Many organizations spend millions on market research, many people spend lifetimes trying to determine what things you should watch to see greater trends, many lives and fortunes are bet on how things may or may not change.
There are two problems with this, one is what they are looking at, and two is what you can do based on that.
I used to say years ago (decades ago really) in the far south west of the country that you could tell the local boys, and the local country boys, because at night round headlights were local (rectangular headlights were just coming in, so they were usually owned by the state (po-po) or owned by visitors who lived up country or up in London or somewhere rich) boys, and round headlights with only one bulb working was local country boys.
Because we were poor, innit.
Nowadays I drive a 15 year old volvo shed that I paid less than a thousand bucks for, and it has a light on the dash that comes on when ANY bulb fails.
I swear to you, I have never seen so many cars with only one working fucking headlight since those days 50 years ago on backroads in the south west of cornwall, and there is lots of shit about christmas sales numbers for the shops being dire and all the rest of it, but the fact is, not being able to afford a 5 buck headlight bulb in 2017 when there is zero chance you’re not aware of it even in a city because nobody has a car so old it doesn’t have a warning light on the dash… well, this is nothing like last year, last year there were a few, this year I can drive 4 miles across town and see more than a dozen in one fucking trip.
Don’t get fancy and complex and smartass, cars driving around in never before seen numbers with only one working fucking headlight is all the evidence you need that lots and lots and lots of people are on the bones of their ass, financially.
The second part is difficult, what do you do with this data, how does it help you, how does it change your plans, well, not so easy.
I have *never* seen anywhere near so many, it’s a fucking epidemic.
I can tell you that those same one eyed cars are driving past lawyers and offices and councils and shit where people think nothing of charging 100 bucks an hour for something maybe worth 5, if it was done right first time, which it never is, if it was done in 3 days and not 3 weeks, which it never is, and nobody pushing a pen inside those buildings looks out and sees what I see.
The ones eyed cars out on the street don’t look in to the offices and see what I see either, routing clerical shit that would have taken maybe two weeks 5 years ago and maybe 1 week 10 years ago and maybe 2 working days 20 years ago is now taking forever.
I have one good friend who put a firm date in his diary six weeks in advance to sign and lease and take possession of a new shop, that date is monday, today is now just saturday, he hasn’t seen the lease yet, next thursday the solicitors that have taken six weeks to not produce a lease for him to sign are closing for two weeks until well into the new year.
I have a friend who bought a new limited company in early september to start a new business, by mid september he had set up a company bank account and everything else he needed, and he applied for a VAT registration number… he is still waiting… he basically can’t start trading until he gets one, because they will treat every sale he makes as containing 20% VAT, which means he will owe 20% of every sale to the state as tax, but until he gets a VAT number, it’s illegal for him to charge VAT, so VAT suggest he just puts a 20% surcharge on everything (I shit you not, this is official legal advice from VAT to his accountant) and put the 20% aside, in the meantime all his potential customers see is bills that will be 20% higher, but they will not be VAT bills, so they can’t claim the 20% back against the VAT they charge their customers, so… he is just 20% more expensive… his potential customer base just vanished… which means his potential business just vanished, so he said fuck it and is back truck driving for an agency… the 10k he invested in starting up the business is either gone or wrapped up in plastic sheeting in his garage waiting for an ebay sale.
Off the top of my head I know personally of at least three other people who are in some sort of “legal limbo” because they still haven’t heard back from some office or agency of one sort or another, and while in every case it wasn’t life or death which way each decision went, one might have been preferable, but the other would be workable, they are all in the worst of all possible worlds, where they have no fucking idea, and so they dare not make any decisions of any kind, because decisions taken in ignorance could well be fatal…
I myself have company accounts that are overdue for filing, they aren’t filed because the accountant hasn’t filed them yet, and the accountant hasn’t filed them because they can’t until they hear back from a different government agency, I personally genuinely have no idea where I stand with all this at present.
All of the above are not automobiles, but they are exact analogies of the car with only one working fucking headlight…
Lots of cars with one headlight is not a trivial or minor thing.