Here's a special message for anyone who is reading this column as a result of spending 45p on the Evening Post today – thank you.

For, if some people had their way, nobody would be buying anything today.

Saturday, November 29, has been designated Buy Nothing Day – an event described as a "24-hour moratorium against consumerism". Hard-pressed business people – including those struggling to keep companies going here in Bristol – could probably come up with some other descriptions for this event. I don't know why the organisers don't just cut to the chase and call their event something like Send A Retailer Out Of Business Day, or Put Workers On The Dole Day.

At a time when most of us are having to watch what we spend, a campaign that actively discourages potential customers from purchasing could be the final straw for many struggling businesses.

It's tough out there for all sorts of companies at the moment. Just look at Woolworths, a chain store which has been trading for nearly a century, and which this week became the credit crunch's biggest casualty so far, when it called in administrators.

When big companies like Woolworths and, indeed, MFI collapse, it makes you realise how vulnerable businesses are at the moment.

In the past few days, one of my relatives lost her job when the company she worked for shut down. A friend told me that a number of suppliers to her company have gone bust. The travel company that another friend works for faces surcharging customers because their overheads have risen so dramatically recently.

Many of those involved in Buy Nothing Day are undoubtedly sincere individuals who think they're making the world a better place, and don't see any irony in how by being modern-day Marie Antoinettes and playing at being poor for the day, they could end up causing some business people real poverty.

However, I suspect there are others who have an anti-capitalist agenda and consider profit to be a dirty word, who won't be happy until they see tumbleweeds blowing through every High Street and shopping centre in Britain. They seem to think anyone who runs a business is an evil capitalist, rather than someone trying to earn a living.

No doubt the Buy Nothing Day brigade will come up with caveats about how their campaign is aimed primarily at large corporations rather than small businesses. Their high-minded principles presumably prevent them from going into supermarkets and shopping centres, so they probably haven't noticed that the retail behemoths they so despise are also major employers. That's why more than 30,000 jobs are now at risk because of the demise of Woolworths.

One of the purposes of Buy Nothing Day appears to be to get people to buy into something – namely the idea that not spending is some sort of pseudo-spiritual experience.

Somehow, I don't think this argument will cut much ice with security guards, cashiers and shelf-stackers in major stores in Bristol. And while on the subject of shopworkers in this city, I must say the staff I've come across have always been well-trained, helpful, and friendly – and I very much hope they manage to keep their jobs in these difficult times.

If you don't have the money then, of course, don't spend it. But to give the impression that not spending, or trying to spend next to nothing, is some sort of worthy act is an insult to anyone who is trying to make a living running a business of any size.

Spending wisely is one thing. Strange little acts of meanness are quite another. And even more perturbing is today's Buy Nothing Day, with its ultimate aim of encouraging consumers to adopt a more puritanical approach to how they spend.

Shakespeare's King Lear got it right when he declared: "O reason not the need ... Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life's as cheap as beasts."

Or to put it in more modern language, people would be no better than animals if they only needed basic necessities to be happy.

Unnecessary purchases are often the nicest ones: the bunch of flowers bought on a whim; the gooey chocolate cake that looked too good to resist; the picture that was purchased simply because it was so beautiful. One of the best sights in Bristol this week was when crowds of people went into shops to buy the DVD of Mamma Mia! – the feel-good film that became this year's surprise box office success. Many of the purchasers were not buying Mamma Mia! for themselves.

Of the people interviewed in the Evening Post, some men had bought copies for their wives, and a woman had bought two copies – one for her mum, and one for herself.

The knit-your-own-tepee types who won't be spending anything today might not approve. But I'd rather be singing along to Dancing Queen than joylessly sitting at home, counting my pennies like Scrooge.