Britons waste billions on unwanted Christmas gifts

[The Straight Story]

Britons waste billions on unwanted Christmas gifts


LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Britons waste 2.3 billion pounds every year on unwanted Christmas presents, and almost a third of them wind up being sold online after the festive season.

More than three-quarters of 1,400 adults surveyed for charity World Vision said they waste up to 50 pounds on unwanted gifts every Christmas.

Of the hundreds of thousands of unwanted gifts received each year, 39 percent gather dust in a cupboard and 28 percent are later sold on the Internet.

A quarter of the population spends up to 300 pounds on gifts for friends and family each year, the survey shows.

But almost 60 percent who waste money on unwanted Christmas presents said they would rather spend that money on themselves than give it to charity.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL037326420071203

[AlCzervik]

1. good to know Britons are also receiving unwanted fruit cakes.

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Damn....you beat me to it. I still suspect that no new fruitcakes have been baked since 1844

....and the existing ones are just being passed around year after year like an unwanted Faberge egg.

[zalinda]

4. Not really, I know of at least one person

personally who likes fruit cake................my mother. That's what I get her every year for Christmas, because she likes them. She likes the candied fruit, yuk! She even likes the cheap ass ones you buy at the drug store. Oh, well, it's time to send her a new one, it's mostly pecans and candied fruit, very little cake. I think I'm going to opt for the little ones, that are dipped in dark chocolate, her favorite.

zalinda

[AlCzervik]

5. it's probably cost more to ship than gold bars, never picked up a fruit cake that weighed less

than a 100 pounds.

[Liberal Veteran]

9. If fruitcake were any more dense, light wouldn't be able to escape its gravity.

:D

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. I bake several every year

The American fruitcake, made with candied peel and mellowed with good rum for several months at least, is very tasty when made right. The problem is, few people are willing to make them right and commercial made cakes are crap.

I make a variation called "Dundee Cake." Take dried fruit, soak it in brandy, and bake it into a rich pound cake spiced with ginger and cinnamon. Sliced thin and served with fresh whipped cream.... paradise on earth, my friends.

[Captain Hilts]

6. They're fruitcakes baked in 1976 and still in circulation. They're paid for. Plum pudding anyone?

[TahitiNut]

8. I love fruitcake. Send them to me!

Yum!! :dunce: :silly:

[frogcycle]

3. I'm sure the number in the US is bigger

but I do my part to keep it down

[Fenris]

7. That 60% is one depressing statistic.

[nam78_two]

11. I was thinking the exact same thing.nt