Glorious Weather

It seems like a long time ago since we really had a nice warm spell in July like we are having at the moment. Most of the recent summers have been plagued by rain. In fact the last one I can remember was four years ago, in a summer I remember only to well, when the warm spell went on and on.

With this warm spell predicted to well into next weekend and talk of it going on beyond we certainly turning around some of the predictions of the summer being a wash out. Hopefully there will be times when the girls will be together to have some water fights and general fun in the sun. I know I can't wait for the summer fun, it what I really need at the moment to make me smile. Time with all the people I love.

Well Done Andy

After all the excitement of last years Wimbledon when Andy Murry was the runner up there could only be one way to better it, by winning the title and becoming the first British man in 77 years to lift the trophy and that is just what he did.

Winning in straight sets again the world number one he proved himself to be one of the finest, if not the finest, mens tennis player that Britain, and more specifically Scotland has ever produced. So great was his achievement that as he lifted the trophy the village church bells ran in celebration of his achievement.  I hope this is just the start of a special summer for this man that all his hard work in the past will see him once and for all become the world number one.

Goodbye Google Reader

For a few years now I have been using Google reader to keep up to date with other blogs I read on the internet. It has proved over the years to be a loyal friend, delivering blog posts as they happened to my phone. So today is a sad day for me to lose a service I loved, for Google Reader is no more.

Although I can see why Google closed down the service I do think they have let a lot of people down and possibly alienated a few along the way. Looking on the web there seems no real alternative that matches the features it provided and phone apps of similar power. In fact most of the apps out there that are any good all use the Google reader service to provide the feeds.

Personally  think Google were wrong to such the service down. It is services like this that over the years has made me a fan of the search engine giant and without them Google loses one of the great futures that has made me come back time and time again.

Oakham's "Rip Off" Tesco Supermarket

This weekend I was in the local Tesco supermarket in Oakham and I found an old lady standing round the fresh eggs looking rather bemused and lost. Then I realised why for the eggs she was looking for, as was I, were missing from the shelf and not even a sold out sticker to be found. I talked to her and she said that they had be discontinued in our local store as had many products in the same everyday value range.

 

Living on a low budget the old lady was saying how a lot of the range had disappeared from the store in the last few weeks. She was deciding what eggs she could afford and working out what she food wouldn't be able to buy because of the price of the eggs which she relied on as a food item. With 15 eggs in the everyday value range costing £1.34 the nearest she could get value wise would have been £3.00 for the same number of eggs, and then she would have to buy 20 at a cost of £4.00 because they came in boxes of 10.  That is well over a 100% increase in price!

 

Then I started on a mission to find out if the old lady was right while I did the shopping, and it came as a surprise she was right. Gone had all but one of the value breakfast cereals, not a sign of the value Chocolate Mousses, or the Garlic Baguettes, then there are some of the value Biscuit range missing, in fact a lot of the products in the Everyday Value range on the companies website are absent from the Oakham store, making it more expensive for those on a tight budget to shop, and this table gives you an idea of how much by:

 

Item	Value	Standard	Expense
Chocolate Mousse	4.5p each	15p each	233% more
Eggs	8.9p each	16.6p each	86% more
Single Garlic Baguette	32p	85p	165% more
Rice Snaps	18p per 100g	33p per 100g	83% more
Digestive Biscuits	30p	59p	96% more

 

While I was in the store I managed to ask  one of the staff what had happened to the Everyday value range and I was given an answer I didn't expect from a supermarket whose advertising is "Every Little Helps". Clearly in this case it means every little bit of profit they can squeeze out of the customer by not stocking the value range is more than welcome in the company coffers, even if it means people like that little old lady have to miss a meal or two. The reason I was given was that Okaham is an affluent area and it is the managements view that stocking the value range stops customers coming into the store and by removing it from the shelves and concentrating on the own brand premium products they will attract more customers.  

 

The reality is the poor people in Oakham who have no choice but to shop in the Tesco supermarket are being ripped off by the company. They are being denied food because they can't afford it. Due to the decision to remove value items the poorer people in the area will be eating less this summer. I really hope that the fat bellies that run the company and get massive bonuses are happy to know they are helping to starve the poor of Oakham while they sit and gloat on their profits.

 

Maybe a new slogan for the company is required, along the lines of "Starve the Poor, we feed the Rich". It looks like it is going to be hungry summer of the old and the poor in Oakham this year.

Catherine becomes a Teenager

Another year another birthday for Catherine and this time it was special one, it was her thirteenth birthday. Today she entered her teenage years and she became a real teenager after year of practicing for the role.

She had a great morning opening her cards and discovering the money inside before heading off to school to get more presents from her friends. One of her friends, Kane, stood at the turnstiles at the entrance to the school and got everyone to wish her a happy birthday and they tried to get into the school. After school she went out around the town and came home later for her favourite dinner, a chicken curry, before talking to her friends before bed. We were going to have a cake but with Emily sleeping over it there wasn't really a point, so she had some small cakes just for herself, and not to share.

The day hardly ended as I expected and in fact came as a bit of a shock, and then Catherine didn't get a Birthday card from her little sister Lucy which was rather predictable, but all the same she seemed to have a lovely day.