moosebreath

Phones4u's business model has become redundant, that's why they have gone out of business. Whether that was taken advantage of or not, neither you or I really know. All we can say for sure is that phones4u was going down one way or another, just another high street retailer failing as people like you and I exercise our free will to purchase our goods at better value elsewhere. It's people like you who would probably advocate state intervention to prevent business failures under some laughably misguided notion that it might help people, only to completely destroy the very market that provides jobs and wealth in the first place.

It's impossible to know based on publicly available information whether that was asset stripping or just bad business. Certainly the levels of debt accrued were not excessive for a company of that size. I would like to see it looked at, and I'm sure it will be. Cause for revolt? No.

Most of the instore jobs have been saved. They will be basically the exact same jobs. As the market moves towards more Internet sales, you can't justify stores, so some jobs will be lost. They will be offset by the creation of jobs in Web development, Internet marketing etc. The mobile/smartphone market in this country has reached saturation and sales have dropped 11% this year. With that, inevitably, will come a loss of jobs. That's business. Some industries and sectors are on the up, others on the way down.

I haven't seen much about asset stripping. They went into administration because they couldn't reach agreement with EE on a deal to stock their products. That was the final straw after they lost the business of several other carriers over the last few months. If you're a carrier, it makes perfect sense. Why pay a middle man when you can just own the store yourself?

Nice of the author to admit he is not at all financially sophisticated, why not then just leave it at that? You only need a basic grasp of business to understand what happened to phones4u. They were an unnecessary bricks and mortar middleman in a shrinking market moving towards online sales and carrier owned stores. Those jobs were going, one way or another. New jobs will be provided by increased online sales and through the conversion to carrier stores. Nobody really loses out apart from a very small number of people who might get left behind somewhere in the transition. They'll just have to go and work somewhere else. This is supposed to be a cause for revolt? Get a grip. Markets and industries evolve, often causing short term localised employment volatility, but always progressing towards greater efficiency.

Couple of minor points: 1) the banks and the government aren't the same thing, banking salaries are set by supply and demand, not by the government 2) if you dispute the above, remember Labour presided over the banking crisis, not the tories 3) the public purse stands to benefit from bank 'bailouts' (they were never actually bailouts), which is helping to fund things like the raising of the tax free allowance which has made millions of hard working people better off 4) it was Labour's 'make em poor, keep em poor' vote buying policy (aka the 'welfare' state) that created the majority of the public debt 5) regardless of who is in power right now, Labour's mess needs to be cleaned up by cuts, that's something even Labour themselves agree with (infact that's one of an hilariously long list of Tory policies that Labour initially denounced only to change their minds once the realised it worked) 6) we are more or less the fastest growing economy in the developed world 7) employment is at record levels 8) the country is booming 9) I'm moosebreath and I'm here to straighten this place out a bit