Recession or not, people can't walk around naked ... especially not in the United Kingdom. (Iceland in summer? Fair game.) Marks & Spencer Group Plc (London: MKS:UK), the largest clothing retailer in the country, just sustained its smallest drop in sales in nearly two years thanks to some savvy deals (offered to consumers) and warm weather. After making their dollars pounds stretch for so long, shoppers were finally ready for a bit of style.

Revenue declined a modest 1.4% for the year so far, much better than the 2.5% average estimate offered by 16 analysts. This was good enough to push M&S shares up 4%. If all goes well, same store sales may start to increase soon, which means that a full recovery will be right around the corner. Same store sales have fallen for the past seven quarters, and company cut its dividend for the first time in almost a decade.

The discounts that helped lead to the recent M&S sales performance are responsible for 18% of the company's food sales (which are down 0.5% on for same store) – much better than the 2.4% estimate. General merchandise fell only 2.4%, beating the 3.5% projection handily.

Early estimates of a contraction in the U.K. economy were not enough. First quarter 2009 estimates were revisited, showing a 2.4% fall in gross domestic product from the last quarter of 2008 to 2009. This downward revision made the first three months of the year the worst since people wore skinny ties, hated communism, and bore nicknames like "Buzz."

In the second quarter of 1958, U.K. GDP plummeted 2.6%, though the 2.4% threshold matches the depths hit in 1979. The original 2009 Q1 estimate was -1.9%, according to the Office for National Statistics in London.

Retail sales took an unexpected downward turn in May in the United Kingdom -- for first time in three months. Cautious banks appear to be the problem, as their rationing of credit is impeding broader economic recovery. Retail sales fell 0.6% from the previous month, while economists had predicted a 0.3% change in the other direction.

Year-over-year, retail sales were off 1.6%. Sales for the year are down 1.1%, the greatest decline since score-keeping began in 1988. Of course, there's plenty of fodder for rationalizing the results. The annual change was affected by an "unusually large" retail sales estimate for May 2008. Clothing, textile, and footwear retailers and department stores led the plunge, with nonfood store sales off 1.4%, compared to a 0.3% increase in food retail sales.

Falling property prices have pushed equities lower for the past nine months, constrained credit and ... forced British couples to stay married?

According to a study by accounting firm Grant Thornton, divorce filings have fallen precipitously in the United Kingdom. Fallout from the worldwide financial crisis has made it harder for couples to sell a jointly owned home and impairs the ability for each soon-to-be-ex-partner to start and sustain an individual lifestyle.

The U.K. Office for National Statistics put the number of divorce filings at 12.2 per 1,000 marriages in 2006 and 11.9 in 2007 -- a 26-year low.

This post is part of our feature on Money Winners of 2008. See all 20.

Whatever you do, don't tell my mom about John Webber. He's an English guy who had hung onto a cup that his junk dealer grandfather bought in the 1930s. One day he took it out from under the bed and decided to get it examined. It turns out to be made of gold, about 1,700 years old, and decorated with the face of a Roman god. He got $100,000 at auction.

The reason I don't want you to tell my mom about this guy is that this is exactly the scenario she thinks will happen with every mug she has ever bought at a garage sale, each "collectible" she keeps stashed in cabinets and even the old eight-track player that she cannot be persuaded is worthless. It's stories like Webber's that keep houses full of junk.

Also, Webber is now in his 70s. I don't know what his family or financial situation is. I'm sure he could use $100,000. Who couldn't? But I'm also pretty sure that the money would've made a bigger difference in his life if he had examined the cup when he was saving for a house, sending a kid to school, or starting a business.

Be sure to check out more Money Winners of 2008.

This week BT PLC (formerly British Telecommunications PLC) (NYSE: BT) got lots of favorable coverage for relenting on its plan to remove thousands of iconic red phone boxes. BT announced in June it wanted to replace about one-third of its remaining 12,000 red phone boxes. The company has slowly been dispatching the boxes for years, prompting small local protests all along and a big outcry this summer.

BT proposed a new deal: for £1 a town could keep the box, but with no working phone. A working phone would cost £500 ($900) a year. According to The Telecom, BT says £500 ($900) pounds is only half the annual cost of operating a red phone box. Really, $1,800 a year to maintain a pay phone? This July, residents in Cornwall were told their phone, which had been broken since June, wouldn't be fixed till late August. In protest, they strung up a bunch of tin cans on strings inside the booth.

Cheerio! What to do if you're a 54-year-old former world leader, in good health, with Western sympathies? Days of leading a major country are behind you, but you're not ready to pack it in anytime soon. Link up with a major American corporation, of course! Tony Blair, who served as Great Britain's prime minister from 1997 through June of last year, has agreed to join with JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) in the role of part-time adviser.

The financial terms of the arrangement weren't disclosed, but one Manhattan recruitment consultant estimated in The Financial Times that Blair's fee would likely be more than $1 million a year (though that sum doesn't go quite as far in pounds these days).

If the markets are concerned about the U.S. consumer starting to weaken, we're now seeing global consumers curb their retail spending as well.

Bloomberg reports that Marks & Spencer Group Plc, the U.K.'s largest clothing retailer, dropped severely in London trading this morning off the back of a surprisingly weak holiday sales period.

Bloomberg reported, "Marks and Spencer shares slid as much as 21 percent after Marks said today that revenue fell 2.2 percent at stores open at least a year in the fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 29, the first same-store sales drop in 2 1/2 years. The median estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for growth of 1.1 percent."

Oof. That's almost a -3.5% surprise to the downside.

"If you are an average person on an average salary in the U.K., you are having a very tough time,'' Chief Executive Officer Stuart Rose said in an interview on Sky television. "About the only thing that isn't going up is the cost of clothing. People are being squeezed.''

Zack Miller the managing editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund.

Last week on BloggingStocks, I wrote about Playboy Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: PLA)'s foray into social networking, and wondered whether it would help the company to launch itself out of the doldrums.

Michael Schneider of www.barrelomoney.com left a comment to let me know that he thinks the company is already launching itself out of the doldrums:

Playboy, in our view has already started a substantial turnaround that has set the company of the right course. they have added many new sources of revenue and have strengthened the brand. Recent results are telling as many print media companies are floundering and competitors like New frontier turned in weak results.

But the stock isn't showing evidence of this turnaround -- which is good. If the company really is turning itself around, the stock could present an opportunity for investors.

Now we have the latest evidence of Playboy moving in a new direction: It's opening a store in London, establishing a presence that has been missing there for the past 25 years. Playboy is also looking at opening a casino in London.

There's been a lot of evidence lately that Playboy is at least trying to reinvent itself and become relevant again. If you think it has a chance, you may want to look at buying the stock.

With March Madness on the books and the World Series a long way away, the world's gamblers need another race to follow. With Prince William newly single, the odds-makers are placing stakes on who England's most eligible bachelor might be courting next.

On the list, with fairly generous odds of 20-1, is reportedly rehabilitated pop starlet Britney Spears, who was rumored to have engaged in email flirtation with Prince William five years ago. Other potential suitors for William (and therefore possible heirs to the throne of England -- how frightening) include Paris Hilton, with 14-1 odds (!), and Heather Mills (formerly Heather Mills McCartney), who has proven talented at earning the love of beloved Englishmen and then dragging their names and fortunes through the muck.

I'm not a gambling woman by nature, but I must say these odds are not ones I'd take. I just can't conceive of the chances being all that good for a Britney/William union (or a Paris/William match-up, for that matter). By means of comparison, bookmakers have set odds of 30 to 1 on the Cincinnati Reds winning the World Series (300 to 1 for the Washington Nationals), and there are certainly fewer teams in Major League Baseball than there are eligible young women interested in Prince William's hand.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.