What a headline that is. It’s probably my asthma but I’d struggle to say all that without taking a massive intake of breath halfway through. It also reads like a tired tabloid headline, one you might expect to find in the Sun or Mail, but it doesn’t come from the depths of the gutter press. It’s from The Guardian. The story goes on:
“Cash-strapped Britons are cutting back on eating out and reining in on buying takeaways to save up for the expensive Christmas season splurge.
“The amount spent on going out to restaurants plunged 10.8% month on month in September, a significant slowdown compared with the decline of 5.8% registered in August, according to the latest UK consumer card spending figures from Barclays.”
I’m sure Barclays know far about the subject than I do. The world of eating out and buying takeaways is not one in which I have ever existed and if we reined in our spending on them, it wouldn’t make a jot of difference. But if these figures are anything like accurate, the picture must be somewhat bleak for the hospitality trade.
If we have little or nothing to gain by not doing things we don’t do already, then it will have no effect on something else we don’t do to great effect, which is engage on an “expensive Christmas season splurge”. We will spend money on buying gifts for family, although nothing seriously bonkers. A dictionary definition of Splurge an “ostentatious display of effort or extravagance” bears no resemblance to the life we lead – that sounds more like the increasingly exhibitionist world of social media in general and Facebook in particular – and while we will probably treat ourselves to a higher quality piece of dead animal and an expensive single malt Scotch, Christmas to me is not, and has never been, that decadent.
Referring to ‘cash-strapped Britons’ suggests that all of us are cash-strapped. I would say that some Britons are more cash-strapped than others. For example, I read this morning the wonderful news that food inflation has fallen to a mere 11%, which I suppose is wonderful news. But given where it has been in the recent past, with food prices going up by 11% a year when, in all likelihood, people’s income is falling either in real terms or actual terms or if you don’t have enough money to buy food in the first place is not exactly something to celebrate. The people who use food banks are so cash-strapped there’s nothing to rein in. I’m sure Barclays are looking at a mean average, somewhere roughly equidistant between filthy rich and actual poverty, with the rest of us somewhere between.
I can’t see the point of a Christmas splurge anyway. I don’t do the religious bit for Christmas, but I do relish the opportunity to be with family and friends, in person or virtually, something which isn’t always too easy during the hurly-burly of life. That needn’t cost an arm and a leg and for me it won’t. I haven’t sent a Christmas card in decades – so you will know that you’re in exulted company when you don’t get one this year – and I generally try to avoid buying presents for anyone other than close family. I don’t do Christmas meals or parties, either, antisocial bastard that I am. I’d rather save whatever money I’ve got for things I really, really want, to go to places I really, really want to go to rather than when I’m sitting around at home, when it’s dark and cold all day, trying to avoid Mrs Brown’s Boys and Call The Midwife.
So, I’m not cutting back on anything. I’d like to think I’m being more discerning. But I’ll also be aware of those who are not as lucky as me, at Christmas or any other time, and I’ll concentrate some of my efforts on helping them. As I’m sure you will, too.
