Brits spend billions on unwanted Christmas gifts

Brits will waste £1.2billion on Christmas presents their friends and family don’t want, research showed today.
Britain may be a nation heavily in debt, with the High Street in a slump, but parents will spend an average of £137 on each of their children this Christmas.
Britain as a whole will splash out a total of £15.4billion on gifts this Christmas. The estimated figure is £950million less than last year.
This is 60 per cent more than the amount spent by the over-50s on their children when they were young, which was about £86 each.
But poor Grandfathers are expected to have less spent on them than any other family member – bagging gifts worth just £14, grandad could wake up to find his stocking bare.
Meanwhile, lucky wives and girlfriends will unwrap gifts worth an average of £117 and £102 respectively others include husbands; with 16 per cent of wives admitted they spend less money on gifts for them than before they were married.
Boyfriends and daughters will be much better off, netting a hefty £101 each per item.
The season of goodwill does not extend to brothers and mothers-in-law either, with both netting a measly £24 per present.
Traditional gifts appear to be coming back with 74 per cent of those surveyed intending to buy books and 19 per cent giving socks, compared to five per cent giving iPods or digital cameras (six per cent).
Simon Ziviani, of Direct Line, which commissioned the research, said: “The average household will spend £540 on Christmas presents.”