Michael Gove, education secretary:
My suggestion would be a gift from the nation to her majesty; thinking about David Willetts’s excellent suggestion of a royal yacht, and something tangible to commemorate this momentous occasion.
In spite, and perhaps because of the austere times, the celebration should go beyond those of previous jubilees and mark the greater achievement that the diamond anniversary represents.
Thankfully, Downing Street had the sense to reject this suggestion.
Mitt Romney: the probably Republican nominee
Last night Mitt Romney scored a crucial triumph in the New Hampshire Republican primary meaning that he is now the only Republican non-incumbent presidential nominee to win both there and in Iowa. The chances are he’ll use this as a launch pad for the next primary in South Carolina on the 21st January where he remains the favourite to take yet another victory. He’s now seen by voters as the Republican most likely to beat Barack Obama.
He even had the support of independents – he came out slightly ahead of caucus runner-up Ron Paul. Jon Huntsman, who shunned Iowa for relentless campaigning in New Hampshire was quite some way back and you wonder if this is his last stand since this was his best chance to make up some ground on the frontrunners.
This is despite the endless amount of criticism he’s had from fellow candidates based on his business interests. The supporters of Newt Gingrich released a video that was nearly half-an-hour long and accused Romney of being a corporate bad guy responsible for the losses of many jobs. Rick Perry has also been one of the loudest voices in the anti-Romney movement but for him it’s not translating to good poll results.
So, after only two state votes thus far, is the race over? It is and it isn’t. Only a catastrophic gaffe of earth-shattering consequences can stop him from going up against Obama but it technically isn’t over until there is one man standing. Despite trailing in the polls, Perry and Gingrich are still convinced that they have a shot, partly because they’ve invested too much money to back down feebly but also partly because of their own convictions and Rick Santorum is equally unlikely to back down because his good Iowa result is fresh in the memory. If anyone’s even going to drop out soon it’s Jon Huntsman. The fact that comedian Stephen Colbert, who isn’t even a listed candidate, is beating him in South Carolina, the next state on the GOP presidential nomination roadshow, is telling.
But hey, following this all unfold is still far more entertaining than UK politics at the moment so I’m more than happy for it to go on as long as it can. If anything, it’s like watching a predictable rom-com. Albeit with characters who could quite easily fit in a horror film.
Photo by James Cridland
Cast your mind back to 2008. It was a very strange year since that was when the recession kick-started and it seemed to accelerate the losses of most retail companies. For one of them, Woolworths, it proved to be a fatal blow. That said, they can’t blame an economic downturn for their death. No one knew what Woolworths was meant to be any more. Was it meant for CDs? Was it meant for DVDs? Clothes? Toys? Sweets?
The problem was that it was for all of these things and going into a branch of Woolworths was like going into a messy house of random stuff. Who is ever going to need both a bathroom mirror and the soundtrack to Mamma Mia in one shop? No one. In October they were placed into administration and their lifespan came to a messy end in late December/early January 2009.
Those in charge at HMV must have seen what happened and thought that it couldn’t possibly happen themselves. It couldn’t possibly be that the only major entertainment/music retailer left on the high street could be in similar trouble. However, last month CEO Simon Fox fired off the much-feared SOS warning.
Their sales figures, released yesterday, made from grim reading. Like-for-like sales fell by 8.2% – an improvement on last year’s disastrous 13.2% but only because there wasn’t any snow stopping them and that there was an extra trading Saturday in the run up to Christmas Day. Competition from the internet and supermarkets have slowly been suffocating them and Fox admits that ‘material uncertainties’ has put doubt on their future.
New plans
So, not for the first time and only months after getting rid of bookseller Waterstone’s last year, it’s time for a major rethink about what HMV is about in this new era of commerce. A couple of years ago they pinned their hopes on HMV Live, their concert decision that runs thirteen music venues such as Hammersmith Apollo and the Kentish Town Forum, because of the resurgence of the live concert industry. Now they’re looking to sell it because of its huge costs (the debts run up to over £160m) but the chances are that they could find themselves a good deal after it has attracted plenty of interest; a sale of over £60m is entirely possible.
Now it looks technology products could be their new saving grace. Fox said that the 144 stores that were re-fitted with a range of digital profits reported an increase in technology like-for-like sales of 51% in the five-week period leading up to Christmas. 500,000 pairs of headphones were sold as well as 20,000 tablet computers.
DVDs and Blu-ray also look likely to stay despite their falling demand. The former is still worth a lot of money and the latter is finally starting to pick up the pace with more and more people owning some form of Blu-ray player.
This will all be at the expense of video games. Stock of a wide range of titles available for the Wii, PS3 and so on will soon be limited to the most recent/popular ones. It’s also probably for the best. If I wanted to buy a computer game on the high street then I’d go to a branch of Game, since it’s by far the most obvious place to buy one…in very much the same way that if you wanted to buy a CD a few years ago then HMV was the first choice for many people.
Will these plans work?
To be honest, for all their good business intentions, it’s hard to envisage a major and instant turn-around in fortunes.
Regarding the problems of HMV Live, whilst you can’t fault them for choosing to invest in live music, they chose to do it in a way that was ultimately beyond their means. Had they reduced the scale of their plans they might have found themselves in a slightly less worrisome position. Even their plans to focus on technology has huge risks. They’re moving into a field with a lot of competition, particularly with online retailers like Amazon, so they’re going to find it tough.
Instead, they should focus on their strengths. Yes, technology is doing well but they should do more to promote their range of CDs and DVDs. It’s not like Tesco or Asda is going to have a similar wide selection of products available in that area. They also need to stop the ridiculous pricing of certain items. Of course no one is going to buy a CD if you’re going to put a sticker that says £16 on it.
When you go into any of their branches you’ll see CDs in one corner, books in another, games in a slightly bigger one and T-shirts and posters in the middle. There’s even a soft drinks fridge for you to pick up a Diet Coke or something similar. It’s a store of increasingly random stuff. HMV runs the risk of ending up like Woolworths, closing up shop because of the fact that they no longer knew what they were meant to be any more.
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Sidenote: Writing this reminded me of a feature on Wired’s website in 2010 about Rough Trade East and how they managed to survive. It’s worth a read.
I’ve had my fair share of problems with the welfare system over the years. When I applied for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) straight after leaving university I found out I couldn’t actually get any of it because they thought I could live off my girlfriend’s part-time income (which is almost an insult, to be frank) and then when we tried to get some housing benefit last winter we came unstuck because we had to keep sending document after document after document to prove our case. In the end, we gave up since it was causing so much stress.
Something needs to be fixed on those specific areas and that is what makes the coalition government’s decision to ‘re-haul’ it by cutting money out from disability benefits particular perplexing.
They’re hoping to pass the welfare reform bill before Christmas and instead of clamping down on benefit cheats they are removing certain forms of disability benefit like the Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and announcing the introduction of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), which claimants may only be get for a year if they have a partner that earns £7,500 or more or there are limited savings.
Basically, instead of showing compassion, they’re trying to throw in as many loopholes to stop disabled people get the money that they actually need.
The other truly ridiculous thing about these proposed changes is that it’s basically saying to couples: “If you want to get benefits, split up!” Who knows what kind of damage that would do. For the disabled, it’s important that they have people around them to support them and make them stronger. It’s also crying out for benefit cheats to claim more money from the government that they don’t really need. Heck, if it’s easy enough already when it comes to the JSA and housing benefits then they’ll crack this one too eventually.
What angers me the most though is that this sends out the message that because we are broke it’s going to be the disadvantaged that have to pay. Has it really now come to this?
