SMART SCOTS GIVE IT ALDI (AND LIDL)

I remember hearing about a woman who used to take her neighbour shopping in her car. The neighbour liked to buy some of her weekly shop from one of the bargain supermarkets, but driver (a bit of a snob) informed everyone that she didn't even get out of the car.... The thought of being seen shopping in a cheap supermarket put her off.

I remember thinking that it was a shame to be so strung up on image, because the quality of the products in both Lidl and Aldi is pretty high.

Not being the kind that worries about being seen poking around in Oxfam or Save the Children (and having laid my hands on some fine brand names at a fraction of the cost of their new price, who can blame me), I've never been shy about shopping in the German supermarkets.

But until recently I wondered how they managed to make any profit. They were nearly always more or less empty, and even on a Saturday morning there was never a crush in the small car parks.

Now things are different, I suspect as a result of the 'neverendession' (to paraphrase one of the very few genuinely funny things that David Cameron has even said.

The car parks are full; the tills are all open and goods, far cheaper than the main British/American supermarkets are selling, are flying off the shelves.

Indeed according to this Yahoo article Aldi made £56.8 million in profit last year, having recorded a loss the previous year. They opened 29 new stores and plan to continue opening new ones in the coming year, creating over 4,000 new jobs (welcome, albeit most of them will probably be part time).

Lidl and Aldi concentrate on selling their own brands to the almost total exclusion of big brand names. This means no premium paid to the big names, and the savings can be passed on to the customer. In the other supermarkets only around 50% of their products are own brand.

Frequently supermarket own brands are of much poorer quality (some custard I bought at Asda was so inedible it had to be thrown out). Aldi and Lidl's brands in contrast are of very high quality. Indeed, recently a taste test organised by "Good Housekeeping" magazine found that Aldi's Christmas Pudding was the second best brand behind Waitrose. Fortnum & Mason came 29th!! And Aldi's pudding cost £7.99, whereas Fortnum's was around £29.00.

And a study by Grocer magazine found that on a shopping basket of 33 items Aldi was 16% cheaper than Asda, 20% cheaper than Tesco and 40% cheaper than Waitrose! And there is not a lot of difference in price between Aldi and Lidl.

Judging by the readers'  comments on the Yahoo article, Aldi's rise in the ranks is due in part to price, but also to the quality of service you can expect. Tesco's (the worst of all the UK chains, in my opinion), Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury and Waitrose, have all been working hard to try to maintain their market share in the straitened economic times. 

It seems they have no room for slacking.

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On rather a different topic I see from comments at Wings, and an article by Rod at Auld Acquaintance that there has been a debate in London about Scottish Independence, and that 336 - 5 found that Scotland would be better off in the union. 

Now, somewhere between 30 and 40% of the population wants independence, and around 20-25% is undecided, so it occurs to me that the presentation of Scots' views in the English parliament is very unrepresentative.

I understand that a further proposal put by the SNP that Scotland would enjoy a special relationship with the UK, rather like that enjoyed by Canada, Australia and New Zealand, was defeated by a similar number.

So it appears that the English (and the Welsh and Irish) don't really like us. If we go they will not be friendly towards us. But they want us to stay. 

Weird.

I can only conclude that that is because, according to them the North Sea has the potential to be the World's Global Energy hub. 

In other words they want our money.

Incidentally the 5 were the SNP members in the Commons chamber. (According to Rod, Stewart Hosie was not there due to illness. Get well soon, Stewart. You will surely be missed in London.) 

I was surprised not to have the support of the Welsh Nationalists.

BORIS MIGHT BE BETTER TO SAY VERY LITTLE BETWEEN NOW AND THE ELECTIONS

Sometimes Boris Johnson comes over as a bit of a fool, but a relatively inoffensive English eccentric in the “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” mould; an Eton, Oxford toff who speaks Latin rather more fluently than he speaks English.

And as a backbench Conservative MP that is more or less what he was. A relic of England’s past, but a relatively amusing one.

However, having found himself propelled to a measure of importance as the Mayor of London, he has a more prominent role in the life of the English nation. And Boris, it seems, is not really cut out for that kind of scrutiny.

A few months ago, the English and possibly some Scots, Irish and Welsh descended upon London in mighty numbers to demonstrate about cuts in ...well, just about everything. There was a wide range of people from all sorts of backgrounds, including some of Boris’s own class. Most of them were peaceful and marched, as is their right, through London on a route agreed, until they massed in Hyde Park for a series of speeches by politicians and union leaders, countryside and student campaigners.

Before they got to Hyde Park, some of them branched off and headed for Oxford Street and Piccadilly where, disassociated from the bulk of the march, they engaged in various degrees of more direct action.

One group decided to have a sit-in in toff’s store, Fortnum & Masons in Piccadilly. TV cameras were allowed in, and the coverage I saw was peaceful. Mr Johnson, however, stated on ‘Question Time’ that the protestors had done 'tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage'.

Unfortunately for Mr Johnson a member of the Fortnum staff has said that the damage was minimal and he (Johnson) was asked by a London Assembly member to justify his remarks, which he did thus:

“The point that I was making was that the occupation of Fortnum & Mason was pure vandalism … The fact that Fortnum and Mason is owned by a charitable foundation, provides many jobs and pays its taxes was clearly lost on these ‘activists’.”

Not much of a justification for a tale of 'tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage' which actually was not done.

Boris maybe should be quiet about vandalism in any case. The people I saw sitting in in Fortnum’s were late teen/early twenties, student types, not unlike Bullingdon Club members David Cameron, George Osborne and ……yes, Boris Johnston, 20 something years ago, whose pleasure it was to get drunk and trash restaurants in Oxford and elsewhere.

Boris himself wrote in his autobiography: "We got drunk, trashed the Ritz and then went down Piccadilly to loot a few items from Fortnum's".

I wonder how it was OK for them to steal from Fortnums while drunk, and it wasn’t OK for a group of peaceful protestors of the same age to occupy the store for an hour or so 20 odd years later.

Incidentally, the Charitable trust which owns Fortnum’s, the Garfield Weston Foundation, was found by the Charitity Commission to have broken the law in its donations of over £1 million to the Conservative party. Could the moral indignation, not to mention hypocrisy, stem from that?

Pics: Boris on Bike using phone (probably illegal), and Boris before he got fat, when he was young, beautiful and shop lifting from Fortnum's.