OT: Tes**'s, relentless onslaught ..?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its got to the stage where its cheaper to NOT use Tesco for 'fresh' food.

As transport costs spiral ever upwards, the viability of 'locally priduced' producrs sold direct, increases.

I suspect that 2005/6 will be the peak of Tescos and the big supermarket.

Right. Thats why we shop elsewhere.

[The Natural Philosopher]

...that all taste of recycled toilet paper...

Look, there are half a dozen animals worth eating

Cow Pig Sheep Goat Deer

and similat for bird things Partridge Grouse Pheasant Duck Goose Turkey Chicken Guinea fowl

etc. How much choice do you NEED A decent sheep is a decent sheep...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Factory farmed humans.

Pump em full of Afghani suprluus popy juice, sit them in front of big brother, and let the rest of us get on with actually LIVING...

[Mary Fisher]

I feel sick.

"Ebony is a dark colored, dolomitic marble with calcerous banding. The dolomitic composition gives the rock a greater hardness. "

WHAT???

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

That didn't occur to me. And even if we had been such a target it wouldn't ave bothered me :-)

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Ninety three?

DIFFERENT??

B_R_E-A-D_S ???

Have you ever wondered about the producers of those products - including the animals?

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Well, you know what I'll say. But I'll say it anyway.

We only eat tomatoes in season - that is the season when they're ripe in our own garden. And in different varieties. It will start in a week or so and go on until Christmas - yes really. We always have home grown tomatoes with our Christmas Eve (home made) pork pie. Then we don't have any more until the following July or August.

Why does anyone need tomatoes all year round? Or peas? Or anything which has a season?

We have such a huge variety of seasonal vegetables in this country that we don't need tasteless sameness from January to December.

Mary

[Owain]

Ninety-three isn't many really.

My local Tesco has 76 breads freshly baked in-store throughout the day.

1. Crusty White Bloomer 400g £0.48
2. Crusty White Bloomer 800g £0.72
3. Crusty White Poppy Seed Bloomer 800g £0.72
4. Crusty White Sesame Seed Bloomer 800g £0.72
5. Crusty White Short Split Tin 800g £0.63
6. Crusty White Sliced Bloomer 400g £0.48
7. Crusty White Sliced Bloomer 800g £0.72
8. Crusty White Sliced Split Tin 800g £0.53
9. Crusty White Split Tin 400g £0.48
10. Crusty White Split Tin 800g £0.53
11. Crusty White Split Tin Sliced 400g £0.48
12. Tiger Loaf 800g £0.68
13. Tiger Loaf Sliced 800g £0.68
14. White Sandwich 800g £0.73
15. White Sliced Sandwich Bread 800g £0.73
16. Finest Cheese Bread £1.29
17. Finest Olive Bread £1.29
18. Finest Pain De Campagne 400g £0.99
19. Finest Pain De Campagne Knot 2pk £0.49
20. Finest Rye Bread 400g £0.99
21. Finest Seven Seed Bread 400g £0.99
22. Large Plain Ciabatta £0.95
23. Mediterranean Bread 400g £0.99
24. Single Ciabatta Roll £0.19
25. Single Herb Ciabatta £0.95
26. Tear 'n' Share Cheese Bread £1.49
27. Tear 'n' Share Garlic & Herb Bread £1.49
28. Tomato & Herb Tear & Share Bread £1.49
29. Traditional Irish Wheaten 400g £0.79
30. 4 Hovis Granary Round Crsty Rlls £0.49
31. Hovis Granary Brown Baton £0.24
32. Hovis Granary Brown Sliced Tin 400g £0.46
33. Hovis Granary Brown Sliced Tin 800g £0.72
34. Hovis Granary Brown Tin 400g £0.46
35. Hovis Granary Brown Tin 800g £0.72
36. Single Hovis Granary Brown Rolls £0.19
37. Bakers Dozen Rolls £0.99
38. Cheese Topped Baton £0.29
39. Continental Morning Rolls Pack Of 4 £0.48
40. Crusty Tiger Rolls 6 Pack £0.55
41. Plain Baton £0.25
42. Round Crusty Rolls 6 Pack £0.42
43. Sandwich Baguette £0.25
44. Sandwich Baguette 4pk £0.78
45. Single Crusty Tiger Roll £0.19
46. Single French Country Roll £0.16
47. Single White Continental Morning Rolls £0.15
48. Single White Crusty Round Rolls £0.15
49. Tesco Chunky Cheese Roll £0.19
50. Tesco French Bread Grand Rustique £0.69
51. Rustic Wholemeal Tin 800g £0.62
52. Single Wholemeal Continental Roll £0.19
53. Wholemeal Bread Tin 400g £0.45
54. Wholemeal Bread Tin 800g £0.62
55. Wholemeal Cob 400g £0.45
56. Wholemeal Continental Bread Rolls 4 Pack £0.59
57. Wholemeal Sliced Bread 400g £0.45
58. Wholemeal Sliced Bread 800g £0.62
59. Finest Bloomer 800g £0.85
60. Finest Crusty Cob 400g £0.65
61. Finest Crusty White Farmhouse 400g £0.65
62. Finest Crusty White Farmhouse 800g £0.85
63. Finest Crusty White Sliced Farmhouse 400g £0.65
64. Finest Crusty White Sliced Farmhouse 800g £0.85
65. Finest French Cob £0.65
66. Finest Sliced Bloomer 800g £0.85
67. Finest French Bread Parisienne 400g £0.69
68. Finest French Bread Petits Pains 4pk £0.69
69. Finest French Pain Rustique 2pk £0.69
70. Finest Rustic Multigrain 400g £0.65
71. Finest Rustic Multigrain 800g £0.89
72. Finest Rustic Multigrain Sliced 400g £0.65
73. Finest Rustic Multigrain Sliced 800g £0.89
74. Finest Rustic Wholemeal 800g £0.69
75. Finest Rustic Wholemeal Baton £0.49
76. Finest Rustic Wholemeal Sliced 800g £0.69

In the other Bread sections, Sliced Loaves includes: brown bread with bits, dietary bread, impulse free from, longlife bread, premium brown bread, premium white bread, standard brown bread, standard white bread, super premium brown bread, super premium white bread, value white bread, warburtons.

That's not counting Bagels, Pitta, Croissants, Rolls, In-Store Bakery Savouries, Organic, Seasonal, Gluten Free ....

The last time I had to buy bread from a baker regularly because there wasn't a local supermarket, most of it was inedible because the bottoms were soggy from rancid oil. And they had very little choice, and none at all after 11 a.m.

Oh, the joys of the small independent local trader. Evolve or survive. I think people have forgotten how tedious shopping used to be.

Owain

[T i m]

Much though I don't (didn't) like Tiny (or Time fot that matter) I think some of their problem was they grew too big too soon? Once CS can't keep up it all snowballs?

If you take a 'std' Tiny / Time machine apart you will find the same components as you would in pretty well any other 'std' clone machine?

Ignoring the (non std) PSU on some of the more compact Tiny machines they are probably easier to sort than a Compaq or Dell (once you have un-glued all the cables and put a std BIOS back on the systemboard that is) ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

[T i m]

That was tongue in cheek Mary .. I am now growing my own runners and toms ;-)

Well exactly ..

Well you can freeze peaze or home grown runners can't you? (ok, not a good as fresh but at least you know where they came from) ?

As you know I'm no food 'fan' anyway so wouldn't miss most of it!

All the best ..

T i m

[T i m]

I saw something on the telly recently fish production in Iceland (or somewhere) and they showed various 'cuts' of fish dopping into Tesco, Sainsbury, M&S boxes ....

One may mark the cut 'Finest' and charge £3 and another 'Best' and charges £2 .. ?

All the best ..

T i m

[Mary Fisher]

Um. How many of those are different?

Would you be able to do a blindfold taste test?

And what does the word 'Finest' mean?

I don't understand your point.

Their products must have beenpopular ...

You mean it isn't now?

I hate shopping. We do as little as possible.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

And anyway what could be cheaper than a packet of seeds which will last for years and produce all the free tomatoes and beans you could want?

Hurrah!

We've been eating runners almost every evening for the last week - yummee - my favourite fruit :-) tonight we had them with blue potatoes, a fine roast Welsh Black beef joint and chard. Drool ...

Yes, we tried that. But apart from not being as good, sadly, as fresh ones we hardly used them because there's always so much else seasonal vegetable stuff. That sounds clumsy but I can't be bothered going back to it! Now we just gorge on gluts :-)

That's sad, but it takes all sorts :-)

Mary

[T i m]

Well I'm not sure about that but isn't there a 'happy medium'?

My mate used to mainly sell Raleigh bikes and Raliegh suggested the price. This price reflected that everone made a profit and the customer got a good well made product with full after sales service.

Cheap (and often nasty) stuff started coming in from the far east but 'serious' buyers still bought their Raliegh's. As quality of the imports improved the 'value' of the Raliegh had to reflect that and now I believe are made alongside all the other offerings from the Far East.

I believe the general 'quality' and attention to detail of the current offerings isn't as good as the general bikes of yesteryear but if it only cost £49 in Tesco's who (these days) cares? I mean, what kid would want to ride a 2 year old cycle anyway (assuming it's not just rusting away on it's side in the back garden within 6 months anyway)?

And if you want to test this concept have a look in the 'Metals' skip at yer local tip .. (when I looked last time there were probably 10 bikes in there you could probably ride off on 'as was' ..?)

Would 'we' care for these things better if they had a higher value (or if the cost reflected a real living wage for all who were part of it's construction)?

All the best ..

T i m

[Rod]

T i m wrote in news:s1kee15t7eth5pp9br13b364c733cqerqe@

4ax.com:

I suppose we could all go and live in Gerrards Cross?

[Owain]

Part of the problem is they sold packages with printer/ scanner/ webcam/ virtualrealityheadset/ vibratingsextoy/ 500softwarepackagespreinstalled so there's a lot more to go wrong, and another part is they appealed to the first-time clueless buyer getting a PC for the kids to download pr0n^W^Wdo their homework, so the support workload would be a lot higher.

At one time they were among the first using "shared memory" for graphics (to save buying graphics memory) and other money-saving ideas, which have their merits but weren't implemented well to start off with.

A friend and I both bought PCs about the same time in late 1995 / early

1996. He got a Time and it was back and forth under warranty for most of the first year; when he finally gave up he got a Tiny as they were better ... He was on his third PC by the time I replaced my Gateway 2000, which was used constantly for 6 years and intermittently for a further two, and the monitor lasted 9 years.

Owain

[Rod]

"Mary Fisher" wrote in news:42e7f99b$0$12562$ [e-mail]:

Agreed.

And you confidently say that they are "freshly baked in-store throughout the day". Sorry, but some marketing person came up with that phraseology. No ordinary person would say it. And it is patently untrue in many of the supermarkets that I go to. They may have baking going on through much of the day but much of what is on the shelves is many hours (or even days) out of the oven.

And if the supermarkets' bread is so varied and wonderful, how come the breadmaker 'revolution'? Oh yes - that gets us back to DIY...

[Andy Hall]

Hopefully to shut it down.

It seems a bit of a stretch for a group like John Lewis (more at the quality end of the market) to want to go for Morrisons who are almost at the other end of the market apart from the minor players like Aldi/Lidl

Morrisons failures are entirely their own fault because they have assumed that one size fits all and have not understood the regional market differences.

[Mary Fisher]

Aldi/Lidl aren't minority players on a European scale.

I don't know much about Morrisons but what I do know doesn't suggest that they're failing. As for regional market differences - I didn't know that any of the big supermarkets had those.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Yes. It's awful.

I'd like to think so but since the culture of Cheap and Now has become universal I doubt that it could ever happen.

Unless we had a long war ... :-)

Mary