A shabby story

[Wilko’s collapse was one of biggest retail casualties in recent years © Getty Images]

Not impressed to read at reference 1, that the ultimate owners of Wilkinson's, the discount store which collapsed last year, ultimate owners who appear to be none other than the Wilkinson family, will not be stepping in to plug the hole in the store's pension fund. Put crudely, it seems to be another case of owners stripping the assets out of a company, then dumping the liabilities of that company onto someone else, hiding behind the cover provided by limited company status. A rock salmon to the Thames Water shark?

Not impressed either to read in yesterday's Guardian of a lady shearing a record number of sheep, 517 of them in nine hours. I don't mind the huge amount of effort and training, which goes into such a thing, but I do mind about the sheep. It seems that they are not that keen on being sheared, and I would not have thought that shearing them against the clock, particularly when one was getting very tired, was not doing them any favours. If humans want to do silly things, that is up to them - but don't involve the animals. I associate to the whipping dressage of recent fuss - one of the many silly sports cluttering up the circus which is the modern Olympics.

On a more cheerful note, I had been fretting about the way in which the only way out of the mess we are in in the UK is lots of growth. Growth which it seemed to me was a bad thing: we need to do less, to take less out of the planet, not more. Can we not organise ourselves better than that we have to rape the planet in order to stand still? Fretting which was not helped by reading about the whizzy company at reference 2 which appears to specialise in persuading young people to part with their money by means of clever advertisements which appear on social media on their telephones. What a way to make a living.

But it occurred to me this morning, in the course of a Middle Lane circuit - involving no less than three blackberry stops, that there may be a self correcting mechanism in the market after all. An awful lot of what we buy these days is largely made up of labour, say care in the context of hospitality or care in the context of a home. Or even paying a lawyer to strut and fret his hour upon the stage. And generating a lot of economic activity and growth by paying for each others' time seems harmless enough planetwise. And it does keep us busy and occupied. And the price of other stuff - stuff involving planetary resource greedy primary goods like steel, plastics and oil - will rise, relatively speaking. All of which sounds comforting enough - until I start to think of all the electricity needed to power all the social media. Time to walk a brick, when maybe more light will dawn.

PS 1: the snap above started life in the FT in avif format, which continues to cause me trouble, reference 3 notwithstanding. Not, for example, properly integrated with Microsoft's File Explorer.

PS 2: continuing my wanderings through the weekend FT, as a former inhabitant of GOGGS, I was amused to read at reference 5 of the listed, one-person urinal there, possibly used by that other well-known drunk, George Brown, as well as Winston Churchill. The heritage gang have infiltrated the very heart of government. They even managed to install a plastic screen in front of the porcelain to make sure no-one else tries to use it. Is there a Mr. Big holed up somewhere east of Athens, pulling all the strings? Help!

PS 3: I didn't manage anything as grand as this, but I did manage to abstract a fine double toilet roll holder, possibly from the 1930s, now adorning our upstairs toilet.

Reference 1: Wilko parent does not expect to plug collapsed chain’s estimated £70mn pension hole: Ultimate owner of discount brand, whose directors include its former chair, argues it is off the hook for liabilities - Laura Onita, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 2: https://www.sparkfoundryww.com/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIF.

Reference 4: Macbeth: Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17–28 - William Shakespeare - 1606.

Reference 5: Rachel Reeves pulls plug on plan to junk urinal linked to Churchill: UK’s first female chancellor told that carrying out the work in her private toilet would require listed building consent and cost thousands - George Parker, Financial Times - 2024.