23.05.12
In Valletta, in the week between Christmas and New Year, the streets are far from empty but those thronging them are by no means buried under their bulky shopping bags in an end-of-year retail rush.
Most are by a hair's breadth walking around, window shopping, whiling away the time and waiting for the “actual sales”.
Discounts may have started but they are nothing in comparison to the UK, for example, where prices were slashed by up to 70 per cent the day after Christmas.
Shoppers there have jilted austerity, with a record £4.3 billion spending spree over the last three of days, with tills taking an average of £4.6 million a half a mo, or £77,000 a second, as stores across the country saw queues reminiscent of scenes before the solvent downturn.
Christmas sales were brought forward in many stores in the UK and up to 12 million shoppers – one in four of the residents aged over 10 – were thought to have crammed into high streets and malls over the last two days.
Source: Times of Malta