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Jan's rant

Realism

Predicting the future is not easy! At the time of writing this piece the government is hard at work reviewing it's economic forecasts. The Chancellor and his team have realised that these forecasts were somewhat optimistic and off the mark. The revised numbers do make for some gloomy reading.

Walking into the city centre recently I was surprised to see that even our small city is being occupied by anti-capitalist demonstrators - well at least a small part of the city centre and no tents in sight. Most of the protesters were well dressed and well spoken and most of them under the age of 25. I wholeheartedly support a more even distribution of wealth and admire these people for making a stand but I do wonder how long this campaign will last. In order to make a substantial contribution to a more fair distribution of wealth a lot of us need to be willing to embrace a change in our living standards.

Of course I have every respect for those in the civil service and am more than happy for them to have their well deserved pensions. But I think we need to be realistic here - the economic climate is dire and won't get much better soon. We are all in this together. A friend told me how his company had slashed pensions some years ago and there was no consultation process involved with their staff. If the company had not taken this drastic action they would not have existed today.

My economics lectures of some years ago told me that there are economic cycles - apparently roughly every 7 and 50 years we can expect some form of downturn. I'm not going to correlate those figures with what we find around us at the moment, but the time will come when we will climb out of this economic hole. Just not sure when and it would be my guess that it won't be 2012.

All may not be doom and gloom for our many independent health food shops though! In the December issue of Natural Products news an article on page 5 suggests that small stores are faring better than multiples as petrol prices continue to rise and more shoppers buy from local stores whilst leaving their cars at home. Shoppers are also more aware of wastage and are purchasing more frequent and smaller quantities. Value and luxury products continue to do well.

Some of you may be aware that the government has significantly changed the timing and the amount of Feed in Tariff. We were ready to place our order for our own large photovoltaic installation but have had to put this project on hold whilst recalculating costs. We continue to look for energy reducing schemes - there are still quite a number of energy reducing projects we can employ on both electricity and gas usage.

We all want financial security for our businesses and our private lives. With that security being shaken by the economic climate perhaps the time has come to look for other things to enrich our lives. A little lifestyle change or a small additional activity might just be as satisfying as a pay rise.

Just some more random thoughts ....

Have a great 2012

Jan

Any comments?
E-mail jan.walsma@goodness.co.uk