Michael Barbaro (Extracted from "Retailers Try, Try Again After Slow Season", New York Times, 24 December 2005)

"Get ready for the Christmas shopping frenzy all over again.

Many retailers, fearing that today's last-minute buying spree will fail to make up for ho-hum sales growth this season, are looking past the holiday weekend and planning an aggressive Monday marketing blitz.

Wal-Mart plans to push video games, DVDs and computer software up to the front of the store. Coach is to introduce a new set of jewel-studded handbags. And Abercrombie & Fitch is to preview its spring clothing line, even though it is still frigid across much of the country."

[Ed: The commercial powers-that-be still haven't caught on yet, have they? Where is the long succession of big-item goods of the last century which were so new, so useful, so status-satisfying throughout the whole population that people saved hard for months and years to acquire? They haven't appeared for a couple of decades past. Nor have we the time or energy to want anything more than trivia.

The truth is that as energy costs rise remorselessy, commuting becomes expensive, the large cities degrade, the rich of America go into their gated communities and the London rich of this country buy into beautiful sequestered villages in the West Country, we are moving into brand new times. No new consumer goods to keep the mass of the people happy, but entirely new patterns of living and working are steadily taking shape around us if we have eyes to see. Is all this a pessimistic note on which to end 2005? Or is this a time of great fascination to to future-watchers?]