Christmas shopping figures disappoints capitalists

Sowed today we hear the Christmas shopping figures in 2013 were very disappointing for a few big names on our high street including the likes of Tesco and Morison’s and Marks and Spencer’s I understand. Year has been mixed signals from the High Street, with Next, John Lewis and House of Fraser performing strongly, but disappointment for Debenhams and Mothercare. Also on Thursday, Tesco reported like-for-like sales down 2.4% in the six weeks to 4 January because of a "weaker grocery market". At the same time, rival Morrisons reported a 5.6% drop in like-for-like sales. Retail analyst Bryan Roberts said the company "should have held its nerve" and not pushed ahead with pre-Christmas sales High Street sales started well before Christmas, something underlined by data from the British Retail Consortium, which reported on Wednesday that shop prices fell by 0.8% in December, the fastest rate in almost seven years. Mr Bolland has reshuffled some key staff in the hope that a new clothing range, heavily promoted with a marketing campaign featuring the likes of Dame Helen Mirren, Tracey Emin and Darcey Bussell, would start delivering results. The executive makeover saw a new head of the GM division, John Dixon, brought over from the successful food section in October 2012, while Belinda Earl, the former Jaeger and Debenhams boss, became style director the month before. The usual hype about massive Xmas sales by retailers both in the US and in the UK turned out to be just that - hype. The shops experienced relatively dismal sales despite internet buying and massive discounts on items. According to ShopperTrak, US retailers posted their lowest holiday sales growth in four years. Sales between Thanksgiving and Christmas rose 2.7%, compared with 3% a year earlier, while the number of people walking into stores declined 14.6%. It was a similar story in the UK. Households continue to suffer falls in real income and so they are not increasing spending much beyond essentials. The misery continues for most.

A thank you at Christmas

To all who have read this blog during the year and even just skimmed read bits I thank you for stopping by. This year has been an emotional one for me where politically I’ve transformed myself going from an out and out Marxist and Trotskyist in the Socialist party to ending it being in no party questioning party politicise and Marxism itself. 2013 has been a big year for myself looking back at may where I stood in a local election in the county council elections where I received beyond my wildest hopes I gained 59 votes in a huge Tory are whilst standing for TUSC. Whilst this blew me away I never thought this would change much locally and nationally I still feel TUSC are plugging away in vain with a lot of the oppositional votes going to labour for now and frankly their strategy and message is not working and I have explained this elsewhere. But for me attending various protests and meetings earlier in the year to now where my activism is on the low side of things it’s been a big year of change for me. Personally I’ve reached point where I am no longer as big into politics as I was but still keep a firm interest in such matters and am still as I’d call myself a socialist but maybe with al to of anti leadership ideas and a few more autonomous views where democracy matters a lot more to me now than before. I am a lot more of an independent critical thinker now than I was and I feel better for it. I am no longer under the control of an unappointed leadership who see themselves as leaders of us all. A new start and a new wave of thinking is breaking out on the left and many of the old left parties are in crisis and will face bigger upheavals in 2014 I feel as they fail to adapt to this new period we are entering. Now I’m free of all dogma’s and party controls I feel free to express myself as best I can and I am happier for it. I encourage others struggling with a oppressive top down party to break from it you will be better off for it trust me they are not the be all and end all as I’ve discovered they are ultimately holding us back I feel. As Karl Marx rightly pointed out only works can change society no one else no self appointed leaders or parties they can only lead us to state bureaucracy and less freedom as shown in the last century we must learn the lessons and not repeat our mistakes. I have a few irons in the fire and my political journey may not yet be over but 2014 looks to be another big year with European elections and the Scottish independence referendum to watch closely the next year looks to be shaping up to be another big one for many who have progressive outlook on things and look to turn things around for the working-class. A lot has happened in the last year and 2014 will be interesting for many reasons many events are yet to happen that we will have no idea they will happen but to ground ourselves in solidarity with our common people other workers and those oppressed right across the world is key. I understand now revolution is not around the corner for us in the UK but things can change very quickly and we must be awake to them but things do not just happen our ground work this year will influence watt happens next year. The fantastic work by students on campus’s up and down the land but notably in London and Brighton has set the path for bigger and better struggles next year for students against cops on campus and outsourcing too. This looks set to be another big battle ground of struggle for 2014 which we should keep our eye on. But going forward we cannot make big predictions as some do at the end of a year going into new one but what we can say is that workers may have suffered b big defeats in the past but there is no grantee they will go on suffering big defeats a time will come where there is a layer in society with not much left to loose who will be the first to really fight back and give this gov a scare and possibly upset the whole apple cart. I once again thank all for reading this blog this year and hope you can continue in to the New Year and offering your suggestions for improvements if possible. # Happy New Year and a safe and prosperous 2014 to all.

A very Tory Christmas

This Christmas many will struggle to enjoy a Christmas at all with the rising cost of living and the austerity which is really biting now for many ordinary people. This is Tory Britain where half a million people are reported to be using a food bank now to get by. This is a national disgrace now that the Red Cross has an appeal for support for the people in the UK we know something is very wrong in the world. Not that it wasn’t before but this hasn’t happened since the war. So while we all struggle to enjoy a Christmas dinner the Tories will be living it up in the nicely warmed tax payer funded homes or one of their many homes I should say as most do have more than one if not more these days. For the Tories any thought of the poor over Christmas will be a distant thought if at all. Those who they are making pay for the crisis of capitalism are just collateral damage to them it would seem. The bosses of the 'big six' energy companies should be in the dock. 31,000 extra people, mostly pensioners, died last winter. With 3.2 million households in fuel poverty and one in four families forced to choose between eating and heating, how many more will die this winter? With almost calculating cruelty, all the big energy suppliers have announced more and bigger price hikes just as we go into winter. Even Ofgem, the toothless regulator, has admitted: "There is a deep mistrust of anything the energy companies do or say... It is not surprising the customers jump to the conclusion that prices are driven by profiteering." It is not surprising because it's true! Fuel bills have gone up 152% in the last ten years. Their profits have gone up 74% since 2009, to £3.74 billion last year. Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) pay over 60% of their profits to shareholders in dividends, and npower haven't paid any UK tax for the last three years! British Gas paid just five bosses £16.4 million in bonuses in March this year. Parent company Centrica's chief executive Sam Laidlaw got £4.9 million in salary and bonuses last year, enough to pay the annual fuel bills of 3,500 households. Huge public anger has forced politicians to be seen to be doing something. They all say "switch suppliers" but the big six, with 95% of all domestic customers, operate a price cartel and run a virtual monopoly. The Con-Dems advised people suffering fuel poverty to wear an extra jumper, the Centrica boss said wear two! Ed Miliband says a Labour government would freeze energy prices for 20 months but we all know they'll just stick them up before and after. This Christmas will not be a happy one for those at the bottom end of the scale. Lets fight for a world where Christmas’s are not something to dread how we can afford it how we can enjoy things with our families and friends but one rid of capitalism where we live happily with a society which meets peoples needs before anything else is considered.