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Originally Posted by sexobon
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'Black Friday' was introduced to the UK by Amazon in 2010. In the great capitalist scheme of things it was/is a cunning piece of marketing and it kick starts the Christmas shopping season quite effectively.
It's always been the tradition to start the sales immediately after the Christmas and New Year's Day holiday. In recent years, the sales have started on 26th December despite it being a public holiday.
Presumably the thinking is 'if we can shift our tat on November 28th, why wait until December 26th'?
Today I had, through force of circumstance, to travel to the nearby town for a couple of errands. I had a fair idea that the retail park I had to visit would be busy so I left the car in the town centre car park and walked the few hundred yards there. The parking area was full to bursting so that was one of my better decisions. The branch of Argos I visited wasn't any busier than usual so I assume that other premises had cut prices to attract that amount of attention.
Various TV news outlets have been showing the stampedes in supermarkets and department stores across the country. Bedlam doesn't describe it.
Read and weep. (See the video and gasp in amazement.)
ETA: I've just heard 'Newsroom' on the BBC World Service where they finished off with a report from Oxford Street, London's Temple to Mammon.
Several interviewees related how far they had travelled, how long they had queued and how much they had spent.
At the end of the report, Jackie Leonard the presenter abandoned her duty to be impartial and could only utter the words 'They're all mad...'