-0.4%

early mornings start for me when the digital radio kicks in to wake me up (or as it has been more recently reminding me that i should go to sleep). generally it is a good start to the day with the pleasant friendly rapport between nicky campbell and shelagh fogarty easing the listener in to the stresses of the day.
every now and then there is a story or guest that just winds me up.
today it was stephen robertson of the british retail consortium. now i have to say he wasn’t as bad as digby jones, but then few people are.
mr. robertson was on to speak about the downturn in retail.
during my working life i had to deal with many retailers, many of them were sensible rational human beings. no it is true, it is true. that said there were a few who were full of doom and gloom, no matter what their circumstances, one such retailer complained his monthly bill with us had been increasing each month over the year, even though he was buying more because he was selling more he was still resentful of having to pay for it. another complained that he had too much competition in his area and so his profits had only increased by 5%. oh dear.

according to the report on the radio sales have declined by 0.4% for the same time last year.
the response of mr. robertson was: "the numbers speak for themselves - these are clearly tough times." indeed a decline of 0.4% is tough. (the british retail consortium talks about like for like sales, and this does not include any new shops that have opened).

confusingly the news brief on the british retail consortium’s website states: “non-food non-store sales in november were 9.5% higher than a year ago. as with store sales, this was worse than in october, when sales were 16.6% up on a year ago.” i am not an accountant but that looks pretty healthy to me.

i suppose my lack of sympathy comes from the fact that the implicit assumptions in the complaints of people such as mr. robertson is that growth is a given and that there should never be any decline in profits and that profits should grow year on year. profit it not enough; it has to be growing profit. secondly the moment there is any blip it then becomes the role of government to step in and make sure that retailers do not suffer. though i would wager that the british retail consortium would be at the forefront of making sure that retailers are paying as little as possible in tax, are as exempt as possible from as much of government legislation.

but in the end the reasons why i am not a fan of mr. robertson is that he spent three years on the board of woolworths, obviously did a fine job there, and he refers to the uk and “britain plc”. shallow reasons i know, but then i am not an economics guru.