Germany versus Britain - shocking statistics

[sasguru]

Aww, baby out of arguments again?

You were at the start of the thread.

[Robinho]

You were at the start of the thread.

Oooh, great comeback.

[minestrone]

I remember the great egg race being on TV and thinking "I would really like to do engineering", these days kids are growing up with the apprentice and "buy and sell tulipe for a profit" attitudes.

Makes me glum.

[d000hg]

Random question to those who work in the eurozone... are their local equivalents of HMV, Jessops, Blockbuster (though I thought BB was international) going down the tubes too? Are their city centres ending up as alternating fast-food places and £1 shops with the odd payday-loan/pawn shop?

[BrilloPad]

Oooh, great comeback.

Its the best he has got.

[formant]

Random question to those who work in the eurozone... are their local equivalents of HMV, Jessops, Blockbuster (though I thought BB was international) going down the tubes too? Are their city centres ending up as alternating fast-food places and £1 shops with the odd payday-loan/pawn shop?

Can only speak for Germany (mostly Berlin):
Nope. In fact they're building one new shopping centre after the other. Don't think I've ever spotted a payday-loan shop. Increasing number of 1-EUR shops lately though. Media/Technology chains like Media Markt and Saturn still seem to do very well (judging by how busy they are on a day-to-day basis.

For Media Markt this bit of info may be interesting in this context:
"Every store is 10% owned by the store manager. Store managers have discretion as to which products to stock, range, pricing, personnel and material costs."

In the past I've done remarkably well at negotiating the price of laptops down below online retail competition prices.

[Robinho]

Random question to those who work in the eurozone... are their local equivalents of HMV, Jessops, Blockbuster (though I thought BB was international) going down the tubes too? Are their city centres ending up as alternating fast-food places and £1 shops with the odd payday-loan/pawn shop?

We don't all live down Whitechapel Road D000gh.

[stek]

Germany versus Britain - shocking statistics

Berlin is my favourite city, never got a sniff of a role there tho! My missus worked at Otis near Tegel...

Gonna watch 'In wieter ferne, so nah!' when I get back to the Hotel! Als das kind kind war....

Great movies!

[doodab]

Random question to those who work in the eurozone... are their local equivalents of HMV, Jessops, Blockbuster (though I thought BB was international) going down the tubes too? Are their city centres ending up as alternating fast-food places and £1 shops with the odd payday-loan/pawn shop?

It's a while since I was in Munich but when I was there just over a year ago they still had some fantastic specialist shops that rival or better any in London for things like homeware, cameras, musical instruments as well as the saturn chain (sort of combined HMV + Comet / Dixons but with a considerably better range i.e. not just focussed on the cheaper stuff) and others such as conrad the like of which we simply don't have here. All supported by a city of only 1.3 million people.

I put it down to a couple of factors. They are quite conservative and prefer physical shops to online, they also value tradition and that things are "made in Germany" and seem to prefer quality to lowest possible price so are less inclined to buy cheap tat made in china to the point that it's hard to even find it in the shops. The specialist shops generally employ people with expertise rather than minimum wagers, and they maintain a good range of physical stock so you can go in, get your hands on something and play with it and take it home that day. The consumers themselves aren't paying as much as a %age of income for housing and generally avoid debt so don't have to service it, which means they have more disposable income, and they seem marginally less inclined to waste it on tat.

Some of the bigger department stores did get into trouble when I was there though.

Waitrose edges it in the supermarket stakes but apart from that, clothing and English language books I'd say that the shops in Munich were better than we have in London.

[formant]

Berlin is my favourite city, never got a sniff of a role there tho!

Berlin is my hometown, but has zero jobs in my field and not a great job market in general (nothing like the South/Munich). I go there a lot, but I've only ever worked in the UK.