On 4th January in this blog, I said that we were likely to see high street retailers getting into financial difficulty in the first quarter of 2008. 19 days later, Dolcis , the shoe retailer, called in the administrators. Other shoe retailers are struggling with difficult trading conditions.For some, like Faith Footwear that lost 12 million in 2006/2007 fiscal years, and Stead and Simpson,  who ran up losses of over 3 milion in 2006, the future looks very tough. Clothing retailers will also continue to operate in harsh trading conditions until consumer confidence returns. The turbulent stock markets this year and talk of US recession is now making the man on the street very jittery.

I don't know about you but right now, I'd like to see the return of those scouser Harry Enfield characters- you know, the ones that used to continuously  say  "calm down calm down!!"