HMV to go into administration (From Watford Observer)

It's such a shame us Brits prefer to buy our stuff from American Companies - Who employ minimum wage Eastern European labour AND Avoid paying tax into our system.

Cutting our nose to spite our face comes to mind! Are we a nation of traitors walking blindfolded into a bleak, high unemployment low morale future?

Still, at least our high streets can be demolished to make way for housing to cope with our impending population explosion.

Buy British!
www.buybritish.com and similar sites will help you out!

The only way we will be able to continue standing on our own two feet.

Do i sound paranoid?
Or have i just done the Math, studied the population curves and graphs and looked to the future? (something governments fail to do)

Anything i have missed?

Another victim of the Uk's business rates on shops, which are the highest in the world! I am a shop owner, we have seen 60 shops close in the last year year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 14 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £3500 per month in rates alone! He is an independent trader with 2 staff. He has to sell £12,000 worth of stock per month just to pay rates! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. On top of this he collects 20% of sales in VAT. In other words never mind the 50% tax on bankers, how about the 120% tax on shop owners!

fight rates wrote:
Another victim of the Uk's business rates on shops, which are the highest in the world! I am a shop owner, we have seen 60 shops close in the last year year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 14 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £3500 per month in rates alone! He is an independent trader with 2 staff. He has to sell £12,000 worth of stock per month just to pay rates! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. On top of this he collects 20% of sales in VAT. In other words never mind the 50% tax on bankers, how about the 120% tax on shop owners!

It's a conspiracy - even Watford council wants to destroy the high street! Those rates prove it! (I assume the council set the rates) - give it 20 years and it will mainly empty or residential - along with many of our retail parks!

When the shops go, the coffee shops go, the restaurants and cafes go..etc...

Even if you knocked off the rates high street stores would still struggle to compete with online competitors whose overheads are far lower allround.

The rates may be high but they are not the cause of HMV going under.

G-Whiz, I agree we should do more to buy British but we also have every right to buy our goods at the best price we can find. For so long the British public have been fleeced paying far more than some of our 'cousins' in Europe. This is changing, possibly only because the internet is forcing companies to be more competetive

Don't forget that the council needs the revenue in order to build bridges over ponds, replace the paving blocks every 10 years and pay private companies for consultations and public opinion surveys. But of course, funds are limited, so those measures only apply to the doorstep of the town hall so they can have a showpiece plaza when entertaining American film moguls.

HMV are paying £1.15 million a year in rates for just their Oxford street store. That is just for one store. Can you imagine how many CD's you have to sell to finance all 200 stores. This means they have to sell at high prices to pay all this cost. Many internet companies pay little or no corporation tax or rates. It is a very unfair market.

I shall say again, what ever few pounds we save on purchasing an item on line, we will see eventually going on tax increases to cope with the masses of people claiming benefits after being made redundant. We are responsible for this High Street heartbreak. We cannot have an outpouring of faux grief for staff losing their jobs and then shrugging our shoulders and continuing on as if nothings happening.

We really have built a society who would sell their gran to save a bob or two and not consider the great moral implications.

Welcome to the dark side of technology.

I walked into HMV and the assistant said "Good morning" i said "You too" He said "2nd aisle, 1st shelf on the left"

HMV was never cheapest shop.. its no surprise people including me go else where...

Watford_Chick wrote:
HMV was never cheapest shop.. its no surprise people including me go else where...

I'm sure the staff at the store will thank you for the sympathetic post. Don't complain when taxes are raised to pay all these people benefits whilst they're in between jobs now!

TRT wrote:
Don't forget that the council needs the revenue in order to build bridges over ponds, replace the paving blocks every 10 years and pay private companies for consultations and public opinion surveys. But of course, funds are limited, so those measures only apply to the doorstep of the town hall so they can have a showpiece plaza when entertaining American film moguls.

Not forgetting turning Watford Junction into a waste land and being protected by the purple helmet that watches over all that is bad.

We can now convert the harlequin ghost town into the 60 houses for the health campus.

Save Farm Terrace allotments!

theturpster wrote:
We can now convert the harlequin ghost town into the 60 houses for the health campus.

Save Farm Terrace allotments!

What ever

With the growth of MP3s and downloadable videos / movies, HMV's days were numbered. It was just a matter of time before they called it a day.

G_Whiz wrote:

fight rates wrote:
Another victim of the Uk's business rates on shops, which are the highest in the world! I am a shop owner, we have seen 60 shops close in the last year year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 14 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £3500 per month in rates alone! He is an independent trader with 2 staff. He has to sell £12,000 worth of stock per month just to pay rates! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. On top of this he collects 20% of sales in VAT. In other words never mind the 50% tax on bankers, how about the 120% tax on shop owners!

It's a conspiracy - even Watford council wants to destroy the high street! Those rates prove it! (I assume the council set the rates) - give it 20 years and it will mainly empty or residential - along with many of our retail parks!

When the shops go, the coffee shops go, the restaurants and cafes go..etc...

Er, not entirely, business rates are collected by the council on behalf of central government. See here for an explanation - https://www.gov.uk/i
ntroduction-to-busin
ess-rates/overview
A small percentage of that money then comes back to the council as they provide such services as cleaning streets etc.
The council are currently working to regenerate Charter Place and deliver a brand new Watford Market which will bring life back to the area around the old Clements building.
Sorry G_Whiz you're barking up the wrong tree here

theturpster wrote:
We can now convert the harlequin ghost town into the 60 houses for the health campus.

Save Farm Terrace allotments!

Yawn, more Farm Terrace cobblers, you need to get out more and not just down to the allotment

Wacko Jacko wrote:

theturpster wrote:
We can now convert the harlequin ghost town into the 60 houses for the health campus.

Save Farm Terrace allotments!

Yawn, more Farm Terrace cobblers, you need to get out more and not just down to the allotment

Get out more? Maybe if society at general didn't spend the most of their time behind a monitor and keyboard then the High Street may actually have a chance of survival.

Razor Sharp wrote:
With the growth of MP3s and downloadable videos / movies, HMV's days were numbered. It was just a matter of time before they called it a day.

Yep you can't beat a nice looking collection of files, far more attractive to look at than a collection of DVDs, CDs or even vinyl....

All hail the zeros and ones!

I can't remember having to perform data recoveries on a 12" picture disk lol.

Razor Sharp wrote:
With the growth of MP3s and downloadable videos / movies, HMV's days were numbered. It was just a matter of time before they called it a day.

The quality of downloaded audio and video are completely dire. Even ogg and flac files will never compare to the richness and warmth of analogue. Video downloads are just as poor as compression drops so many frames if movie its unbelievable. Its all cheap lazy drivel and can't believe public are gullible to pay for substandard quality.

Wacko Jacko wrote:

G_Whiz wrote:

fight rates wrote:
Another victim of the Uk's business rates on shops, which are the highest in the world! I am a shop owner, we have seen 60 shops close in the last year year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 14 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £3500 per month in rates alone! He is an independent trader with 2 staff. He has to sell £12,000 worth of stock per month just to pay rates! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. On top of this he collects 20% of sales in VAT. In other words never mind the 50% tax on bankers, how about the 120% tax on shop owners!

It's a conspiracy - even Watford council wants to destroy the high street! Those rates prove it! (I assume the council set the rates) - give it 20 years and it will mainly empty or residential - along with many of our retail parks!

When the shops go, the coffee shops go, the restaurants and cafes go..etc...

Er, not entirely, business rates are collected by the council on behalf of central government. See here for an explanation - https://www.gov.uk/i

ntroduction-to-busin

ess-rates/overview
A small percentage of that money then comes back to the council as they provide such services as cleaning streets etc.
The council are currently working to regenerate Charter Place and deliver a brand new Watford Market which will bring life back to the area around the old Clements building.
Sorry G_Whiz you're barking up the wrong tree here

Wrong tree maybe - but the same forest!

I feel more sorry for the passionate independent traders that lost their shops, jobs and livelihoods when HMV and Virgin rolled into town.

Strawberry Fields in Rickmansworth was an absolute gold mine and introduced me to the world of music, to which I am still hugely involved. I have not bought a single item from a highstreet music shop for some considerable time because the quality and range of stock was becoming dire.

I now buy online from independents who were smart to move online and through this method I can find out about a huge range of music from around the whole world. Not just music that has a big enough budget to get the general media's ear.

One comment which still resonates now from my growing up in the area is the total lack of drive for good, proper live music venues in Watford. Ok a few places try, but perhaps some of these empty shops on the high street could actually add something positive to the thriving night time economy that Watford has. Be it a night time culture that some may wish would disappear, a variety or choice of music would be a welcome thing in the town centre.

We have had some amazing local talent come through in the last decade and Watford has not helped, or reaped the rewards of giving a proper, thoughtful stage to the mass of creative and passionate individuals it has.

TRT, you say don’t forget about the bridges over ponds etc. But you are forgetting that that money comes from a totally difference source and the council is obliged to spend it on capital projects like that. Wether a bridge over a pond is the best use for it is another matter, what the money cant be used for is day to day running of the council.

Fight rates, Oxford Street is a prime location and going to cost a prime fee. I doubt the vast majority of their other stores come close to that kind of rate.

Turpie, I agree with you that ideally we should as consumers be a bit more long sighted. However being able to buy something in the comfort of your own home, cheaper than on the high street and its delivered quickly is extremely attractive.

Im sure the rise in internet shopping has had an impact in this and other recent shop failures but there must be plenty of examples in history of firms going under due to changes in shoppers habits. As polyphant pointed out independat retailers lost out when firms like HMV expanded nationally, just like other high street stores lost out to say supermarkets. Its part of the natural evolution of shops and shopping habits.

I don’t know the exact details but apparently you can buy a 3D printer that can make out of plastic any number of items. All you need to do is feed it the plans and it builds the product. Who knows in 20 years time these will be as common and cheap as muck and it'll be the turn of online stores to lose out.

I'm well aware of the various budget restrictions, however when a capital project IS funded from tax revenues (rates), I ask myself could that have been funded from an alternative, dedicated pot? In the end the bulk of WBC's cash flow is derived from taxation of one kind or another.

theturpster wrote:

Razor Sharp wrote:
With the growth of MP3s and downloadable videos / movies, HMV's days were numbered. It was just a matter of time before they called it a day.

The quality of downloaded audio and video are completely dire. Even ogg and flac files will never compare to the richness and warmth of analogue. Video downloads are just as poor as compression drops so many frames if movie its unbelievable. Its all cheap lazy drivel and can't believe public are gullible to pay for substandard quality.

Vinyl had a good bass response, which I missed in CDs, MP3s tend to have a limited audio range/response when compared to CDs. Digital downloads and HD screens have their limitations, until retina style ultra HD is commercially available.

In the end, it's convenience over quality, virtual storage over physical storage a d practicality over purity.