Jonathon Wardman

Woolworths' real closing down sale

According to this BBC News article I was right, if a little premature, about the Woolworths sale.  It’s turned into a closing down sale after all.  While Deloitte had previously said that the stores would stay open until after Christmas, they are now saying that some shops could close by the end of the year.

Personally I doubt that even those which remain open will have anything worth buying after this weekend.  It didn’t look to me like they were re-stocking in my local store last weekend and I have no doubt this weekend will be even worse.

This is not a closing down sale

Deloitte, the administrators called in to deal with the collapse of Woolworths, are claiming it’s not a closing down sale but to me it looked pretty terminal.  Like most people calling in to one of the chain’s 815 stores today, I was greeted by empty shelves and long queues.

While Deloitte are promising that the stores will all remain open until after Christmas, I’m not sure there will be much left to sell following the weekend.  Given that Woolworths’ problems began when they were unable to obtain credit insurance and so their suppliers were unwilling to give them credit, I don’t see how they will be able to re-stock.  Unless the Woolworths’ four distribution centres are very well stocked, or the intention is that this sale will provide a cash injection to allow the chain to get their delivery chain up and running again, I doubt they’ll find any suppliers willing to work with them.

One thing is certain – the sale has made people flood back into their stores.  I can’t help feel that if they had managed to get this many people in each shop before now they wouldn’t be in the mess they are in.

Press neutrality – the view down the lens

I read an interesting blog post earlier this week – “To read or not to read?” – written by an MA broadcast journalism student.  In it he talks about the ethics surrounding reading other people’s text messages without their consent.  He uses this example to illustrate a point regarding investigative journalism as a whole.  While we agree on the main point in question, I’m not sure I agreed with everything he says.  I’d recommend you go and have a look at his post, and my comments at the end, as I’m not going to repeat them here.

Then, this weekend, I spotted a copy of The Daily Telegraph on the train open on an article titled “The Mandy and Osborne Show had us in stitches”, so I had a look.  The article I had initially seen was, in fact, not very interesting at all (some comments by an actress about The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards), but the item above it was.  The section I was reading was the comment section, and the piece above related to the current economic climate.  The article is clearly comment – it’s not hard fact, it’s one writer’s opinion on the way Gordon Brown has handled the slow down in the economy.  As good comment should be it’s a very biased article. [read more]