圣诞将至 英国零售额飙升

A Christmas Carol is the theme for the Oxford Street Lights this year. And retailers have unpleasant memories of Christmas past with excess stocks, limp sales, and panic discounting. But Christmas present could be much more appealing. Retail sales last month were 3.4 percent up against the year before with a strong performance in most categories of shop. Despite the ghost of recession still hanging over the high street, Britain's love affair with consumer spending has proved too remarkably resilient. And one of the reasons for that is low interest rates. People with checked mortgages are spending much less to service the debt on their homes. And that means they have much more money to spend in the shops. Even benighted sectors such as electrical goods did well. Sales of televisions, fridges and the like reversed more than a year of falls with a rise of 5.9 percent.

There is perhaps an element of the VAT increase. It's coming in in January. That might be a consideration that we need to take into account. The fact there are a lot of our more big ticket items, the prices will be going up after the Christmas.

The Office of National Statistics said that the postal strikes may have helped to boost October's spending figure as customers brought forward online purchases amid fears over pre-Christmas delivery. This helped to drive the growth in internet and other distance sales to a hefty 15.8 percent. Experts expect the strong sales to continue past Christmas and think retailers may even have been caught on the hop.

I think retailers have gone into this Christmas with less stock than they had last year. They were expecting about time they are gonna have sales which I think were stronger than they have expected. And something actually is gonna be short. And some of the big selling items, yes, probably will sell out quite quickly.

So Christmas present seems to be sewn up. But next year, we’ll see VAT rise and unemployment starting to bite.  Real fears remain about Christmas future.

Glossary

 bring forward: to move sth to an earlier date or time

catch sb on the hop: to do something or to happen when someone is not expecting it or prepared for it; catch sb by surprise/catch sb off guard

sew sth up: to finish a business agreement or plan and get the result you want

bite: to start to have an unpleasant effect