Book shops warn Oxfam with threats of charitable actions

By Jeff Flynn

The Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (PBFA) - who represent the nation’s second-hand book sellers, have slammed “bloody do-gooding” charity, OXFAM, for threatening to put them out of business.

“What do they think they’re doing, selling old books at a fraction of their market price, just so they can be enjoyed by people on low-to-no incomes,” said one angry book store owner, in London’s fashionable Primrose Hill.

“We don’t do business in their territory, do we? How would they like it if we started giving money to the under-privileged, or funding programmes for the poor abroad? Eh?”

“Well if they don’t stop selling books, that’s what we’ll do!”

Sorry

Suzy Smith, OXFAM books’ project manager was repentant “I sympathise with them completely. We had no idea that by selling books donated to us for free, for the purpose of eliminating global poverty, that we were undermining the dying trade of second hand book stores.”

“We’ll try not to put our bookshops in places where people actually like to read books. We’ll stick to places like Slough, Wolverhampton and Withenshawe.”

“We obviously regret that our efforts in helping people who earn less than a dollar a day is impinging on the life-style to which they have become accustomed, and we’ll be taking the appropriate action.”

Oxfam

John Gaventa, chairman of the OXFAM trustees reasoned “I had mistakenly assumed that the recession, decreasing consumer interest and the proliferation of online shopping, had been the main root cause for the decline in book sales,”

“But now I know it’s down to us, we will cease our activities immediately.”

“From now on, OXFAM will no longer be raising funds to help the millions of under-privileged men, women and children around the globe, we will instead strive to protect these 600 or so small businesses from a global economic downturn that is affecting everybody else as well.”

“If people want to buy a tatty dead-man’s suit jacket or a DVD of ‘Jimmy Carr Live’ for two quid, they best start looking elsewhere.”