B&Q (OT rant)

[John]

Saw a battery operated hand held fan with rows of LEDs at the check-out today. I wondered who thought that a Chinese factory should bother making such a daft thing and then ship it half way around the world so that we end up putting it in our land-fill sites.

We have people getting up-tight about carbon footprints and renewable sources - yet we appear to be encouraging ridiculous production that uses up resources without adding to the value of life of the person buying it. We should be putting resources (including transportation) into useful things - not tat.

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John

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[TheScullster]

"John" wrote

If any of said people were serious about the issue, we wouldn't have Tescos etc using strong arm methods to put local shops out of business. Local shops provide excellent service for single/retire people and families doing in-between shops. Taking travelling cost into account, they are not that much more expensive (if used with caution).

Tescos would have us believe that a local shop is defined as one that is reachable by women in 4x4s in under half an hour!

Similarly OT rant over

Phil

[Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot]

People do not *have* to shop in Tesco.

Si

[John]

...and once the local shops have disappeared Tesco will start increasing their prices. This is certainly what happened with DIY shops when B&Q, Focus and others muscled the local shop out of business. (although I still have an excellent one near me)

[Tony Bryer]

Local people put local shops out of business when they stop using them.

On the sorts of things I buy the local shop is 20-30% more expensive than Tesco.

[John Rumm]

And for those that want to, they will deliver. One van, 20 customers is way better than one car per customer.

[Owain]

No they don't.

They take far too long to get round for single people and don't open long enough hours (usually).

For oldies, Tesco means they can get everything they need under one roof without having to go out in the cold and wet, they can have a snack in the cafe and there are nice clean loos and a freephone for the taxi home. Or there's online ordering and home delivery - I think about half the people in my computing class do that. They're over 80 and a bit bewildered, but getting there slowly and very enthusiastic.

Owain

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Strangely it wasn't the large supermarkets that killed off my local grocer type shops but the Tesco Metro. It's no larger than some of the previous competition, but provides exactly what I, as a single person, want. Ignoring price too. Previously, the local shops seemed only to sell what they wanted to sell rather than what I actually wanted to buy.

What do I want from this sort of shop? A selection of decent fresh produce. Possibly ready made main courses of good quality if I'm in a hurry. And the fact they have a car park is a big plus.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Out of the several that used to be round here, few provided a pleasant shopping experience - mainly through surly staff on the till. The local small Tesco types seem to manage a smile. I'd have thought that more difficult for an employee than owner.

My main complaint was of poor selection and quality. In the 'convenience' stores. Sure if you had the time to traipse round several specialist shops

- baker, greengrocer, butcher, etc you could get decent quality. But generally I can't be bothered.

[John Rumm]

Is this a class you attend yourself or teach?

[Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot]

Zactly. Our 24 hour Tescos are like Dawn of the Dead at 6am. The coffin dodgers love 'em!

Si

[Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot]

Supermarkets just do things right. Owners of all small shops had the opportunity to do that too, but only a few of them did. Jack Cohen, for one, who started with a market stall.

Si

[Owain]

Sauce! I'm much more bewildered than they are.

It's a class I voluntarily "buddy". I got one of them inserting clipart into headers and footers in Word today.

Owain

[Owain]

Mobility scooter racing in the frozen foods aisle?

Owain

[nightjar]

Unless, like me, going to Tesco adds about 200 yards to a journey I make every day anyway.

Colin Bignell

[nightjar]

If it didn't sell, they wouldn't import them and shipping a container halfway around the world takes less fuel than driving it from one end of the country to the other.

The people who buy them must disagree with that, or they wouldn't buy them.

Colin Bignell

[The Medway Handyman]

At last the voice of reason! Why are Tesco et al so successful? They give the punters what they want.

We had a 'corner shop'. Closed on Wednesday arvo, hugely expensive, very basic stock - mostly past its sell by date, surly staff, smelled like a Turkish Brothel (alledgedly). It closed a few years ago.

Since January we have a Tesco Metro 300 yards away - open 6am till midnight, fresh produce, good selection, ample parking, cheap petrol, wide variety, nice staff, good prices.

Simple innit?

[John Rumm]

Thought that might be the case, but the way you worded it... ;-)

I spent 45mins one trying to get an en-dash into header in word 97 once... it crashed every time!

[Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot]

Yus. I fail to see why, when people demonstrate against a new supermarket, they don't just ignore it and continue to use their existing shops. The reason appears to be that *most* people *do* want a supermarket local to them, but perhaps are currently forced to use s**te local shops where they wait an hour to be served whilst knitting patterns are discussed at length by the mad tivvies behind the counter.

If a community was entirely happy with their shopping arrangements prior to said supermarket opening surely it would be forced to close soon enough?

Even Dave "I fookin' 'ate Tesco, me!" Fawthrop uses Tesco when he "has to"!

Si

[Tony Bryer]

I use Lotus WordPro for virtually all my wordprocessing but switched one of our software manuals over to Word 2003 as I felt that I ought to acquire some competence at using it, and using it on a real document was the way to do this. I really cannot believe how poor it is in many respects compared with WordPro; this is not just unfamiliarity. Little gems like this

"When you delete a section break, or move an entire section to another part of the document, you get what seem to be very strange results. For instance, deleting a Continuous section break causes the preceding Next Page section break to convert to a Continuous one, or deleting a section break causes an important Header to disappear from the document, or causes the entire document to become landscape..

I agree it's confusing, but it's ?by design?."

I write computer software; I do my best to make it usable. But when an MVP (Microsoft guru) is reduced to saying "I agree it's confusing" I just shake my head in disbelief. No doubt BillG will tell me that the answer is to buy Office 2007 - cheap for home users, rip-off price for businesses who want to be legal.