London Report: White Christmas

Almost all of this week.

Of course, everyone looks forward to different reasons for snow.

For example, when children look forward to snowy days, Santa's reindeer sled can run faster and deliver their gifts earlier. The women of the otaku government hope to have a beautiful encounter in the ice and snow world, but for retailers, they expect the order to fly like snowflakes.

In fact, this year's Christmas shopping season, Britain ushered in a rare warm winter. Until now, don't say that there is no heavy snow, even rain water is not much.

Although the sun is much more, but the popularity of commercial street is still low.

The British Federation of industry reported that business activities in the UK retail industry have been shrinking for six months, while only 26% of retailers said the volume increased, while 44% of retailers declined.

Although Christmas is coming soon, retailers are still in trouble.

According to the British Retail Research Center, the consumption of British people exceeded 1 billion 50 million pounds on the last Saturday before Christmas, down 5% from the same period last year.

Retailers are looking forward to the coming of Christmas, which may open up their pockets. But in the light of the gloomy economic outlook, perhaps only a white Christmas can make a miracle in order to change the prudent attitude of consumers in spending money.

White Christmas is not only important for the British retail industry, but also for some economists, it even concerns whether the whole macro-economy is in recession.

One of the "three giants" of the British Office of budget responsibility, Professor Stephen Nichol of Nelder field college of University of Oxford, said in a few days ago a special committee on fiscal affairs of the house of Commons that heavy snow before the end of the year could prevent the British economy from going to the two bottom.

In Nichol's view, once the snow falls on Christmas day, people stay at home for a few days. When the temperature rises, they will immediately go out to spend.

This will statistically increase the data in the first quarter of next year, thereby avoiding the two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Although this kind of consumption pattern is somewhat disordered, it also reflects the value of white Christmas from another aspect.

In the face of the current warm winter, do not know whether the outside group that represents the interests of the retail industry will complain that the British government did nothing in the recent Durban climate conference.

Because the whole British retail industry is looking forward to cooling down with one word, it seems that snow is a panacea for the enthusiasm of consumers.

Ironically, as long as people who are not forgetful will remember, only a year ago, Britain passed through the coldest December of a century. The continuous snowfall gave the British a real white Christmas. But many retailers did not enjoy much prosperity in that year. The reason given by the British Retailers Association is that the weather is too cold, and the snowy weather restricts people's desire to go out to buy.

A year later, though the weather changed, there was no change in the retail industry.

It seems that the weather is indeed an omnipotent excuse. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the British meet to talk about the weather.