Or don’t, as the case may be.

It has always appeared to me to be one of the great contradictions of economic theory that politicians are never done lambasting the rest of us for not parting with enough hardearned spondula to spend the country’s obstacle-strewn way out of the various crises into which they have so regularly inserted it and us over recent times. All this, while simultaneously wagging their collective fingers at the hapless populace when it gets into debt and can’t pay its way, bills or taxes. This is only for individuals, of course, as largescale corporations seem to be able to get away with not paying very much at all, if anything. It is certainly not the case, in the words of those incredibly irritating and thoroughly patronising radio adverts that always appear at this stage of the fiscal year, that they find it hard to ignore the terse instruction: “And don’t forget to pay what you owe.”

But what do I know? The answer to that is, without doubt, not a lot. O-grade arithmetic from 1973 does not qualify me to pontificate about the management of money at a level beyond making sure that I give no organisation a groat more in interest than I absolutely have to. I’m tight that way.

But it would seem that I am not entirely alone in my increasingly frugal approach to coping with the national debt, as nobody except for Lidl and Aldi appears to have done terribly well out of the traditional spendthriftery of the festive season. This year the emphasis, so we are told by gloomy reports and dark prognostications, being firmly on the thrift rather than the spend.

Generally speaking, we can probably look forward to a minor reduction in the Bank of England-set interest rate because, apparently, of reduced spending on women’s clothing and, of all necessities, hotel rooms. It does make you wonder how these things are calculated and by whom. Like the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, we are all “working to become financially independent” but perhaps with not such a leg-up out of the starting blocks.

The great certainties are not what they were. Debenhams is shutting up shop all over the, well, shop. And even that barometer of middle-class retailing, John Lewis, is feeling the pinch. Ironic, somehow, that the lessthan-successful Christmas advertising campaign of this year, with a saucereyed, dragon-like creature managing to burn everything around him, failed to set the heather on fire, either.

And then there’s M&S. This national treasure of a shopping institution has been having a rough time of it lately. This is not just a spending crisis, it’s an M&S spending crisis. Profits are down generally. Caused, it is claimed by those whose coats (not to mention other lessthan-desirable garments) must by now be on distinctly shaky hooks, by overestimating the pre-Christmas demand for, of all things, certain items of tightfitting attire for men.

Ahem. Now, considering that food, even in these days of German discount supremacy, is still M&S’s biggest seller, you’d think someone in the strategic planning office might have done some joined-up thinking and joined the particular dots that connect jolly festive treats with larger, looser items of apparel, sported specifically to accommodate such highly enjoyable over-indulgence. If anything ever illustrated to perfection the wrong analysis of the “daddy/chips” equation, it is surely this.

M&S boss Steve Rowe admitted somewhat sheepishly that overordering men’s skinny jeans was a big mistake, owing, I surmise, to a dearth of suitably skinny men. Look around, Mr Rowe. Obesity crisis? What obesity crisis?

And, it would seem in this era of renewed political conservatism, the beleaguered populace has also become “more conservative in gift-giving.” That, to anyone, with an eye on the family present list, does not mean skinny jeans at the top of the Christmas list. It means socks, with a possible wild diversion into hankies in boxes. Or, in my case, plumping (if I can put it that way) for a nice, navy-blue zip-neck jumper. In size XXL.

It does not take Einstein to work out that most men, even of the younger generation, are not going to thank you overly much for a pair of skinny jeans thrust snugly into their Christmas stocking. They just, in all senses, won’t wear it. And if you ask me, I put the likely rejection down to that modern mantra of supermarket shopping in all its multifarious forms, when they try them on and find “unexpected item in bagging area”.

“The great certainties are not what they once were

The great British shopper has, it seems, been unable to spend his or her way out of the economic malaise affecting several bigname retailers.