Woolworths: The Sad Truth for Many

Being a family man I found myself in a town centre today, taking back a non-functioning electrical Christmas pressie (egged on by a distraught sprog).

The story ended happily when the item was replaced and we continued with our assortment of errands, some of a banking nature, some comestible (those corned beef pasties won't eat themselves y'know!) and others of a more commercial/fanciful ensemble.

All of a sudden I felt an urge to pop into the local Woolworths and witness a bit of history and so - admittedly with little persuasion (or percussion!) needed on my part with Mrs FC and the FC sprogs - we found ourselves in a very eerie and strange Woolworths shop.

Most of the shelves were empty, many of them with "sold" stickers on, with people buying the fixtures and fittings.

One wall even had photocopies of things as mundane as office chairs, the branch safe (empty?) and the staff cooker for sale. It made my pic n mix free for all ("5 sweets each kids! Fill yer boots" -- not literally obviously) seem a bit tame, as some local yokels filled trolleys with bits of display stands.

Now, I'm not one to shed a tear for unbridled Capitalism and Big Businesses, but as with many of those interviewed on the news viz this episode of the "Credit Crunch," I find it a bit sad to see this happen.

When I was knee-high to a grasshopper (a pre-FC sprog if you will) I remember going to visit one of my myriad of unrelated "aunties" who worked in 'Woolies,' standing on tip-toe as I tried to see over the counter. So it is that Woolworths entered the early memories of many people, and we all feel an era is passing.

So what should we feel with the passing of Woolworths? I can't feel sorry for Big Business or multinationals. I couldn't even tell you who owns Woolworths. But there are people we should feel sorry for: the 27,000 employees of Woolworths who face a future on the dole.

Unemployment can never be easy, but going onto the dole with so many others (add on those from MFI and other firms going bust) and at the start of a recession must seem like the beginning of a long black night for many of them.

And that's what went through my mind yesterday as I took in the vista of all the decimated shelving units and dismantled point-of-sale bumf languishing in corners.

It's easy for Gordon Brown to play "saviour of the world" because he's used our tax-money for generations to come (via enslaving us to a super-duper blow-your-mind national debt) to "bail out" the banks and keep the greedy amoral scum, who lived high on the hog whilst the debt bubble grew and grew, in their positions.

Yet he stands by useless as a chocolate teapot as 27,000 Woolworths employees - from the shelf-stackers, through the till-tappers to the junior management - get a Christmas Present of a P45.

The Saviour of the World - Super Gordon? - gets in debt with the banks to bail-out the banks (heads they win, tails you lose) and the "normal" folks get covered in guano.

Perhaps if the Woolworths staff had been as greedy and as avaricious, gambling other people's money, then Super Gordon would have forked out a few billion to bail them out too?

And why not!

Let Gordon do a one-off payment and convert Woolies into a Workers Co-Operative, wherein the workers split the profits depending on the hours they work.

It might just work. It might just save him much more in long term dole, housing benefit etc. It might just save the high street. It might just show that Super Gordon cares for more than just Banking Bosses and Car firms owned by Indians.

And, as I paid for the few goodies selling at 50% and walked out of Woolies probably for the last time, I couldn't help think of all this and of Gordon Brown's skewed sense of loyalty and proportion.

Still, at least so many of the banksters and City of London wide-boys enjoyed blow-out Christmas parties.

That must be a comfort to all those facing 2009 being unemployed.