Claire’s Accessories goes under - blaming Rachel Reeves for the 1,300 jobs lost

If only it was 3 billion, it’s trillion.

Trouble is we've been suffering your "pain point" since the 1970s, so that's 50 years so far during which we've sacrificed our shipbuilding, railway building, steel industry, coal mining, slate/tin mining, car manufacturing, "corner shops", pubs, High Street, oil & gas industries, clothing manufacture, etc.

Where does it stop?

Yes, we have the financial services industry which is highly risky as the entire thing could easily be shipped off to any number of other countries.

We've also relied on foreign investors buying up new build houses and flats or buying and renovating big old properties, but successive governments have hit that market with various tax grabs so even foreign investors are now slowing down their buying and starting to sell off their UK real estate.

We had the growth in universities but the wheels are falling off that too now.

We've, as a nation, just borrowed and borrowed and borrowed to finance our decline, with national debt now standing at a whopping £3 BILLION and the interest on that alone being higher than the amount we spend on education.

It's not sustainable and we're heading for an economic death spiral.

You can't base an entire economy on importing cheap crap from China and a small army of "influences" sat on their sofas on their laptops!

People always squawk. It's what they do.

People will, however, be better off in the long run if we can create an economy that isn't filled with zombie companies lurching along from one crisis to the next. At the moment we've a lot of dead weight, established in the market, which has the effect of stifling any 'green shoots' of entrepreneurship. Killing the zombies will make way for dynamism and advancement. then we need people with enough 'go getting' to make the most of the opportunities.

However, there will be a pain point. You can't have the destruction of the old, to make way for the new, without job losses. There will be an impact on investments as things move around. And then the markets will rise again, as they always do.

People will be squawking when it shows in jobs more and more, perhaps some who care nothing for those schools and CA.

Or maybe when it hits funds generally.

Well, they survive by carrying goods people actually want, at prices people can actually afford.

That the staff is young or part time is neither here nor there. The Claire's business model has been failing for years, is undercut by online retailers, and the business failed to move with the times.

This one isn't on Rachel Reeves. Some failures may well be - but this one is like a private school that's been mismanaged for years finally failing and squawking about VAT rather than facing reality.

Do the machines build themselves?

Who is to blame for the high borrowing and debt servicing?

As I pointed out earlier, annual UK government borrowing had fallen to a three-year low in the year to March

Exactly parent company in the US folded.

Youth unemployment does matter, some might not have dc close to that age range, but getting a job is important.

And borrowing is very high plus debt servicing.

Labour are going to struggle as that contraction below kicks in.

but it depends on if that growing economy is going to be using more machines than people etc

The economy is growing, borrowing is down, energy supplies are more secure. Closer ties with the EU.

A King with the same sense of humour as his dear mother.

The long predicted failure of a chain store that sold tat on the high street, predominantly to tweens and early teenagers, is not the measure of a failing economy. Quite the opposite in fact.

Which is why we need to grow the economy, increase efficiency, increase GDP etc. None of which looks likely until there is major change. They can't keep hitting businesses when they actually need businesses to grow and increase productivity and profitability to try to get the economy to recover after so many shocks.

Sorry I actually meant to say I agree with you but missed that out accidentally.

Overall a contraction of businesses is going to impact everyone at some point, even if it’s not felt yet by many.

My reply was to the point made by several people about how they think the workers could get paid a decent amount only if bosses didn't overpay themselves - I was just pointing out that the numbers don't play out like that.

It's like everyone whingeing about MPs getting subsidised lunches - 600+ MPs getting a few thousand of subsidy for their meals spread over 60+ million people in the UK ends up pennies per person. That's what I mean about the optics not looking good, but the numbers game meaning it's pretty irrelevant in the big scheme of things.

I fully agree with you about the consequences of the lost jobs - even 1 lost job is awful, but we're seeing an epidemic of job losses at the moment which is a tragedy for those directly involved, but also for the wider picture, i.e. more unemployment means less spending in the economy and bigger benefits bill will may drive taxes even higher to pay for it. It's all a mess and nothing is being done to deal with it.

Looking at the data in @cricketnut77it might feel
abstract and irrelevant in numbers but it covers jobs. And at the end of that what those jobs pay for in terms of public funding.

It’s not going to go well to see that contraction outlined below. Watch stressed looking for jobs threads go up too, for dc who need work particularly.

The optics don't look good, but the reality is that even if the "overpaid bosses" waived all their wages/dividends, etc., that sum spread over hundreds of workers is a trivial sum for each of them. Just work the numbers. Like I say, it never looks good for bosses to be paid hundreds of thousands, but there are so few of them and usually huge numbers of staff, so one divided by the other gives tiny numbers.

I once analysed Tesco's accounts who regularly get slated for high profits/directors wages etc. I divided the total remuneration of the Board by all the staff numbers and it came out at about a pound a week for all the staff!

So it's really not the "gotcha" that people think it is.

Yeah, it's terrible giving people a decent wage. Why don't you moan about overpaid bosses?

a consumer base that has simply run out of money

It is ironic reading this after the thread I have just been scrolling. There are still plenty of people with plenty of cash to spend, it seems. But they are not spending it in the likes of Claire's.

Yes. She won't have paid NI on any of her income once at state retirement age, while people with lower incomes of working age will have had to pay it. This isn't a matter of opinion, the way NI functions is that it only applies to certain forms of income and at certain ages.

Yep concerning

This isn't a standard recession. Technically we aren't even in one. And a recession ends. This feels more like the slow unwinding of two centuries of British enterprise under the weight of energy costs, taxes, business rates, and a consumer base that has simply run out of money.

Or a consumer base that prefers to shop from their own home using Amazon, Temu and Shein to name a few. Consumer habits have massively changed too. The death of the high street more than hinted at where we were going.

I don't really think Claire's Accessories covered themselves in glory with their over priced, cheap tacky plastic tat.

Can't really see why they are complaining.They have had a good run and made a few bob in the process.
Time for the to go

You could get some better stuff in Poundworld..Home Bargains and Superdrug and the much maligned TEMU for a fraction of the price.

.

Sadly companies are finding every possible way to avoid corporation tax. Tax avoidance by wealthy people is achieved by moving their incomes abroad to places like Dubai.

Successive Chancellors have had to move the tax load somewhere and unfortunately its towards employment.

Ultimately the government work for us. They've squeezed public sector budgets to the point of third world services. They've got to balance the books or we'll go bankrupt like Greece nearly did, but we don't have Germany to bankroll us like Greece did.

Yes the newspapers act like Rachel Reeves is personally responsible for every poor decision that led us to this point, rather than the poor bugger trying to sort it out.

Thankless task that it is, I'd rather have someone in power with the courage to try and sort it out, than one of the populists that got us into this mess.

They say don't believe everything you read. But when it's the Executives of a failed company saying it, I'd say treble that. I don't suppose they mentioned corporation tax avoidance or Executive pay, did they?

Yes, I know.

The PP to whom you responded would like to see NI and income tax combined into income tax, thus income at a certain level is taxed at
a certain level, whether the source is salary or pension. NI isn’t ring fenced in any meaningful way, so let’s just call it a tax - an income related tax.

She paid NI whilst she worked and contributed to her teacher's pension. Then paid tax post retirement.