THUS Magazine

Woolworth crash will decimate the music industry

The latest nightmare recession headline is that Woolworths is about to go bankrupt (again) with the loss of more than 30,000 jobs and 860 store closures across Britain. Have the government thought this one through? Where are we going to spend the windfall cash bonanza that Gordon and his elves have earmarked to save the economy this Christmas? The country needs us to buy dancing santas, 6 ft high inflatable snowmen, artificial trees that randomly collapse like Bradford and Bingley, showering glass bomblets to choke the dog, snow globes filled with fetid water from Chinese open drains, anorexic Barbie dolls, unplayable TV Tie-in board games, Selection Boxes, plastic fish that sing ‘YMCA’ if you’ve remembered to buy the batteries. Where will we source Etch-a-Sketch, not to mention ‘Now That’s What I call Music, vol 201?’ Boney M live at Guantanamo? What about the Beano Annual? Has anyone thought about the Pick n’Mix mountain? How will we provide leery passport pictures with the collateral shortage of Photo-me booths?

Hidden assets - an Eldorado of chocolate coins

Actually, like the War on Terror, this is largely playful scaremongering. We can source some, if not all of this oxygen of consumerism at the Pound shops festooning our tumbleweed High Streets and at car boot sales. But Woolworths have gone one step further. In an audacious attempt to outdo their rivals in tat, and a last demonstration of their fabled retailing nous they offered all 862 shops on a first-come, first-served basis (provided you can find a manned till) for a shiny one pound coin (or a packet of chocolate coins, provided they are of Woolworths origin). I’m no Philip Green (thankfully) but did this send out the right signal to a potential buyer? Whitehall’s Willy Wonkers should seize upon this golden investment opportunity and nationalise Woolies, saving jobs, preserving our heritage, restoring the much-needed feelgood factor and providing ‘fiscal stimulus’ in one fell swoop.

The New Labour Woolworths empire might also include MFI, purveyors of white formaldehyde sofas, collapsing hardboard wardrobes and pouffes to the indiscriminate and the sub prime. For a modest fee to consultants and financed by one of the many government-owned banks, the new entity could be rebranded as GUM, after the highly successful USSR engine of supply-side retailing (now, ironically, a luxury outlet). Auto manufacturing could follow, had we not already sold Rover to clearly mechanically-illiterate Chinese communists, Nanking Auto, for an eyewatering £60 million in a cruel act of industrial sabotage. I’m amazed they didn’t buy Reliant at the same time.

British manufacturing hegemony may yet return

But all is not lost. This week brought the news that Yugo has conked out, a belated victim of the Balkan conflict. The government could indulge in a spot of liberal intervention and import Yugos for first-time car buyers caught in the trap of not having enough cash to buy a real car.

Of course, this is a riff too far. People who genuinely cannot afford a car can rush to Woolworths before it closes its doors for the last time and enjoy a driving experience in a Noddy car ride, or drive away with a plastic dashboard and steering wheel that makes pointless parping noises.