Black Friday 2014: as it happened 28 November 2014 Protests over Black Friday in Ferguson, Missouri are ongoing, where a "Black Lives Matter Friday" rally is being staged. You can watch them live. 22:20 A wave of celebrities and politicians have suddenly woken up to the Black Friday headlines, and have weighed in on Twitter. 22:06 Scenes from today's shopping are on the front page of tomorrow's Daily Telegraph, described as a "black and blue Friday." 21:13 Black Friday has turned into something of an extreme sport in recent years. This comparison of the US shopping festival in 1983, and two decades later, helps to make the point. Something to reflect on when we consider what Black Friday may look like in years to come. 21:09 Dixons Carphone enjoyed eight sales a second including online and in-store sales today. They say web traffic is up five-fold from last year. Worth pointing out that the Dixons and Carphone merger took place within the last 12 months, so the comparison isn't too helpful. 21:04 Vince Cable, business secretary and MP for Twickenham, has got in touch with his wilder side, braving the streets on Black Friday. He's helped reopen a local Post Office. 20.07 BREAKING: Some people managed to form an orderly queue today. Footlocker only let one customers in one or two at a time. Perhaps a model for retailers more generally in 2015. 19.56 Things have started too cool off now, as retailers prepare for their next big hit. Cyber Monday lands once the weekend is over, and is set to be one of 2014's biggest days for the UK's largest internet retailers. Thankfully we can expect less stampedes and injuries, although the day is likely to test the servers of shops. Those wanting to snap up bargins may have to deal with site outages and queues of a digital kind. 19:41 So "what has today's biggest discount been?," we hear you cry. You can thank the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) for that one. Their decision on Thursday not to cut supply has seen the price of oil traded on global markets continue to crumble. The price of one oil benchmark - Brent - has fallen below $70 a barrel for the first time since May 2010. 19:04 Returning to last night's discussion on the origins of Black Friday's name an old newspaper clipping gives some context. The crowds formed by a throng of shoppers in Philadelphia which merged with those leaving the nearby Army vs Navy football match may have something to do with the moniker. The Army-Navy game gets a mention in this New York Times story, which includes the first mention of Black Friday by the paper. 18:54 With data now pouring in from our North American peers, it seems apparent that the birthplace of Black Friday just can't be matched for volume. Terry Lundgren, CEO of retailer Macy's, has said that traffic is set to hit new records, while its peer Target has been selling computer games at a rate of 2,000 a minute. I'm encouraged by the traffic. Now we just have to see if the traffic turns into sales. The meat of the business starts just in a few hours," Mr Lundgren told MarketWatch. 18.45 Some of us are still managing to keep Black Friday distinctly British. 18.31 How did Black Friday get to the UK? A few US folk are confused as to why the UK is getting so excited by Black Friday, even though the majority of us don't even celebrate Thanksgiving. In the US, price cuts are intended to get US shoppers into stores after Thanksgiving, so that the Christmas shopping season can begin. We're glad you asked - The event actually crossed the Atlantic in 2010, but it took until this year for the same dramatic scenes to be replicated in the UK. 18.16 USA Today is reporting that police say a Costco employee stabbed a colleague prior to opening on Friday morning in Nanuet, New York. Clarkstown Detective Lt. Glenn Dietrich said the victim was hurt across the abdomen and face by a box cutter during the assault and is undergoing surgery after being taken to hospital. The police are currently looking for the individual and said there were no customers inside the store during the incident. 17.57 AFP and Business Insider report on Best Buy's website which crashed for a while earlier today. BI said the website was down for more than an hour and the page carried only the words: "We're sorry. Best buy.com is currently unavailable. Check back soon. Best Buy told AFP the cause was "a concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance." 17.40 For an alternative Black Friday, look no further than Nasa's Twitter account. The space agency has been spending this special shopping day tweeting images of black holes. Here are some of the best: Nasa says a black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. For more information about them, visit the website. 17.30 Today Black Friday is global and not just an American export in the UK. In France, for the day dubbed Le Black Friday by some, supermarket operator Casino Guichard-Perrachon, media retailer Groupe Fnac and online store La Redoute slashed prices. This is despite being a country where discounting is highly regulated. Bloomberg reported Casino's online unit, CDiscount, was to introduce Black Friday promotions in all eight countries where it operates, including Senegal, Vietnam, and Colombia. Meanwhile, Swedish online retailer CDON Group AB, which introduced the concept there last year, said sales were more than double those of an average Friday as it had 1.2m website visits, 70pc more than normal. 17.12 A retail analyst warned Black Friday sales would depress, rather than kick-start, Christmas shopping. Nick Bubb, an independent analyst in London, said the final two months of the year are the most lucrative for British retailers, representing an even greater proportion of annual revenue than in the US. "There's a huge risk that consumers will buy what they would have bought anyway, just for less," Mr Bubb told Bloomberg. It's ruining margin. 16.51 South West News reports on a video of shoppers wrestling over a delivery of discount TVs - with some shoppers walking off with one under each arm at 12.15am on Friday. It happened at Tesco in Eastville, Bristol, and in another part of the city, Brislington, officers went to a Tesco after there were reports of scuffles breaking out in the queue. But Avon and Somerset police said no arrests were made during the incidents. 16.37 Staying with full inboxes, those who find theirs full of spam today can use unroll.me. The website promises that once you sign up, you can see a list of all your subscription emails and unsubscribe instantly from whatever you don't want. 16.35 Jon M. Chu, director of Step Up 2 and 3, Justin Bieber: Never Say Never, has discovered one positive to all those emails we're getting from different companies advertising their deals. Silver lining I guess... 16.32 Thames Valley police are warning people to avoid the area around Bicester Village after shoppers flocked to the Oxfordshire site. Ahead of Black Friday, the centre advertised extra discounts of up to 80pc on certain lines, with shops staying open until midnight. But INS News reported many people were stuck in traffic jams as crowded car parks forced access to the centre to be closed. Thames Valley Police said there were miles of delays on the A41, the A34 and the M40 surrounding Bicester Village. 16.15 Spare a thought for this keen shopper. A man stayed up all night outside Asda in Hollingbury, East Sussex, in the cold only to find out the Xbox he really wanted wasn't part of the Black Friday sales. In fact, the deal for the console starts tomorrow as part of Asda's Green Saturday. Kerry Ancell, from Asda, told Solent News: "One man at the front of the queue from 1am played cards to keep himself entertained while he waited. But when he got to the front of the queue he realised the Xbox he wanted to buy was not on deal until our sale tomorrow called Green Saturday. 16.10 This Vine might accurately describe what shopping feels like on Black Friday, although soft toys are probably nicer to be throwing yourself against! 16.04 Demonstrators against the police killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown showed up in shops and shopping centres across greater St. Louis. Bloomberg reports some of the Black Friday protests led to brief faceoffs with police, who told them to leave private property. No arrests were made, according to the St. Louis County police department. Some stores were temporarily closed. Leslie MacFadyen, who runs a website that aggregates Ferguson-related protests nationwide, told Bloomberg more are planned in shopping locations in more than 40 cities. 15.50 It might be a great tradition in America but country singer Carrie Underwood appears to have chosen the safer route of online shopping... 15.42 This is pretty cool. Branded3 Black Friday spending tool shows shows how much has been spent, live, on Black Friday Deals. See the pounds and pence go up in real time. 15.38 As we approach the end of the working day (prematurely I'm sure some of you may feel), here are some tips from Visa about how to shop safely online. The company also said the £518m Black Friday was set to overtake Mega Monday as the biggest online shopping day of the year. Never enter your PIN number to a website if asked to do so. You will normally be asked for your card number, expiry date and CVV2 (number on the back of card) Shop with retailers you know about, or research them first to ensure they are reputable and reliable Make sure you understand and read the delivery and return policies that should be on the retailer's website and always read the T&Cs Make sure you're sensible when shopping online, and look out for merchants running out of goods. If only one merchant has a lot of stock at a good rate, have a look at the merchant more carefully. If something is too good to be true, it probably is. 15.28 The writers on Project Babb have produced this ultimate guide to the very worst football club merchandise this Christmas. Depending on your perspective and tastes, it either has the best round-up of what you can get your football-crazy friend/family member/insert your own answer here. There are some Arsenal gnomes for the massive Gunners fan in your life or Aston Villa curtains anyone? 15.22 Kevin W. Glass via Twitter and my colleague, Peter Spence, has brought this to my attention: A Gallup poll on Black Friday which found "Americans living in the Midwest and nonwhites are significantly more likely than average to say they will shop on Black Friday." Gallup found that the older the individual, the less likely they would be to go shopping on this manic day. Only 8pc planned to go shopping this Friday compared 34pc of 18 to 29 year olds and 19pc of 30 to 49 year olds. To drill down on the difference between white and nonwhite individuals, 15pc of the former said they would go shopping today compared to 27pc of the latter. This difference between the races is much larger than the difference between the sexes. 20pc of women said they would go shopping compared to 16pc of men. Click on the link above to get more data which also shows the richer you are, the less likely you will be to leave the house for Black Friday shopping. Only 16pc of those earning more than $75,000 said they would. 15.00 Here are a couple of charts from Postcode Anywhere, the address-lookup service used by thousands of shopping websites, which has a real-time spending tracker. This chart shows how many people have used the service to enter their address at online checkout during Black Friday, compared to the usual number of internet transactions processed in a normal day. Shopping peaked between 11am and 12pm, with almost 42,000 people using Postcode Anywhere, up from the average 16,829 in that period usually. 14.50 Ao.com said it is on track for its busiest trading day in its 14-year history, with sales five times higher than last year's Black Friday. The online electricals retailer said its online traffic was 13 times higher than the same day last year at 7am, and it sold out of the Bosch Tassimo Joy pod coffee machine (£39, down from £129) within 90 minutes. 14.40 Currys PC World said its web traffic this morning was five times higher than last Black Friday, with eight transactions per second -- in stores and online combined -- at sales peak. The online queueing system had some customers waiting an hour to access the Currys website, though, and some shoppers grew tired of waiting. A woman who gave her name as Judy said she waited 57 minutes to buy a widescreen television on Currys' website before giving up and going to Asda, which she said was "a last resort" as she was "terrified" and "really put off" by the chaotic scenes she saw on TV. 14.35 Has Apple snubbed its British customers? Although the iPhone maker was keeping quiet in the run up to Black Friday, many expected Apple to discount the price of some of its iPads, Macbooks and iPods like it did last year. But as Business Insider points out, Apple seems to have completely ignored the UK. If you want a cheaper Apple product, you'll have to go through a third-party supplier such as Tesco or John Lewis. 14.20 This morning, we told you that the websites of Currys, Tesco, Argos and Game had all crashed. Guess what... they're all still down. 13.50 We've got the morning report from Asda, too. Since stores opened at 8am this morning, two million transactions have taken place. In the first hour, Asda sold: 3,500 Beats by Dre headphones 1,000 BMX bikes its entire stock of X Box 360 250GB consoles with Halo and Forza games more than 8,000 TVs... which, when you look at the footage from some of Asda's stores this morning, isn't much of a surprise. The 40-inch Polaroid LED TVs are being sold at £139, down from £219. Here's a reminder: An Asda spokesperson commented on that Wembley incident: "We do not condone the behaviour of a very small number of people in our Wembley store this morning. Despite our extensive planning and additional security colleagues there was an isolated incident when the store opened. The sale has run smoothly in all our other 440 participating stores. 13.45 This just in: passenger traffic on Oxford Street between 9am and midday was a fifth higher this year than the same day in 2013, according to the New West End Company, a group of retailers and property owners in the Oxford Street area. Between 9am and 10am, the increase reached 29pc. However, Telegraph writer Harry Wallop points out that this increase in traffic is only because many stores, including John Lewis and House of Fraser, opened at 8am this morning, compared with their normal time of 9.30am, which is when they opened last year. "We are expecting a record amount of "lone ranger" shoppers coming up to Oxford Street to hunt for the perfect gift on their own, as well as families this weekend," said Jace Tyrrell, deputy chief executive of New West End Company, which expects customers to spend £150 in the shopping district over the three-day Black Friday weekend. 13.30 A top UK police chief criticised retailers for having insufficient security personnel after his officers attended disturbances caused by crowds of shoppers seeking Black Friday discounts, writes Leon Siciliano. Ian Hopkins from Greater Manchester Police has slammed the behaviour of shoppers on Black Friday, saying "people's behaviour was absolutely terrible." 13.25 This is one of the clips from Asda Wembley this morning. There's a particularly brutal fight over a television from 1:05 onwards. 13.11 Lunch time! Therefore, shopping time. Here's our round-up of the day's best deals, from Amazon, Asda, John Lewis, and dozens of other retailers. There are all sorts of fun things in there, from robots, drones and quad bikes to video games, coffee makers and Disney pyjamas. Don't say we don't look out for you. 13.00 Spare a thought for the employees who bear the brunt of Black Friday -- such as the warehouse workers who send out your online orders. In this video, Telegraph features writer Harry Wallop takes a look around the enormous John Lewis warehouse in Milton Keynes. 12.45 Speaking of #PRFails (see below), can we declare this a #PRWin for Aldi? 12.32 Just witness the carnage. 12.25 Richard Glynn, a PR who blogs from PRDetox.com, has declared Black Friday a #PRFail. Here are some of his personal highlights from ITV's Good Morning Britain this morning, which had cameras at an Asda store: The endearing image of customers frantically trampling over each other as cheerleaders gleefully and bizarrely danced and sang in the background! Richard Gaisford revealing how poor the selection of discounted offers was and asking the Asda spokesperson if customers were being mislead. Phrases like: An absolute disaster. Bargains gone in minutes. All the people still queuing didn't realise there were no TVs left. And no-one wanted toasters. Gaisford interviewed a woman in the queue who said she was only at Asda because she'd wanted to shop on-line at Tesco - but couldn't get on the website. No winners there really! 12.10 A word of warning from Kingston cop Sergeant Paul Marshall of the Metropolitan Police: 12.05 We hopefully won't see anything like this in the UK, or anywhere else, this Black Friday. But the website Black Friday Death Count shows that there were seven deaths and 90 injuries related to Black Friday in the US between 2006 and 2013. Fourteen of those injuries happened last year, and one teenager was killed when he fell asleep at the wheel while driving his friends home from Black Friday shopping. 11.52 A third person has been arrested in relation to Black Friday. Greater Manchester Police said that a 42-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault at Tesco in Burnage Lane, Green End. 11.50 A real-time spending tracker from Postcode Anywhere, the address-lookup service used by shopping websites, shows that online retail traffic since midnight has been, on average, more than 300pc higher than on a normal shopping day. The highest markup was between 5am and 6am, when it counted 3,152 online transactions -- 488pc more than the usual 536 purchases made during that hour. Postcode Anywhere also identified the busiest regions for internet shoppers: Belfast Newcastle 11.35 Oxford Street seems to be better managed than most supermarkets. Security staff at Footlocker are operating a one-in-one-out policy, creating a 50-foot queue stretching down the street. 11.23 The Met Police have put out a statement saying that they were called to three London stores last night over Black Friday scuffles: Tescos in Edmonton, Willesden and Surrey Quays. The police were called to a fourth store as previous reported, Asda in Edgware, but the incident turned out not to be connected to Black Friday. 11.12 Twitter user @IAmHappyToast is documenting the anarchy. Here's Batman buying a TV. (Disclaimer: Batman did not really buy a TV in Tesco today. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire. He does not need to buy at discount.) 11.00 Our picture desk has put together this photo slideshow of Black Friday scenes from around the country. Both these photos were taken at Asda's Wembley store, the same one where people got trampled as they burst through the doors at opening time (see the video below). 10.50 I can't bear to watch this, and yet I can't quite tear my eyes away. This video captures the moment staff opened the doors of an Asda store in Wembley and people literally fell over each other in their haste to get inside. 10.28 The mayhem isn't just in Manchester. Twitter user Ross Lewis tweeted about a Tesco employee called Cath who "deserves a medal for even having to endure" customers' "disgusting" behaviour at the Western Avenue branch in Cardiff, which he said has since been closed due to violence. 10.20 Tesco's in trouble now: one of the country's top police officers isn't happy with how the supermarket has handled Black Friday. Sir Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said: "The events of last night were totally predictable and I am disappointed that stores did not have sufficient security staff on duty. This created situations where we had to deal with crushing, disorder and disputes between customers. It does not help that this was in the early hours when police resources are already stretched. 10.05 Several Tesco stores have been forced to close due to overcrowding. A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police described the scene at Tesco Extra in Stretford: "A woman suffered minor injuries after being hit by a falling television and an ambulance was called. The store was closed at 12.36am, just over half an hour after the sales event started. Shaun Thompson, a 21-year-old who went to the Tesco Stretford store to buy Dre Beats headphones, told the Manchester Evening News: "It was getting more heated by the minute and the next thing, at about ten to midnight, voices got raised. The shouting went through the roof, then all hell broke loose. They were ripping the plastic off the palettes and people started fighting. One girl, who can't have been more than 16, picked up some advent calendars and flung them across the shop. I saw a member of staff leaving with a black eye. It was something I would never like to experience again. In case you're having trouble imagining the mayhem, this video shows Tesco customers rushing to snatch products off shelves as soon as the sales started. The rope is cut at about the 50-second mark: 09.55 Twitter user @uk_daytrader sent us this video that was filmed last night in a Tesco in Blackpool. There are probably some humans in there, drowning in the sea of televisions. Netto, the Danish discount supermarket, told us that it sold out of its Samsung 24-inch televisions, selling for £100 down from £191.79, within the first hour. Apparently, a lady who turned up to buy a bag of carrots left with a TV, two sets of Sony speakers, some headphones and a Galaxy Note (no mention of whether she remember the carrots, though). 09.20 One of the Tesco stores that had to call the police overnight is in Edmonton, which Twitter users are pointing out is opposite the Ikea where a man was stabbed on the store's opening night in 2005. Ikea had to close after just 40 minutes, when 20 shoppers needed hospital treatment and a woman was mugged in the queue. In other news, the wait time on the Currys website is more than an hour, and we can now add Game.co.uk to the growing list of crashed websites (which also includes Argos and Tesco Direct) that can't keep up with demand. 08.50 I'm trying to follow Black Friday updates on Twitter, but this is what my feed looks like: 08.40 This just in from John Lewis: online traffic between midnight at 6am was 307% higher than Black Friday last year -- which was itself four times higher than John Lewis' website had ever seen before. But it is true that many retailers only make a profit thanks to their Christmas trading period.