Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Your sneer about the Clyde doesn't suggest you are being serious. They need to be in the Thames where most of the immigration is heading, and where historically most of the hulks were for the same basic purpose.
But in seriousness: there are major issues with using such old ships, not least sanitation. Dicscharging raw sewage will get you nowhere with planning authorities and environmental laws. Also, such ships are not designed for surveillance and security. And they are very poor value for money in terms of prisoner per pound. Better to have a properly designed and run internment camp on land. With all the nasty things you go on about. [Edit: but that seems to be beyond the skills of HMG (London) these days. Perhaps through deliberate intent? They can't be that incompetent.)
It's revealing that no government has ever adopted the prison ship solution for long, other than the special case of the C18-C19 where the prisoners naturally turned up at naval bases or were needed to work on things like piers and docks. Maidstone in NI was an emergency, soon replaced by land camps.
"no contact with family" - try getting that past any sane court.
If HMG farmed out the running of the hulks to English water companies, discharging raw sewage problem instantly solved and another income stream to discharge into the directors’ bonus funds. Trebles all round!
Cannot underestimate the significance of three Asian-origin political figures as PM of the UK, Mayor of London, and FM of Scotland.
Risen up within three separate political parties.
This can only happen in a tolerant, pro-equality, anti-discrimination democracy like ours…..
Compared to the state of affairs in other Western European countries, it is a luxury - as a non-white, non-Christian academic & writer - to even be in the position to criticise a Hindu PM of Indian origin and the Mayor of London & FM of Scotland (both of Pakistani heritage).
This is true, it is quite remarkable and reflects well on us as a country and more specifically on our political parties. Only Khan has won a popular election though.
Indeed an achievement but only Khan has won an election amongst the voters he governs ie Londoners. Sunak has yet to win a UK general election and Yousaf has yet to win a Scottish election
And there must be a serious doubt that Yousaf will win..The days of the One Party State in Scotland are over.
They never existed! Designed that way. Else we'd not have the Greens wagging the dog.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
Isnt there a simple answer that involves sharing the profits of housebuilding quite differently?
What if half the profits went to the local council, who could either cut council tax or provide better services?
Cannot underestimate the significance of three Asian-origin political figures as PM of the UK, Mayor of London, and FM of Scotland.
Risen up within three separate political parties.
This can only happen in a tolerant, pro-equality, anti-discrimination democracy like ours…..
Compared to the state of affairs in other Western European countries, it is a luxury - as a non-white, non-Christian academic & writer - to even be in the position to criticise a Hindu PM of Indian origin and the Mayor of London & FM of Scotland (both of Pakistani heritage).
This is true, it is quite remarkable and reflects well on us as a country and more specifically on our political parties. Only Khan has won a popular election though.
Indeed an achievement but only Khan has won an election amongst the voters he governs ie Londoners. Sunak has yet to win a UK general election and Yousaf has yet to win a Scottish election
And there must be a serious doubt that Yousaf will win..The days of the One Party State in Scotland are over.
They never existed! Designed that way. Else we'd not have the Greens wagging the dog.
It’s a lovely tradition that Rooty’s vicarious and barely informed dislike of a leader in another country has transferred smoothly to her successor.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
Isnt there a simple answer that involves sharing the profits of housebuilding quite differently?
What if half the profits went to the local council, who could either cut council tax or provide better services?
Yes, local authorities need to be incentivised to allow housebuilding. The way I’d do it, is to increase council tax, perhaps double it, and reduce income tax and the central government grant to councils.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
Isnt there a simple answer that involves sharing the profits of housebuilding quite differently?
What if half the profits went to the local council, who could either cut council tax or provide better services?
Yes, local authorities need to be incentivised to allow housebuilding. The way I’d do it, is to increase council tax, perhaps double it, and reduce income tax and the central government grant to councils.
I can assure you that local authorities need no incentive to allow housebuilding. There is the presumption that any housing application will receive approval despite objections and often ignoring Neighbourhood Plans.
If you ask to build you will almost overwhelmingly likely be given permission.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
The locals want more houses to be built. It's generally the incomers who are blocking them.
The geography argument is largely nonsense - there are very few villages that don't have room to expand by 1% a year. This is what used to happen, back when planning was just a dream.
Pretty simple to demand that properties be built in the local vernacular - local planning can do that.
The population is expanding at 1% per year. 1% of the housing stock is 2,400 homes. Double that to deal with the back log. 5,000 a year.
These numbers seem to have no basis in reality.
Wales alone built 5,273 houses in 2021-2022.
Its population is *not* expanding at the rate England's is. And Wales has a worsening housing problem.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
Isnt there a simple answer that involves sharing the profits of housebuilding quite differently?
What if half the profits went to the local council, who could either cut council tax or provide better services?
Yes, local authorities need to be incentivised to allow housebuilding. The way I’d do it, is to increase council tax, perhaps double it, and reduce income tax and the central government grant to councils.
If they had that source of revenue, it might even get them to ease up on things like controlled parking zones that no-one needs or wants.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
Or, even more radical idea, don't get Barratt to build the houses. Get people to build their own houses. That way at least one person can presumably bear to look at it. That's what most European countries do, e.g. France and Germany, where 60% is self-build, compared with 10% in the UK (half of which is in NI) or 80% in Austria.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
The Co-op Group is a financial basket case. Sadly. OK so it will survive the year which more than we can say for Morrisons, but it still has mega problems which go all the way back to the United Co-op / Co-op Group merger in 2007, or even the CRS / CWS merger to create the Co-op Group in 1999.
Too big, too unwieldly, too many different sizes and shapes and formats of stores. Their operating costs are astronomical vs the likes of a Sainsburys - which in turn is astronomical compares to the likes of Lidl.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
I'd argue that violence to children is worse than class snobbery!
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Having piqued my curiosity, it’s £1.20 for 550ml which sounds perfectly reasonable. Heinz’s version is unavailable which suggests that it may actually be made from tomatoes.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
There aren't enough houses for the people living in Cornwall.
If you advocate an increasing population (which you do), you need somewhere for people to live.
So I come back to the basic question - where do you build these houses? Because when you ask, people say no. If you impose, you change the nature of the place. Some villages can't have new houses built because the geography doesn't allow it. So it has to be in others, and that of course is where the objections come in.
The other factor is what kind of homes are being built? Some flats could be built which are sympathetic to the surrounding and give younger singles somewhere to live. But very little chance of getting local crusties who run councils and have more votes to agree to that.
The locals want more houses to be built. It's generally the incomers who are blocking them.
The geography argument is largely nonsense - there are very few villages that don't have room to expand by 1% a year. This is what used to happen, back when planning was just a dream.
Pretty simple to demand that properties be built in the local vernacular - local planning can do that.
The population is expanding at 1% per year. 1% of the housing stock is 2,400 homes. Double that to deal with the back log. 5,000 a year.
These numbers seem to have no basis in reality.
Wales alone built 5,273 houses in 2021-2022.
Its population is *not* expanding at the rate England's is. And Wales has a worsening housing problem.
We were talking about Cornwall.
Wales has a population of 3.1 million or so. And is expanding at 1.4% per decade. Which is 5K people a year. So 5K properties a year is sensible.
The problem is that the larger numbers of houses being built is a newer phenomenon. There is a big gap to make up.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Yep, nobody more snobby than kids. At least in my day it was mostly limited to the coolness of the album that you’d bought in Bruce Miller’s or more likely second hand in Happy Trails the weekend before, and to be displayed ostentatiously in a transparent plastic bag. Simpler times..
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
I'd argue that violence to children is worse than class snobbery!
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
It is nearly all small local style stores so can't be cheap compared to the massive hypermarkets of the main brands. Seems like a similar price to Sainsburys Local or Tesco Express in London, quality wise Sainsbury > Co-op > Tesco > Independents.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
Rather like that the local Co-op is in walking distance. Was extremely helpful during the early part of the Chinese Plague.
Yes, and they did better than the likes of Tesco for stock control.
Our local butcher did a roaring trade during the plague. There were queues outside it pretty much every day for 6 months. It must have been like a whole year of Christmas Eves for them. Subsided now, but I think a lot of people picked up a habit of shopping local.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
I'd add housing supply to the long list of things that the government has been far too slow to make significant progress on. I've been thinking about why the Tories are faring badly, and I've come to the tentative conclusion that, despite many fine words, so little gets done, and it's all so slow.
To illustrate, here's a list for starters of things that need doing, or the government has said it will do, but where not enough progress has been made over the last 10 years:
Housing supply. HS2. Removing cladding following Grenfell. Delays in the criminal justice system. Adult social care. NHS staffing, and therefore waiting lists and GP access. Leaseholds. Provision for SEN in schools. Small boats. Cleaning up seas and rivers. Sorting out the police, the Met in particular. More generally, the untidy public domain - potholes, rubbish and so on.
I'm sure there's more, but my point is that the progress made on all the above has been, to mimic Ofsted-speak, either inadequate or requires improvement. If I were a Tory, I'd be very worried about the lack of tangible achievements. (And yes, I know it all costs a lot of money, and yes, who knows whether an alternative government would be better).
I'd add housing supply to the long list of things that the government has been far too slow to make significant progress on. I've been thinking about why the Tories are faring badly, and I've come to the tentative conclusion that, despite many fine words, so little gets done, and it's all so slow.
To illustrate, here's a list for starters of things that need doing, or the government has said it will do, but where not enough progress has been made over the last 10 years:
Housing supply. HS2. Removing cladding following Grenfell. Delays in the criminal justice system. Adult social care. NHS staffing, and therefore waiting lists and GP access. Leaseholds. Provision for SEN in schools. Small boats. Cleaning up seas and rivers. Sorting out the police, the Met in particular. More generally, the untidy public domain - potholes, rubbish and so on.
I'm sure there's more, but my point is that the progress made on all the above has been, to mimic Ofsted-speak, either inadequate or requires improvement. If I were a Tory, I'd be very worried about the lack of tangible achievements. (And yes, I know it all costs a lot of money, and yes, who knows whether an alternative government would be better).
It does cost a lot of money but what is never considered is the cost of not doing these things, which imo is greater in the long run.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes; and this sets a puzzle. Why is it that the socially owned, working class supporting, non profiteering, community minded Co-op charges the poor much much more for the same (or sometimes worse) thing as Lidl or Aldi?
I know which one I think is the friend of the working class single parent.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
On the flip side, when Co-op brand products are available to Nisa members they offer real choice and value vs what they offer otherwise. Wholesaling their own brand products is something several of the supermarkets have tried, with mixed results.
The weirdest of these is Morrisons, who resurrected the Safeway brand for McColls. What most people don't realise is that much of the Morrisons own brand proposition is made in factories owned by Morrisons - they have vertical ownership.
So they decided to get into wholesale. But their existing supply chain for their own make products didn't work. So instead of selling Morrisons brand products and driving economies of scale, they contract in other manufacturers to make Safeway branded products. Which is part of the reason why Morrisons will die in its current form this year...
I'd add housing supply to the long list of things that the government has been far too slow to make significant progress on. I've been thinking about why the Tories are faring badly, and I've come to the tentative conclusion that, despite many fine words, so little gets done, and it's all so slow.
To illustrate, here's a list for starters of things that need doing, or the government has said it will do, but where not enough progress has been made over the last 10 years:
Housing supply. HS2. Removing cladding following Grenfell. Delays in the criminal justice system. Adult social care. NHS staffing, and therefore waiting lists and GP access. Leaseholds. Provision for SEN in schools. Small boats. Cleaning up seas and rivers. Sorting out the police, the Met in particular. More generally, the untidy public domain - potholes, rubbish and so on.
I'm sure there's more, but my point is that the progress made on all the above has been, to mimic Ofsted-speak, either inadequate or requires improvement. If I were a Tory, I'd be very worried about the lack of tangible achievements. (And yes, I know it all costs a lot of money, and yes, who knows whether an alternative government would be better).
It does cost a lot of money but what is never considered is the cost of not doing these things, which imo is greater in the long run.
Right, but "the long run" is after the next election, and therefore invisible to politicians behind an SEP field.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes; and this sets a puzzle. Why is it that the socially owned, working class supporting, non profiteering, community minded Co-op charges the poor much much more for the same (or sometimes worse) thing as Lidl or Aldi?
I know which one I think is the friend of the working class single parent.
Scale? Not sweating the suppliers - see the Tesco Lubyanka? Paying for higher quality in products? Spending more on non-profitable, community support stuff? Not being actually that community minded and realising that (a) quite a few people shop there because they *think* CoPo is cuddly and (b) not realise it is cheaper elsewhere?
I think it would be fairer to characterise it as not enough yet.
I'm also not sure about his dismissal of improvement amongst voters who happened to vote Remain in 2016. There's quite a lot of those in the Blue Wall, after all...
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
It always makes me sad to see a pensioner in the Co-op doing a full weekly shop, when they could pay for a taxi to Asda, do the shop, and pay for a taxi back and still come out ahead. Co-op prices are nuts.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Let me guess, you also prefer the separate hot and cold taps in sinks that are completely useless compared to a tap where you can actually choose temperatues between scalding and near frozen.....
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Let me guess, you also prefer the separate hot and cold taps in sinks that are completely useless compared to a tap where you can actually choose temperatues between scalding and near frozen.....
Think of the employment you can create in having a water temperature adjuster, full time!
I think it would be fairer to characterise it as not enough yet.
I'm also not sure about his dismissal of improvement amongst voters who happened to vote Remain in 2016. There's quite a lot of those in the Blue Wall, after all...
Yes, but as he points out towards the end, the improvement in Sunak's approval (compared with his two predecessors) amongst those Remain voters doesn't seem to be reflected in an increased willingness to vote Conservative. Of course, you might be right in adding 'yet' to that statement.
I'm not so sure though. As one of those who in the natural order of things should be voting Conservative, I certainly vastly prefer Sunak to his two catastrophically bad predecessors, but I'm not going to vote for the party until it has purged itself of its ideological insanity, and got rid of people like Suella Braverman from any senior roles. I just don't see how things can be improved in this country until we have a government willing to and capable of repairing as much as possible of the Brexit damage. Whilst I believe that both Sunak and Hunt would like to improve things, the party won't let them make much progress.
On the other side, I can also see that Leavers will remain disgruntled. The sunny uplands they were promised aren't on the horizon. Either they will be thinking they were conned by the Tories, or they'll be rationalising the disappointment by telling themselves that Brexit is not being done properly. Either way, it's hardly surprising that they aren't showing much enthusiasm to vote Conservative.
So I expect there to be only a limited swingback to the Conservatives.
Cannot underestimate the significance of three Asian-origin political figures as PM of the UK, Mayor of London, and FM of Scotland.
Risen up within three separate political parties.
This can only happen in a tolerant, pro-equality, anti-discrimination democracy like ours…..
Compared to the state of affairs in other Western European countries, it is a luxury - as a non-white, non-Christian academic & writer - to even be in the position to criticise a Hindu PM of Indian origin and the Mayor of London & FM of Scotland (both of Pakistani heritage).
This is true, it is quite remarkable and reflects well on us as a country and more specifically on our political parties. Only Khan has won a popular election though.
Indeed an achievement but only Khan has won an election amongst the voters he governs ie Londoners. Sunak has yet to win a UK general election and Yousaf has yet to win a Scottish election
And there must be a serious doubt that Yousaf will win..The days of the One Party State in Scotland are over.
They never existed! Designed that way. Else we'd not have the Greens wagging the dog.
It’s a lovely tradition that Rooty’s vicarious and barely informed dislike of a leader in another country has transferred smoothly to her successor.
Not just me. I know nothing about him but the fact he has already been names Youseless by others on here tells you what you need to know. I didn't like Sturgeon but I didn't have the same antipathy to Salmond as I do to Sturgeon.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
They want to come here and work. We need people to come here and work. But as we dislike these foreign types we want to slam the door shut so that we can decline faster.
He finds people who want to come here for a better life "contemptible".
I suppose it really is very pleasant in Devon/Cornwall who on earth would want that charming vista obscured by cyclists on their way to work.
Thanks to Simon Cowell we now have a generation who don't want to work jobs that involve graft - they want fame / fortune on a plate. So its proving very difficult to encourage young and single (mobile) people to move to places where we have labour shortages in hospitality, in agriculture, in manufacturing.
People simply don't want to uproot themselves to do these jobs. So we need to bring people in who do, or see a contraction in hospitality and agriculture and manufacturing. People may not want Cornwall to be sullied by the other, but they will also be upset if there are fewer restaurants, cafes, hotels for them to enjoy.
The majority of those jobs are actually being done by locals, as they always have.
The mythology that all the menial jobs are done by foreigners is nearly never true.
Who said all? Basic question - are there enough locals to fill all the roles? We both know that the answer to that question is no. So people need to migrate in whether internally within the CTA or externally. Or simply cut provision of these things to the level that locals can provide.
Part of the problem faced by nice areas like Cornwall is the influx of the rich tourist. They buy up houses they don't live in, shoving up prices and reducing availability. Which makes it increasingly difficult for said locals to live there, especially doing lower paid jobs.
An increase in immigration needs to be accompanied by an increase in housebuilding, which has failed to keep up with population changes for a couple of decades.
Sure! The problem of course is where do you build the houses? So many of these twee villages would no longer be twee if they slapped a Barrett estate on the edge of it. So you solve the housing issue but damage the thing which pulls people in.
Or - radical idea - restrict who can own property there. Slap a CPO on any property which isn't occupied on a permanent basis. Use it or lose it. That way you don't need to destroy these places through over-development, you just remove the rich parasites which have made housing unaffordable and impossible for locals.
Or, even more radical idea, don't get Barratt to build the houses. Get people to build their own houses. That way at least one person can presumably bear to look at it. That's what most European countries do, e.g. France and Germany, where 60% is self-build, compared with 10% in the UK (half of which is in NI) or 80% in Austria.
IIRC, the issue with self-build in the UK is finance-related. Banks mostly won’t lend money against an unbuilt property, so they are mostly done at the very top end of the market, where the self-builders have access to other sources of finance. There needs to be a way to change that, to unlock the self-build market.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
The Catsup Bottle
First a little Then a lottle
--Ogden Nash
(Or, as told to me growing up "The problem with the Ketchup bottle / Is first none'll come; then a lot'l".)
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
Rather like that the local Co-op is in walking distance. Was extremely helpful during the early part of the Chinese Plague.
Yes, and they did better than the likes of Tesco for stock control.
Our local butcher did a roaring trade during the plague. There were queues outside it pretty much every day for 6 months. It must have been like a whole year of Christmas Eves for them. Subsided now, but I think a lot of people picked up a habit of shopping local.
During the pandemic, our local wholesale butcher opened a retail shop as so many hotels were closed. Fantastic meat, and way cheaper than the supermarket. Australian fillet steak £45 - not per kilo, for the whole damn fillet, about 2.5kg.
Inflation disconnect Diesel sub 150 (149.9) for the first time in forever at the local costco. Otoh the baby powder our lo will be one for perhaps another 6 months (lactose free) went up from £8.55 to £9.25. Started at £8 11 months ago
Final salary pensions have been uniquely horrible for UK plc
But it should not detract from the deleterious impact they have had on UK plc. Over the past two decades, companies have paid more than £500bn into such schemes. They have held back wage growth, curtailed investment, distorted decision-making, scuppered takeovers and consumed incalculable amounts of management time — all for the benefit of a relatively small cohort of mostly older employees (including me).
The FT, only a few months late to the story as usual.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
If that doesn't succeed, this method guarantees getting the ketchup out of the bottle
The Newly New, Keeping' It Real Provisionally Continuity IRA seems to have gone into business using unemployed Loyalists as enforcers in the drug business.
Surely such cross community out reach and join ventures are to be applauded.
Perhaps we could upgrade the torturers from Black & Decker to Hilti?
On the HYUFD metric of political violence gets attention, presumably the New IRA are now a serious player in NI politics?
They are feeling left out. No nice 6 figure jobs for them.
One hilarious bit that makes me wonder about the background of the writers in the film The Foreigner is exactly that - the NotGerryAdams character is living the good life, while the dissidents are not. That and the bit where NotGerryAdams starts kneecapping people.
A particularly clear example of the cynicism of web personalisation that has taken over the internet in recent years.
“For You” = “For Them”
Free speech, for those who pay.
Orwell would be proud.
The business model is changing, from a free service supported by advertisers - advertisers who have a very particular view of free speech - to a paid service where the customers are the users.
The same change is happening to a lot of new media people and companies, who can no longer rely on the likes of YouTube for revenue if their content is in any way political.
A particularly clear example of the cynicism of web personalisation that has taken over the internet in recent years.
“For You” = “For Them”
Free speech, for those who pay.
Orwell would be proud.
The business model is changing, from a free service supported by advertisers - advertisers who have a very particular view of free speech - to a paid service where the customers are the users.
The same change is happening to a lot of new media people and companies, who can no longer rely on the likes of YouTube for revenue if their content is in any way political.
Yup - you can still post for free on Twitter.
The real complaint is that the verified thing has gone from Important People, to anyone who pays.
A particularly clear example of the cynicism of web personalisation that has taken over the internet in recent years.
“For You” = “For Them”
Free speech, for those who pay.
Orwell would be proud.
The business model is changing, from a free service supported by advertisers - advertisers who have a very particular view of free speech - to a paid service where the customers are the users.
The same change is happening to a lot of new media people and companies, who can no longer rely on the likes of YouTube for revenue if their content is in any way political.
Yup - you can still post for free on Twitter.
The real complaint is that the verified thing has gone from Important People, to anyone who pays.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
I mean closer to people in general, rather than specifically closer to @Driver !
Yes, they fall into that middle ground for me too. Only slightly closer than a big supermarket, only slightly better stocked than the corner shop.
Where they get most custom from me is after 4pm on Sunday when the big shops are closed. God, curiously, is very specific about the hours big shops are allowed to trade on a Sunday, but quite happy for the co-op to be open. Perhaps He is a Methodist.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
My granny used to keep an old empty packet of Smash in the kitchen. When she made mashed potatoes it would be left on the counter for my uncle (then a disgruntled young teenager) to see. Nary a peep and the mash duly consumed without complaint.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
I mean closer to people in general, rather than specifically closer to @Driver !
Yes, they fall into that middle ground for me too. Only slightly closer than a big supermarket, only slightly better stocked than the corner shop.
Where they get most custom from me is after 4pm on Sunday when the big shops are closed. God, curiously, is very specific about the hours big shops are allowed to open but quite happy for the co-op to be open. Perhaps He is a Methodist.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Tomato ketchup in a bottle, None'll come, and then a lot'll.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
He was always a marginal case for an IR35 prosecution, as he clearly wasn’t doing a full-time job with the BBC, and was working with other broadcasters for midweek games. A genuine contractor, as opposed to a five-days-a-week morning show host who was clearly an employee.
I think it would be fairer to characterise it as not enough yet.
I'm also not sure about his dismissal of improvement amongst voters who happened to vote Remain in 2016. There's quite a lot of those in the Blue Wall, after all...
Yes, but as he points out towards the end, the improvement in Sunak's approval (compared with his two predecessors) amongst those Remain voters doesn't seem to be reflected in an increased willingness to vote Conservative. Of course, you might be right in adding 'yet' to that statement.
I'm not so sure though. As one of those who in the natural order of things should be voting Conservative, I certainly vastly prefer Sunak to his two catastrophically bad predecessors, but I'm not going to vote for the party until it has purged itself of its ideological insanity, and got rid of people like Suella Braverman from any senior roles. I just don't see how things can be improved in this country until we have a government willing to and capable of repairing as much as possible of the Brexit damage. Whilst I believe that both Sunak and Hunt would like to improve things, the party won't let them make much progress.
On the other side, I can also see that Leavers will remain disgruntled. The sunny uplands they were promised aren't on the horizon. Either they will be thinking they were conned by the Tories, or they'll be rationalising the disappointment by telling themselves that Brexit is not being done properly. Either way, it's hardly surprising that they aren't showing much enthusiasm to vote Conservative.
So I expect there to be only a limited swingback to the Conservatives.
There's a limit to how much credit a government should get for clearing up its own mess (Major '97, Brown '10, to an extent Callaghan '79). And on of the key benefits of FPTP is the ability to Throw Them Out.
It's certainly better that a departing government has the ability and inclination to start sorting things out before it goes. (I'm not sure that Sunak gets full marks on either measure, for all he's an improvement on his predecessors.) It's a stretch to get from there to "They deserve another term."
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
I mean closer to people in general, rather than specifically closer to @Driver !
Yes, they fall into that middle ground for me too. Only slightly closer than a big supermarket, only slightly better stocked than the corner shop.
Where they get most custom from me is after 4pm on Sunday when the big shops are closed. God, curiously, is very specific about the hours big shops are allowed to trade on a Sunday, but quite happy for the co-op to be open. Perhaps He is a Methodist.
Well, yes. But I'd imagine most people who have a local Coop have an appropriately as local corner shop.
As for your last point, it's not God, it was the SNP. One of the biggest failures of the government post 2019 was to not put the Sunday trading improvements through.
The really fun thing about this Rwanda strategy is that all the disused military bases the government will need for interning the boat people are going to be in Tory constituencies. This will see Tory MPs, hugely supportive of the policy, fighting tooth and nail to prevent it being rolled out on their turf.
Nah. Put them in prison hulks.
On the Clyde.
They'll soon be asking for free passage home.
Tory MPs? Not like you.
It's easy to be rather glib. But if those coming over in boats weren't facing Rwanda, but instead were facing "hulks" (moored up tired old cruise ships/ferries) - no freedom of movement within the UK, no opportunity to make money to remit home, no contact with family, in single-sex restricted accomodation - how many would still think it worth the risk? They would have housing, health and food needs met. But not much else.
Do you understand asylum at all? When people apply for asylum they get deposited in houses that nobody wants to live in. Given subsistence-level non-cash vouchers they can exchange for food and clothes. Not allowed to work. No money to travel. They literally exist, in a lengthy limbo whilst awaiting a decision. With at best hostility and at worst attacks from the locals.
There is a perception that asylum seekers live large on our dollah. In the real world it simply isn't true.
I have huge sympathy for geniuine asylum seekers. I have an equal measure of contempt for those economic migrant chancer queue-bargers who have broken the system. If we were dealing purely with asylum seekers, there'd be a whole lot more money per individual to assist them with.
Those chancers who have broken the system, who get here and then go into a black economy, "shielded" by those in their community - who often exploit them in the process.
The number of what one might term "true asylum seekers" are probably relatively static. Labour with a more "streamlined" way into the UK will see the number of applicants soar. They have form on this. Ask them about the few thousand who were going to come over from Eastern Europe - the few thousand that turned into millions.
So, either Labour is quickly going to realise it has to be as "brutally 1930s" as the Tories. Or they will get turfed out of power at the first opportunity.
So an aspirational Tory who presumably champions the "get on your bike" approach to life dislikes intensely those (from other countries) who aspire to a better life in this country.
Gotit.
You'll never 'getit' in a million years .
Just as well not everywhere in Europe holds foreigners in contempt.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Tomato ketchup in a bottle, None'll come, and then a lot'll.
As my Grandpa used to say.
Surely the real question is when did tomato sauce get renamed ketchup? Can't we change it back as one of our Brexit freedoms?
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
So you are still a glass bottle type rather than the far more efficient squeezy version.....
As my avatar implies, I'm quite into this topic. The squeezy is by far the better design on utility grounds but the glass Heinz ketchup bottle is up there with the Coke one as eye candy. You could imagine it as a Warhol. Then of course there's the sacred ritual of upturning it and slapping its arse to get the sauce out and onto your bacon roll, or whatever it is you're using it to adorn. Very satisfying when it works first time, even better when it gets stuck and nothing emerges and you end up hitting it harder and harder until your hand hurts and you're panting a bit until finally - whoosh - a great big blob suddenly comes out and goes all over the place. You don't get this with the squeezy.
Wrong on so many counts apart from the iconic design.
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
You have to shake the bottle. It's called thixotropy, as any viewer of Magnus Pyke on 70s primetime television will know.
Tomato ketchup in a bottle, None'll come, and then a lot'll.
As my Grandpa used to say.
Surely the real question is when did tomato sauce get renamed ketchup? Can't we change it back as one of our Brexit freedoms?
Eh? I have only ever known it as ketchup. Or occasionally catsup, as my other Grandpa used to call it, largely to annoy my Granny.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, the word 'ketchup' first appeared in 1682, though in those days was made with mushrooms rather than tomatoes.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10.
Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
Of course you can decant ketchup into the Heinz bottle. Try Co-op's.
I was thinking of the difficulty rather than the taste thing, but fair enough. I’d be interested in how much the Co-op sauce costs; I happened to be in one of their stores the other day for the first time for ages and found the prices eye watering, approaching Waitrose level imo. I can understand that when the store is located in eg the Hebrides which is where I’ve used them the most, but not central Glasgow.
Co-op isn't cheap anywhere and never has been (or, at least, not for at least 20 years).
Yes, they trade on being close to you rather than cheap. Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
This is true. But our Co-op is further away than the corner shop, and no cheaper on pretty much anything I might want to get in between main shops. About the only thing I go to the Co-op for is fresh bread.
I mean closer to people in general, rather than specifically closer to @Driver !
Yes, they fall into that middle ground for me too. Only slightly closer than a big supermarket, only slightly better stocked than the corner shop.
Where they get most custom from me is after 4pm on Sunday when the big shops are closed. God, curiously, is very specific about the hours big shops are allowed to trade on a Sunday, but quite happy for the co-op to be open. Perhaps He is a Methodist.
Well, yes. But I'd imagine most people who have a local Coop have an appropriately as local corner shop.
As for your last point, it's not God, it was the SNP. One of the biggest failures of the government post 2019 was to not put the Sunday trading improvements through.
I wonder why the Finance Minster didn't suggest that?
He was always a marginal case for an IR35 prosecution, as he clearly wasn’t doing a full-time job with the BBC, and was working with other broadcasters for midweek games. A genuine contractor, as opposed to a five-days-a-week morning show host who was clearly an employee.
Is it not interesting that paragraph 40 says:
40. By Clause 2 of the Contributor Guarantee, which he signed on 21 March 2013, Mr Lineker gave his “personal guarantee”: “… to provide my services to the Partnership as required under the Contract and to comply with all terms and conditions which require performance or compliance on my part. In particular I warrant that I will read and fully comply with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Guidance and the BBC’s Standards as defined in the Contract.”
So does that mean that he was like any other BBC employee and should not Tweet as he did? Asking for a friend (innocent face).
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
He was always a marginal case for an IR35 prosecution, as he clearly wasn’t doing a full-time job with the BBC, and was working with other broadcasters for midweek games. A genuine contractor, as opposed to a five-days-a-week morning show host who was clearly an employee.
Is it not interesting that paragraph 40 says:
40. By Clause 2 of the Contributor Guarantee, which he signed on 21 March 2013, Mr Lineker gave his “personal guarantee”: “… to provide my services to the Partnership as required under the Contract and to comply with all terms and conditions which require performance or compliance on my part. In particular I warrant that I will read and fully comply with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Guidance and the BBC’s Standards as defined in the Contract.”
So does that mean that he was like any other BBC employee and should not Tweet as he did? Asking for a friend (innocent face).
That contract was from 2013, and was superseded by other contracts and agreements.
Doesn't matter on what happens with the boats, this is what the voters will remember.
Food prices inflation up to new high
Food prices inflation has risen by 15 per cent in a year, causing prices in Britain’s shops to climb faster than ever before.
Average shop prices are now 8.9 per cent higher than they were at this time a year ago, the highest rate of annual inflation that the British Retail Consortium, which collects the data, has recorded. It marks an acceleration from the 8.4 per cent noted in February.
One thing I have noticed in the consumer confidence data is that there has been a decent recovery in confidence among those on >£50k but none among everyone else. I think stuff like this has a lot to do with that. Until we see confidence improving among middle income earners I would be wary of expecting a major Tory recovery, however nasty they are to kids fleeing war zones.
The mix of inflation is striking as well. Life's essentials (housing / energy / food) are going up a lot, but discretionary spending is mostly getting cheaper in real terms;
Presumably that's why the comfortably off are quite chipper.
What seems to be going up most in supermarkets are branded items.
In Asda at the moment a 910g bottle of Heinz tomato sauce is £4, whereas a 970g of Asda tomato sauce is £1.10. Therefore for what is basically the same product, Heinz s more than 4 times the cost. How do Asda manage to make tomato sauce so much cheaper than Heinz, or is there just some extreme profiteering going on with Heinz?
A lot of the own brand stuff is made in the same factories, by the same staff, as the branded stuff, albeit to a different recipe.
You'd assume that Asda are using cheaper ingredients, but they're probably also profiteering on the brand loyalty of customers able and willing to pay more for branded products.
I don't eat ketchup because it's fucking disgusting but I know my kids would go ballistic if we bought anything other than Heinz. We had a mini rebellion on our hands just substituting the low sugar and salt version. I'm mostly an own brand kind of guy but there are certain things (weetabix, ketchup and mayonnaise, marmite, nutella) where only the branded version will do.
I have a pal whose lad goes similarly ballistic when she buys supermarket brands, he calls them ‘council sauce’, ‘council ginger’ etc. She performed an experiment where she replaced the contents of an opened tube of Pringles with I think Asda’s own version, and nary a peep was heard.
Not really an option with ketchup I accept.
I hope your pal gives him a clip round the ear! If our kids called stuff 'council' I'd be furious. My son does call crap stuff BTec which is almost as bad and I do have a go at him, although you could argue that academic snobbery at least has some basis compared to class snobbery. When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Class snobbery is of course perfectly ok as long as it is directed at the toffs and poshos.
Like duh, of course it is!
As a member of that persecuted minority I think it is only fair we keep our tax breaks for private schools as compensation for the lifetime of abuse we receive from plebs and oiks.
Though if you have been to private school you are more likely to be able to respond to any abuse from class warriors educated at comprehensive or academy schools with received pronounciation
The majority of such abuse is from privately educated people who are now trying, desperately, to be as left wing as they can.
Even Corbynites educated at private school are more likely to speak with received pronounciation than Corbynites educated at comprehensives
Try a timetabled process of unilaterally granted independence (from UK and from RoI) for NI with a UN peacekeeping force, perhaps from Pakistan, Jordan, China, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria armed forces. There are no good next steps, but I suggest this as one of the least bad.
Only when they have to sort their own future can they possibly stop blaming everyone else and each other.
@BestForBritain Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
That the pro-EU side of the referendum campaign, and the EU themselves, decided to risk destabilising Northern Ireland to keep the UK in the EU, was a big mistake.
Comments
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/heinz-vs-supermarket-tomato-ketchup-our-tests-reveal-which-is-tastiest-aoaXO8n5ohiZ
What if half the profits went to the local council, who could either cut council tax or provide better services?
If you ask to build you will almost overwhelmingly likely be given permission.
Wales alone built 5,273 houses in 2021-2022.
Its population is *not* expanding at the rate England's is. And Wales has a worsening housing problem.
When I was growing up we usually had the basic/value range for most stuff, it was quite painful in the status-obsessed 1980s. I remember refusing to wear a coat that had been handed down since the mid-70s and was ridiculously out of fashion (would probably be worth hundreds now). Must have been difficult for my parents, who couldn't afford to buy us new stuff. Our kids -who luckily don't ask for much but generally get what they ask for - don't know they're born.
Too big, too unwieldly, too many different sizes and shapes and formats of stores. Their operating costs are astronomical vs the likes of a Sainsburys - which in turn is astronomical compares to the likes of Lidl.
Wales has a population of 3.1 million or so. And is expanding at 1.4% per decade. Which is 5K people a year. So 5K properties a year is sensible.
The problem is that the larger numbers of houses being built is a newer phenomenon. There is a big gap to make up.
More Borgen, less Sherlock: Europe cracks down on British TV
Streaming services may struggle to replace content from the UK, which contributes significantly to their ‘European works’ quotas.
https://www.politico.eu/article/british-tv-netflix-european-content-lupin-vs-sherlock-british-series-face-eu-setback-post-brexit/
Our local co-op has recently turned into a Nisa. Which is apparently owned by co-op. Similarly, our local One Stop sells Tesco goods as it is owned by Tesco.
Our local butcher did a roaring trade during the plague. There were queues outside it pretty much every day for 6 months. It must have been like a whole year of Christmas Eves for them. Subsided now, but I think a lot of people picked up a habit of shopping local.
To illustrate, here's a list for starters of things that need doing, or the government has said it will do, but where not enough progress has been made over the last 10 years:
Housing supply. HS2. Removing cladding following Grenfell. Delays in the criminal justice system. Adult social care. NHS staffing, and therefore waiting lists and GP access. Leaseholds. Provision for SEN in schools. Small boats. Cleaning up seas and rivers. Sorting out the police, the Met in particular. More generally, the untidy public domain - potholes, rubbish and so on.
I'm sure there's more, but my point is that the progress made on all the above has been, to mimic Ofsted-speak, either inadequate or requires improvement. If I were a Tory, I'd be very worried about the lack of tangible achievements. (And yes, I know it all costs a lot of money, and yes, who knows whether an alternative government would be better).
I know which one I think is the friend of the working class single parent.
The weirdest of these is Morrisons, who resurrected the Safeway brand for McColls. What most people don't realise is that much of the Morrisons own brand proposition is made in factories owned by Morrisons - they have vertical ownership.
So they decided to get into wholesale. But their existing supply chain for their own make products didn't work. So instead of selling Morrisons brand products and driving economies of scale, they contract in other manufacturers to make Safeway branded products. Which is part of the reason why Morrisons will die in its current form this year...
https://swingometer.substack.com/p/bounce-back-with-sunak
tl:dr: Some progress, but not enough
Not sweating the suppliers - see the Tesco Lubyanka?
Paying for higher quality in products?
Spending more on non-profitable, community support stuff?
Not being actually that community minded and realising that (a) quite a few people shop there because they *think* CoPo is cuddly and (b) not realise it is cheaper elsewhere?
I'm also not sure about his dismissal of improvement amongst voters who happened to vote Remain in 2016. There's quite a lot of those in the Blue Wall, after all...
It has Coeur De Cardeline Rosé, stonkingly good at just under a tenner buy a case now for summer. If it ever comes.
And I must tell my wife about the Coeur de Cardeline.
I'm not so sure though. As one of those who in the natural order of things should be voting Conservative, I certainly vastly prefer Sunak to his two catastrophically bad predecessors, but I'm not going to vote for the party until it has purged itself of its ideological insanity, and got rid of people like Suella Braverman from any senior roles. I just don't see how things can be improved in this country until we have a government willing to and capable of repairing as much as possible of the Brexit damage. Whilst I believe that both Sunak and Hunt would like to improve things, the party won't let them make much progress.
On the other side, I can also see that Leavers will remain disgruntled. The sunny uplands they were promised aren't on the horizon. Either they will be thinking they were conned by the Tories, or they'll be rationalising the disappointment by telling themselves that Brexit is not being done properly. Either way, it's hardly surprising that they aren't showing much enthusiasm to vote Conservative.
So I expect there to be only a limited swingback to the Conservatives.
First a little
Then a lottle
--Ogden Nash
(Or, as told to me growing up "The problem with the Ketchup bottle / Is first none'll come; then a lot'l".)
First off, you do get that nothing, nothing, it's gone everywhere including on my shirt with the squeezy bottle. You need first to stamp it down, head first, on the table otherwise even though it's been stored upside down nothing will come out and then you puff, and puff, and when it does come out it goes in all directions and for some distance.
And secondly, you don't whack the bottom of the glass bottle dear god give me strength. You put two fingers out and then pour out while tapping the bottle half way along the neck on the two fingers and this will mean a steady, controlled amount of ketchup will emerge.
There is something very American about a subset of largely left-wing trans activists going all in on gun ownership:
https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-trans-women-turning-to-firearms-for-survival
Diesel sub 150 (149.9) for the first time in forever at the local costco.
Otoh the baby powder our lo will be one for perhaps another 6 months (lactose free) went up from £8.55 to £9.25. Started at £8 11 months ago
Final salary pensions have been uniquely horrible for UK plc
But it should not detract from the deleterious impact they have had on UK plc. Over the past two decades, companies have paid more than £500bn into such schemes. They have held back wage growth, curtailed investment, distorted decision-making, scuppered takeovers and consumed incalculable amounts of management time — all for the benefit of a relatively small cohort of mostly older employees (including me).
The FT, only a few months late to the story as usual.
Perhaps you can put together a list of approved subjects and who's allowed to comment on them.
The terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland has been raised.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-65096493
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65095684
A particularly clear example of the cynicism of web personalisation that has taken over the internet in recent years.
“For You” = “For Them”
Free speech, for those who pay.
Orwell would be proud.
https://www.racingpost.com/results/513/wolverhampton-aw/2023-03-27/834702
Surely such cross community out reach and join ventures are to be applauded.
Perhaps we could upgrade the torturers from Black & Decker to Hilti?
One hilarious bit that makes me wonder about the background of the writers in the film The Foreigner is exactly that - the NotGerryAdams character is living the good life, while the dissidents are not. That and the bit where NotGerryAdams starts kneecapping people.
The same change is happening to a lot of new media people and companies, who can no longer rely on the likes of YouTube for revenue if their content is in any way political.
He is not a tax avoider as he has won his IR35 case.
https://financeandtax.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/judgmentfiles/j12696/TC 08774.pdf
The real complaint is that the verified thing has gone from Important People, to anyone who pays.
Yes, they fall into that middle ground for me too. Only slightly closer than a big supermarket, only slightly better stocked than the corner shop.
Where they get most custom from me is after 4pm on Sunday when the big shops are closed. God, curiously, is very specific about the hours big shops are allowed to trade on a Sunday, but quite happy for the co-op to be open. Perhaps He is a Methodist.
None'll come, and then a lot'll.
As my Grandpa used to say.
https://twitter.com/CameronMcNeish/status/1640449606021423121
It's certainly better that a departing government has the ability and inclination to start sorting things out before it goes. (I'm not sure that Sunak gets full marks on either measure, for all he's an improvement on his predecessors.) It's a stretch to get from there to "They deserve another term."
I wonder what excuses they will use.
As for your last point, it's not God, it was the SNP. One of the biggest failures of the government post 2019 was to not put the Sunday trading improvements through.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, the word 'ketchup' first appeared in 1682, though in those days was made with mushrooms rather than tomatoes.
40. By Clause 2 of the Contributor Guarantee, which he signed on 21 March 2013, Mr Lineker gave his “personal guarantee”:
“… to provide my services to the Partnership as required under the Contract and to comply with all terms and conditions which require performance or compliance on my part. In particular I warrant that I will read and fully comply with the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Guidance and the BBC’s Standards as defined in the Contract.”
So does that mean that he was like any other BBC employee and should not Tweet as he did? Asking for a friend (innocent face).
Remember: In June 2016, Major and Blair warned that Brexit may "destabilise the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland".
Leading pro-Brexit politicians called their caution "rather sad", "desperate" and "simply scaremongering". ~AA
https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1640683445851496454
Some of his early books had, er, interestingly similar mistakes to those made other books.
Perhaps we could just put him down as keen on recycling.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/bobble-hats-at-dawn-as-ramblers-fall-out-9142972.html
Only when they have to sort their own future can they possibly stop blaming everyone else and each other.