AS someone who is generally staggered that anybody can be bothered to get out of bed in the early hours of Boxing Day and head for the sales I was completely taken aback by the significant increase in shoppers this year.
The whirlwind of consumerism before Christmas is always enough for me but clearly many of you were left craving more as the number of people shopping was up 25 per cent on last year.
I am even reliably informed that a scuffle broke out in one of the shops in the Bull Ring as tempers flared in the effort to bag a bargain.
This spend-fest in itself would not necessarily be a bad thing but for the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of this spending is being funded by credit cards.
At the moment British personal debt stands at £1,345 billion, its highest ever recorded level.
This reflects the significant change in a generation from a "save now to spend in the future" to a "buy now pay later" approach.
Added to which, access to credit has been drastically increased with minimum checks being made as to whether individuals will ever be able to repay what they have borrowed.
These are worrying omens when for some time it has been predicted that our economy will begin to slow in 2008.
Arguably credit at this level is never sustainable in the long term but you add to these concerns in the housing market, with thousands of fixed rate mortgages coming to an end and confident predictions of record numbers of people being made bankrupt, then the economic storm clouds seem to be gathering.
This uncertainty has not yet been matched by significant increases in unemployment but if it does then this will bring the issue of the nation's credit crunch to a head.
The UK's economic performance has shown remarkable resilience in recent years but there can be little doubt that the next 12 months are going to be truly challenging ones. ..SUPL:
