[Magdalen] And so it begins...

[Charles Wohlers]

Maybe that explains why I got a Black Friday spam / ad in Portuguese this 
morning!

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Jim Guthrie
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2015 10:01 AM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] And so it begins...

No Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday (an FDR Innovation in 1939), but I 
see
our friends across the pond have adopted Black Friday as their own:

>From today's NYT:

"LONDON — The British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, of course, but they have
enthusiastically embraced another great American holiday tradition: Black
Friday. A little too enthusiastically, it seems. Now, some retailers are 
even
trying to dial back some of the frenzy they unleashed just a few years after
introducing the whole idea.

That is because, for a nation that prides itself on its decorous behavior, 
last
year was ugly. Or, what in America is called a typical Black Friday.

At one flagship Asda store in northwest London, part of a retail chain owned 
by
Walmart, one young woman was seen on the floor, desperately clinging to a
40-inch discounted television as several teenagers tried to grab it away.

In Middleton, in Greater Manchester, 200 shoppers barricaded themselves in a
Tesco store demanding the promised sale goods, even after all the stock had 
been
depleted.

The BBC reported that shoppers in different parts of the country had 
experienced
gridlock, biting, pinching, punching, kicking and stock flying through the 
air
as people leapt over barriers to get their hands on heavily discounted 
items.
Police reinforcements had to be called in at stores all across the country 
for
Black Friday, a name apparently coined by the Philadelphia Police Department 
in
the early 1960s to describe the shopping and traffic turmoil that followed 
the
holiday.

Retailers this year are trying to tamp down the mayhem. Asda said it was
dropping Black Friday this year because of “shopper fatigue.” “This year
customers have told us loud and clear that they don’t want to be held 
hostage to
a day or two of sales,” said Andy Clarke, the company’s chief executive.
Instead, the retailer said it would offer discounts from November to 
January.

Nevertheless, Black Friday seems here to stay in one form or another, 
leading
many to question exactly why their country seems to have so quickly adopted 
a
distasteful commercial binge that exists in the United States only because
Friday is a holiday for many people.

Indeed, a Black Friday backlash appears to be gathering force at a time when
some traditionalists are already bemoaning the way that Halloween, with its
kitsch and goofy costumes and edible eyeball cakes, is slowly supplanting 
Guy
Fawkes Day, the four-centuries-old British festival that falls on Nov. 5.

“We have plenty of our own traditions, such as Morris dancing, boarding 
schools,
warm beer and aristocrats, many of which are even weirder than
marshmallow-topped potatoes,” said Sarah Vine, a columnist for The Daily 
Mail.
“But at least we don’t try to shove them on unsuspecting foreigners.”

She noted that even her tiny, corner manicure shop in West London had 
emailed
her its Black Friday discounts.

Sensing a populist cause, some members of Parliament, including Jeremy 
Corbyn,
who is now opposition Labour leader, put forward a nonbinding motion in the
House of Commons last January railing against large retailers who chose to 
adopt
“the American retail custom of Black Friday,” saying it was an affront to 
public
order and a drain on police resources.

Sir Peter Bottomley, a Conservative member of Parliament, said he had signed 
the
motion after several shoppers were seriously injured during Black Friday
shopping skirmishes. “In a country of polite queuing, some people forgot 
British
patience because they were so excited about special offers,” he said.

See:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/europe/britain-adopts-black-friday-with-an-all-american-frenzy.html-----Original
Message----- 

Cheers,
Jim

"The enemy isn’t liberalism;
the enemy isn’t conservatism.
The enemy, is baloney." - Lars Erik Nelson