Rejoice! Do we see the beginning of the end of stuff?

I couldn't help feeling pleasure at the news that Marks & Spencer's not done too well over Christmas. It's not that I wish the store any harm, it's just that I cannot see how we can go on acquiring 'stuff', and retail businesses can go on expanding, in perpetuity - growing profits, selling more stuff to consumers (who already have too much stuff anyway) - without completely trashing the planet.

Eventually this greed has to end. I would rather it ended in a slow and sustained retrenchment. I would prefer an understanding that sustainability means keeping what you have, mending it, re-using it, recycling it and also entails eating less, throwing less away and growing more. I'd prefer that to what I fear might be a big bang of economic disaster with all the deprivation and poverty it will bring.

Clone street Britain will eventually reach a point at which expanding business and increased profits, the greed of consumers, shareholders and private equity investors has to stop. It's logical. It simply cannot go on the way it is.

Do all those people who rush out to save £399 by buying a new three piece suite really need one? No, very few of them do. As soon as they get home they're wondering what they are going to do with the old one, which isn't worn out, isn't unusable but just a bit saggy and needs a good clean.

Does Tesco really need to pull down the store it already has in order to build something which is even bigger, with even more stuff in it? Are people queuing to get in, queuing at the shelves to get the stuff that's there because it's got to be shared out fairly? No, of course not. Go into that supermarket and you're spoilt for choice. There's so much stuff, so many varieties of the same stuff, that it's difficult to find the stuff you really want.

We are running out of room to put stuff and money with which to buy stuff, and we've already run out of holes in the ground into which to dump the stuff which we've discarded in favour of new stuff. Could this be the beginning of the end of excess stuff? I do hope so.