Wednesday, Jan 27, 2010

Now is the winter of our discontent

CBI: Retailers disappointed by weak New Year - CBI

The UK high street reported a slight fall in year-on-year sales in early January, disappointing retailers' predictions and ending a three-month run of sales growth, the CBI said today.
Responding to the CBI's latest Distributive Trades Survey, 28% of retailers said that the volume of sales in the year to early January had risen, while 36% said it had dropped. The resulting balance of -8% was weaker than predictions made last month of sales being broadly flat on a year ago (-2%).
[Forecast was +11]

Posted by dill @ 11:24 AM (805 views) Add Comment

10 Comments

1. little professor said...

A year-on-year fall... Last year was the height of the financial crisis, when banks were going bust every other day and the stock markets were plunging to new lows. Zillions of QE was supposed to have caused the magnificent turnaround in our fortunes, form recession to 0.1% growth. Now we find out the fundamentals are even worse than last year

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 12:57PM Report Comment
 

2. rumble said...

40. flashman said...
.... I just saw the latest retail figures from Greater London, which can only be described as stellar. All sorts of spending records were broken. ...Tuesday, January 26, 2010 05:09PM

The rest of the country must've been shocking!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 01:00PM Report Comment
 

3. Tochinoki said...

>The rest of the country must've been shocking!

Rest of the country? You mean there's more to the UK than London?.... Has anyone told the government that?!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 03:32PM Report Comment
 

4. Flashman said...

rumble: You have a habit of quoting me when I am not involved in a thread. The other day you quoted me at length from early November without adding any comment of your own. Did you save for two months? As far as I could tell, the idea was to highlight my incorrect assertion, that we would be reported as coming out of recession in the final quarter. Well, I was proved right a few days after your quote and before you say it was only 0.1%, wait for the inevitable upward revisions.

Regarding this latest episode of flashman quoting: Here's some December figures from the BRC: Central London retail sales up 12.0% (like-for-like basis) on a year ago. This was the best December result since the survey began. 12% is an extremely large increase in the retailing world

The BRC (who are almost always more accurate than the ONS) are also on record as saying that the December retail sales figures, from the rest of the country, were better than reported by the ONS.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 06:19PM Report Comment
 

5. flashman said...

rumble: You have a habit of quoting me when I am not involved in a thread. The other day you quoted me at length from early November without adding any comment of your own. Did you save it or something? As far as I could tell, the idea was to highlight my incorrect assertion, that we would be reported as coming out of recession in the final quarter. Well I was proved right a few days after your quote and before you say it was only 0.1%, wait for the inevitable upward revisions.

Regarding this latest episode of flashman quoting: Here's some December figures from the BRC: Central London retail sales up 12.0% (like-for-like basis) on a year ago. This was the best December result since the survey began. 12% is an extremely large increase in the retailing world

The BRC (who are always more accurate than the ONS) have also categorically said that the December sales figures, from the rest of the country, were better than reported by the ONS.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 06:21PM Report Comment
 

6. rumble said...

I haven't seen any figures for London or UK excl London, if you saw London's were stellar, and this says combined were down, then...comment... that may or may not make sense as i have a stellar cold or flu, so probably should hibernate for a while, concentrate on forest depletion, looking like the sphinx.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 09:15PM Report Comment
 

7. flashman said...

The CBI is a lobbying organisation. They are angling for lower VAT and lower interest rates. There are better sources of information.

You transplanted my quote from another day into this thread. I would not have chosen to comment on it. My quote from yesterday was about December results and is therefore irrelevant to this thread. It is far too early to get anything reliable for January, particularly from this outfit. The first week of January retail sales are reputed to be very good but the later snow might have put a small dent in the January numbers. John Lewis are considered to be a retail bellwether and they have reported a 30% fall in early January shop sales, due to the snow but a surge in web sales of 56%. We will have to wait and see.

I hope your cold gets better

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 09:57PM Report Comment
 

8. rumble said...

Thanks for the last line. I'll revisit the rest - too many characters.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 10:03PM Report Comment
 

9. devo said...

4. flashman said... rumble: You have a habit of quoting me when I am not involved in a thread.

then as if by magic, you are!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 11:01PM Report Comment
 

10. flashman said...

blibble blobble bloop

Thursday, January 28, 2010 07:20AM Report Comment
 

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