The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

Yesterday's newspapers up here were full of claims like this.




Even the local TV news was reporting when I left the house about "record crowds hitting the shops for last minute gifts".




Here's what I found.




"Oh no! I'll never get my Christmas shopping done in these record breaking crowds!"




"Oh woe, woe is me! Marks & Sparks is so packed it's going to take me FOREVER to see everything on sale, all the good stuff's sold out already, & it's going to take AGES to queue for the tills!"




"This is too much! Look at the lengthy queues to get to the platforms for trains, & all of them carrying tonnes of shopping meaning even less space available! At this rate I'll have to wait a whole 15 minutes to get an entire train carriage to myself! I can't take it anymore! Where's my revolver?" "###CLICK###" - "###BANG!###"

Those I spoke to in the shops said it was dead on Saturday too, & the busiest they've been is Black Friday, when the town was full in the afternoon with drunken office workers and private schoolkids that had all finished up at noon, & it was mostly the cafes and pubs that were getting their trade. An old mate I used to work with in HMV (for the benefit of Bobert, Ollie, [removed] & any others from outside Britain, they are our biggest music & DVDs retailer) many years ago told me they're laying off their entire extra seasonal staff on Christmas Eve in the two city stores, they just can't justify keeping them on.

They'd better hope that people have been buying online instead, otherwise I fear even more stores closing in the new year.