Why I know this? Because I took the trouble of actually going to central London, to Oxford Street and Regent Street, which according to reports, have had an additional 35 per cent of customers visiting that day, and I can tell you that there was no ‘bargains bonanza’ and only prices on selected goods were lowered by 15 or 20 percent at best.
Yes, there were more people than usual in the shops but, as they say, there was nothing much to write home about. The ‘herd instinct’ did work and department stores probably made some additional money that day, with most people ‘burning their plastic’ or, I suspect, using money that they took out as loans to pay for their Christmas shopping.
Nose for bargain — or paying through the nose?
I wonder, I just wonder how many of the shoppers took out payday loans with their vast interest rates to buy the supposedly ‘heavily discounted’ goods that day. Which would mean that in reality they will pay through the nose for their ‘bargains’ if they fail to repay their loans on time, as payday lenders charge thousands of per cent in interest.
The day was not without its extremities. Police were called to a few large supermarkets in the north of London and other places that had advertised discounts on flat screen televisions and some household accessories, with scuffles breaking out between the customers.
Footage of some of this mayhem had been shown in TV news bulletins, probably more to wet the appetites of extreme bargain hunters than to parade the lunacy of the first Black Friday in Britain. Mind you, there was some serious pushing and shoving in some of the big department stores in central London as well, even though the promise of ‘slashed prices’ failed to materialise.
Advertising bonanza
The idea of Black Friday in America boils down to kick-staring the Christmas shopping season by luring customers in with very selective discounts. The hope is that many people will buy something even without a discount, as they have gone to the shops anyway.
The media is playing along with this game, winding up the shoppers. The media, so that you know, makes a lot of money from the ads that retail companies place on their airwaves and pages during the festive season, so it is ready to call white black, if the retailers say so.
Behind this ‘shopping frenzy’ that has been blown of all proportion in Britain during its first Black Friday is the sad fact that the so-called growth in the economy is mostly boosted by consumer debt which means that the growth is artificial.
Consumer snake that eats itself
Most of the overpriced goods on offer are made abroad and that basically means that more personal debt buys foreign made items, with retailers making all the profits. In the long run, apart from the shareholders in the retail chains, no one else benefits, as personal debt grows and in Britain it has gone over the £1.5 trillion mark and is growing.
The odd thing in all of that is that this consumer frenzy — through high interest loans — leads to consumer debt and, ultimately, strangles consumer demand. It is like that snake that eats itself — and so the vicious circle continues and it will all end in tears.
What is even worse is that the housing bubble, created by the government with its very dodgy ‘help to buy scheme’, with taxpayers basically underwriting mortgages given to people with modest incomes – Chancellor George Osborne thinks it’s a great idea — will push people into taking out more loans secured on their property, hoping that the prices on their houses will go up and they will always have a ‘cushion’ to fall on if things turn out badly. We have seen it all before the 2007 crash, and it is heading that way again.
So the Black Friday in Britain, the first in its history, was basically a feast during a plague. And from what I’ve seen, it was not even much of a feast anyway.
