Top of the posts: Fascism in football, sexism on the street and ruffling royalist feathers
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Source: www.independent.co.uk
Hay Festival 2012: Sir Terry Leahy 'It is the customer who decides where to shop' - Daily Telegraph
She claimed that 276 jobs are lost every time a major Tesco is built in a town.
“If you are going to measure your life by your success at Tesco, surely you are going to look back at the effect your incredibly aggressive marketing policies have had on the towns you leave behind?” she said.
But Sir Terry claimed that in fact supermarkets are good for the High Street as it ensures people remain in town to shop rather than going elsewhere.
“The towns that Tesco invests in do better. If you do not let modern facilities into the town people go elsewhere. Not every business is guaranteed to survive. One day Tesco will be out of business. But good businesses can thrive with competition,” he said.
“All markets are about winners and losers. There is a price to pay if you are loser.”
“So the question is, is there a net benefit [if the supermarket wins]. I think there is – there is investment, better quality of service and cheaper food.”
Following the recent planning reforms, Sir Terry backed plans for the controversial “presumptions in favour of sustainable development”.
“In order to make the change to a low carbon economy there has to be investment,” he said.
Sir Terry said ultimately the customers are responsible for the actions of Tesco because “Tesco was not created by a politician, Tesco only grew because millions of people chose to shop there.”
“We do not kill anything off,” he said. “It is the customers who dictate where to shop.”
He also denied that Tesco has been overly aggressive in sourcing from farmers or selling to customers.
“If Tesco is too big, too aggressive too monopolistic then customers will go somewhere else they do have a choice 95 per cent of customers can choose one of the three main supermarkets and they do that every day.”
Plan B for Hay are currently drawing up alternative plans to fund the building of a new school without selling the town centre site to a developer.
Richard Evans, another town councillor, said Hay-on-Wye has only retained its charm as the “town of books” because it has not had a supermarket in the centre.
He said supermarkets like Tesco are killing the traditional market town.
“People come to Hay because there is not a supermarket. There is a butcher, a baker, a grocer and of course all the book shops. Supermarkets like Tesco kill off small towns,” he said.
“I wonder how [Sir Terry Leahy] sleeps at night knowing what he has done for the last 14 years.”
Sir Terry praised the work of the Coalition to manage the economy but said Britain was in danger of being taken over by bureaucracy.
“There is too much business and produce regulation in the UK. Regulation is growing faster than the economy and that in general is not a good thing. I think it is in part because politicians do not trust citizens to make decisions.
“If they trusted people more they would have to regulate less. Particularly in bigger organisations like the NHS. It is a tragedy if you have highly talented people highly controlled by central management.
“Part of problem is that you have wonderful people in the public sector but the management is too centralised.”
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
Enjoy Asda Jubilee Rockabilly show on Sunday - miltonkeynes.co.uk
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Source: www.miltonkeynes.co.uk
New Tesco delivery scheme helps customers save up to £100 - Talking Retail
Tesco has announced plans to give customers savings of up to £100 on their online food shopping, thanks to a new subscription service for delivery.
Delivery Saver, which has launched nationwide, offers Tesco.com customers across the UK the option to pay once and have groceries delivered at no extra cost for either a three-month or a six-month period.
Shoppers signing up for six months could save up to £100 on delivery charges, based on one £6 delivery per week and one extra delivery for a special occasion.
Ken Towle, internet retailing director at Tesco, said: “We listened to what our customers told us they wanted, and Delivery Saver is the result. It’s simple to use and will save money at a difficult time for many families.
“Customers can choose from all available delivery slots, so shopping arrives at the most convenient time. Best of all, if you get regular home deliveries it will quickly pay for itself – and the more you use the service, the more you save.”
Tesco is the first supermarket to offer this service on a nationwide scale, which is part of the supermarket’s wider investment into its UK business and into online shopping. The supermarket is leading the way in the new era of retailing with innovations that make shopping easier and more convenient for its customers.
Source: www.talkingretail.com
Tesco Terry proves we don't need job quotas - Daily Mail
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A new report into social mobility says companies should be shamed into giving top jobs to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, even when their grades are poorer than better-educated colleagues.
Former Labour minister Alan Milburn, hired by Nick Clegg, says workers should tell bosses if they had free school meals as part of a bid to catapult them up the career ladder.
How absurd and patronising. For proof of that, you need look no further than the former boss of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy, whose autobiography, Management In 10 Words, was serialised in the Mail this week.
Example: Former CEO of Tesco, Sir Terry Leahy, was born into poverty but through education found enormous success
Leahy and his three brothers were raised in a two-bedroom prefab on a Liverpool council estate. The family was so poor that Terry lived in his school uniform until he was 16.
Yet at home, his parents taught him ‘the importance of manners, education, hard work, common sense and respect for others’. At primary school, he was inspired by his teacher, Mr McCann, to think of life beyond the council estate.
‘He made me realise that if you work hard, you can do as well as anyone else,’ he said. He won a scholarship to Liverpool’s top grammar school, which he says was his ‘salvation’.
Alan Milburn warned in a report that the next generation of young professionals was becoming a 'mirror image' of the privileged elite
Having studied business, he couldn’t find work near his home, but he didn’t give up. He got a job stacking supermarket shelves in South London — and just over 20 years later he was Chief Executive of Tesco. ‘At an early age, I’d learned that if I wanted to achieve something, I had to look to myself,’ he wrote. ‘Self-help, not “please help” was my mantra.’
If only it was the mantra of this Government and its Labour predecessors, which failed to support the two things that helped make Leahy the man he is: a traditional family background and a chance to go to grammar school.
That’s what frees bright children from the cycle of poverty and under-achievement, not parachuting them into jobs they are not equipped for.
Sir Terry Leahy's book 'Management in 10 Words' charts his rags to riches success story
As the Centre for Social Justice reported this week: ‘Poverty is about more than money — family breakdown, debt traps and failing schools blight the lives of our children.’
I’ve met many examples of successful people raised in poverty, but — thanks to loving married parents who supported them and a grammar school education — have reached the top of their professions.
Nothing would insult them more than to think they got their jobs because of state-imposed social engineering. They want to be rewarded on merit, not charity. They believe it’s not where you come from that counts, but where you’re going.
Alas, with this shambolic Coalition in charge, the poorest and most deserving are going nowhere.
David Beckham arrives home in Britain from LA and whisks his mother off to their local pie and mash shop. No sign of the jellied eel, though. Or, as David calls her, ‘Victoria’. Too Posh for pies, perhaps?
Good son: David Beckham took his mother to a traditional pie and mash shop for lunch
Footing the bill, Ulrika?
Desperate to renew her wedding vows with her third husband Brian, Ulrika Jonsson said she wanted an intimate affair — just family. That’s clearly why she sold pictures of the private occasion to Hello! across nine pages.
In the accompanying interview, she plugs the resort, her dress designer, her husband’s outfit designer and the jeweller who made the ring.
Ulrika decided they’d all go barefoot. No doubt they couldn’t they find anyone to give them free shoes.
Raunchy: Kylie Minogue claims she is 'quite reserved'
After 25 years in showbiz, Kylie Minogue says she’s misunderstood. ‘Deep down I am quite reserved,’ she reveals. A word in your ear, Kylie: Shy girls tend not to wear a cobweb for a dress at the age of 44 to promote their latest single.
Fresh from winning best actress for her role as Princess Fiona in the musical version of Shrek, Amanda Holden says she’d love to take the lead role in Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure.
‘The problem is I’ll never get cast as her as no one would ever take me seriously as a nun.’
No pet, no one would ever take you seriously as a Shakespearean actress.
Rihanna says she has sexual fantasies about Cheryl Cole doing her housework. ‘I would like to watch her cleaning things on the floor, picking up stuff, bending over.’ Meanwhile, Cheryl, promoting her new single, has confessed that Rihanna is her ‘girl crush’. Enough! At least we can be grateful the truly talented Adele doesn’t need lesbian innuendo to sell her albums.
Former PM Tony Blair accused journalists of a personal vendetta against his wife Cherie when he was in office. ‘Attacks on her went too far, they were wrong,’ he said.
Would this be the same Cherie Blair who got a government spokesman to mislead the Press about the purchase of discounted flats she bought with the help of a convicted conman? The truth is that while her husband was in office, Cherie behaved without dignity, decorum — or common sense.
A committee has decreed that calling people ‘fat’ should be on a par with race hate crimes and punishable with prison sentences.
No problem there, then — we’ll just have to call them greedy and lazy.
Prince William has spoken of his sadness that his mother wasn't able to attend his wedding
Jubilee watch
Speaking of his great sadness that his mother had not been at his wedding, Prince William said she still had ‘the best seat in the house’ at the service.
The same would not be true had Diana been alive for next Tuesday’s Jubilee Thanksgiving service at St Paul’s. Stripped of her HRH title when she divorced, Diana would be seated near the Middletons, if she was lucky, and have to watch her beloved sons walk down the aisle with Camilla, the woman who destroyed her marriage and our future Queen.
That’s the same aisle, of course, that Diana once walked down as a bride. Somehow, I doubt she’ll be smiling down on this occasion.
Perhaps the most hurtful charge against the Queen — and one that she has never been able to answer — is that she was a distant, neglectful mother. So how fitting Prince Charles should use his BBC1 tribute to her last night to put that myth to rest.
He showed movie footage of their childhood holidays revealing happy, giggling children and an adoring mother.
Thank you for setting the record straight, Sir.
It must have been an agonising decision for Amy Winehouse’s parents to put her 2.7 million home up for sale. Her father Mitch said: ‘It’s tough. Amy loved that house. But it’s too much of a financial drain. It’s a wonderful family house, full of love.’ Sadly, that is not true. It was a house full of unlimited booze and drugs, depression, pain and finally death.
Heading for a fall?
Frolicking with her toyboy on the beach, Sharon Stone, 54, has obviously decided it’s not enough to look half her age, she has to act it, too. Kissing and stroking Martin Mica, 27, she even did headstands to please him. Isn’t there something sad about middle-aged women who bend over backwards to hold on to younger lovers? It can only end in tears. Or a slipped disc.
Westminster Noticeboard
Four U-turns in a week from our flip-flop Chancellor George Osborne, but help is at hand. Scientists have discovered a technique that enables rats with broken spines to function again.
Ed Balls says he will fight for same-sex weddings in church. This despite the guarantees given by his government when introducing civil partnerships that they would not force churches to go against their beliefs and allow the marriage of gay couples.
The day the full horror of the Syrian child murders was revealed, William Hague joined Angelina Jolie to watch her movie about the abuse of women in the Bosnian war. Surely our Foreign Secretary’s duty is protecting women and their children in today’s world, not sucking up to actresses flogging their films.
It took David Cameron just 25 minutes to clear Jeremy Hunt over his obscenely close relationship with James Murdoch. That’s 24 minutes longer than the Culture Secretary took to give the BSkyB deal his blessing.
Fighting for her job after claims she fiddled her expenses, the first sighting we have of Baroness Warsi is in a mosque wearing the traditional hijab. A moment of prayer or a stunt from savvy Sayeeda to remind Dave that having parachuted her into Cabinet as the first Muslim female in a British government, she’s unsackable?
To ward off a backbench rebellion, the PM is privately consulting senior Tories over a plan to give voters a referendum on Europe in his next manifesto. Just like he did in his last manifesto — and what became of that promise?
The morning Justice Secretary Ken Clarke announced the retreat on secret courts, he was pictured ‘chillaxing’ — slang for chilling and relaxing — at Trent Bridge. Reclining in his chair, he reminded me of another picture this week — a hedgehog called Roly Poly, who’s grown so porky he can no longer even curl up to protect himself.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
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