Next week sees vital trading updates from both Tesco and Sainsbury’s as the battle to gain the initiative in the UK’s supermarket wars continues.
Tesco announces its latest trading update on Monday as it fights to win back shoppers lost over the last six months. It is expected to reveal a fall of 1.7 per cent in like-for-like UK sales in the quarter to May 26th. The trading update will not include the Diamon Hubilee Bank Holiday period.
In January Tesco announced its first profits warning for 20 years following a disappointing Christmas trading period where it lost ground to rivals such as discount grocers Lidl and Aldi. This led to its share price falling to a three-year low and this has not recovered so far.
Since then, the head of UK operations, Richard Brasher has left, leaving Chief Executive, Philip Clarke to lead the fight back. Mr Clarke decline his bonus for 2011 because of Tesco’s poor performance.
However, the update on Monday is expected to show Tesco has not been successful in winning back the lost ground through the heavy discounting strategies and a £1 billion recovery plan that has been the strategy in the opening months of 2012. This will increase the pressure on Mr Clarke whose strategy to improve the supermarket's performance has involved hiring more staff, especially for fresh produce sections and revamping many of its stores.
Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s is expected to have had a successful trading period over the Queen’s Golden Jubilee holiday that will be illustrated when it announces its trading update on Wednesday which will be for the 12 weeks to June 9th. Its chief executive, Justin King will reveal just how much party food, champagne and bunting sales the supermarket moved over the long weekend,
Sainsbury’s is expected to announce like-for-like sales growth of just under two per cent, slightly down on the 2.6 per cent increase reported for the previous quarter. Tesco is expected to announce a 1.5 per cent fall in UK like-for-like sales, though group sales should increase by around 2.5 per cent. Its trading period will not include the Golden Jubilee Bank Holiday.
Asda delivered sales growth of 2.2 per cent in its last reported quarter
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Source: www.myfinances.co.uk
London bus workers threaten strike before Olympics - Waterloo Cedar-Falls Courier
LONDON (AP) --- Thousands of London bus workers have voted to go on strike ahead of the 2012 Olympics, saying they want a premium for working during game time.
Members of the Unite union endorsed industrial action at a rate of more than nine to one Saturday, although strike dates have yet to be announced.
The union is seeking a $775 bonus for working over the games for each of the 20,000 bus workers it represents.
It's the latest group of transit workers to demand extra money to work over game time.
London's subway train drivers have already secured one-time payments of around $775 for working over the games, while those who run the capital's bicycle rental network have also asked for bonuses.
The games run from July 27 to Aug. 12.
Source: wcfcourier.com
Horrigan: How Miller Lite segmented America - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
It was 1973. The Vietnam War was grinding to a halt. The Watergate investigation was in full flower. Disco was being born. And in Springfield, Ill., a product was being test-marketed that ultimately would result in American being segmented into a million little pieces.
It was Lite Beer from Miller.
Work with me here. I'm developing a theory.
Before there was Lite Beer, there was just beer. There were a lot of different brands, but it was mostly the same: 12-ounce cans of lager or pilsner containing roughly 150 calories. You had to go far out of your way to find something different, like a Heineken or a Guinness.
One nation, one beer. Everyone watched the same TV shows and got their news from (you should pardon the expression) mainstream sources. There were rich people, sure, but they hadn't yet begun to suck the marrow out of the middle class. The Vietnam War had been fought by enlisted men and draftees alike.
Then came Lite Beer from Miller, test marketed in Springfield, San Diego and Knoxville, Tenn. It was successful enough that Miller hired the advertising firm McCann-Erickson Worldwide to help roll it out nationwide. Pretty soon the "Tastes Great, Less Filling" campaign was everywhere. America's common culture was doomed.
First came more light beers. And dark beers. And ice beers. And beer with fruit in it. The natural reaction to all of this terrible beer was craft beers and microbrews.
People no longer listened to rock music. They listened to soft rock, classic rock, metal, funk, punk, alternative rock, Christian rock. They listened to classic country and new country and alt country. They listened to R&B and urban and soul and hip-hop and rap.
"Segmentation" was everywhere, people being shoved into tiny niches and markets. Department stores were confronted by boutiques and category-killer big-box stores. Cable news operations not only made it possible to get the news any time you wanted it, but flavored the way you liked it, too.
Then came the Internets, which created an infinite number of segments. If you liked stories about cats on skateboards, you no longer had to hope and pray that your local Ron Burgundy anchorman showed you a cat on a skateboard. You could spend all day long watching cats on skateboards and communicating with other cats-on-skateboard enthusiasts.
You no longer even had to go outside to talk to people. You didn't have to go the store. The store came to you.
The iPods, iPhones, Facebooks, Twitters and segmented media of all sorts only added to the problem. Once we'd lived in a big, noisy barnyard. Now we live in a whole bunch of silos.
Clever people were watching. They saw how the Miller Brewing Co. had been able to split off a segment of the beer-drinking public that could be targeted effectively. Miller knew it didn't have to sell the most beer, it just had to own its segment.
The daily business of most people in America is to sell something (hot dogs, T-bills, refrigerators, cars, ideas, whatever) to other people in America. Suddently people realized they didn't have to sell to everyone. They could begin targeting smaller and smaller segments.
Take radio stations. They figured out they didn't have to attract a broad audience. They just had to attract a big enough segment of similar people that they sell to advertisers. Guys who like sports. Women who like Brad Paisley. You may get only 5 percent of the audience, but if it's the right 5 percent, you become a programming genius.
Data-mining was invented: Find out what people buy and you discover their aspirations. Then sell to their aspirations. Do they drive SUVs or Priuses? Do they shop at Aldi or Whole Foods? Do they go to church, volunteer with the Girl Scouts or buy camping gear at Wal-Mart?
Soon enough, political operatives learned to adapt these techniques to their needs. Bill Clinton talked about 'soccer moms," but what if you knew the soccer mom drove a Volvo, vacationed in Vail and worked as a doctor? She would be different from a soccer mom who drove a beater and couldn't afford a vacation because she worked at Hardee's.
"Cluster analysis" or "micro-targeting" they called it. Take direct-marketing techniques, find out everything you can about potential voters and then tell them exactly what they want to hear.
Computers made all of this easy. Some companies began to specialize in collecting data on what people buy and where. You could buy this data, cross-reference it with political mailing lists and voter data and crunch it with computer algorithms.
People voluntarily surrendered even more of their privacy by signing up on social media. Facebook's IPO may have been botched, but it's still worth billions of dollars because advertisers are mining it like crazy.
Pretty soon, you've got hundreds or thousands of segments, hundreds of thousands of different Americas. You can pick 'em off like a sniper.
Hundreds of thousands of Americas, and all because of Lite Beer.
Lite Beer ruined everything.
Source: www.stltoday.com
London 2012 Oympics: Usain Bolt unharmed after car crash - Daily Telegraph
The pair competed in Oslo, Norway on Thursday, with Bolt beating Powell to gold at the Diamond League meeting.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
To escape the gloom at home, Ireland's fans head for Poland - hereisthecity.com
Sean O'Neill jumped out of his battered 1970s VW campervan and hit the tarmac with a determined thud. "Just wanted to take stock a bit before we descend on the masses," said the Dublin bank clerk, 29, pulling on a cigarette in a layby on the outskirts of Poznan.
Behind him lay a 2,000km drive from Ireland, for which he took the benefit of free petrol laid on by a bookmaker on Ushers Quay in Dublin, before boarding the ferry to Cherbourg. Though he thinks he will abandon the patched-up vehicle by the close of the tournament – until recently it was rusting in his parents' backyard – and take the plane back home, Sean says the journey will have been worth every mile, however slow and spluttering.
"There is nothing, simply nothing, like being able to travel across Europe to see the boys in green. Last time Ireland appeared at a European championship [in 1988], I was too young to remember much about it, so when we qualified this time round, I was like, 'Right, can't miss out on this opportunity'," he said.
It's also been 10 years since Ireland's appearance at any major tournament (the 2002 World Cup) and the "green army" is making up for it in style. Before Ireland's first Euro 2012 match against Croatia on Sunday, the travelling circus of fans were arriving in Poland in their thousands in every type of vehicle, from planes and trains to campervans in various states of disrepair – including a decommissioned ambulance and a caravan welded to a Ford Transit. Some have even arrived on bicycles. Up to 30,000 Irish fans are expected, meaning that Ireland, the second-smallest nation competing in the tournament, will be by far the best supported, barring the hosts.
Already, by Friday, Poznan – Poland's fifth largest city and the stage for a good portion of the Euro action – was heaving with Irish fans sipping beer and befriending the locals in the clammy summer heat.
As they gathered in bars on the central Stary Rynek square in front of Poznan's elegantly decorated sgraffito facades, in cafés on side streets off the old town district and on camping sites set up for the event, their green T-shirts and additional props and banners ensured they stood out. Some donned glitzy shamrock antennae, or curly wigs in the shades of the Irish tricolour, while others wore T-shirts with the slogan "In Trap We Trust", a tribute to the national team's beloved coach, Giovanni Trapattoni, perhaps the most popular Italian in Ireland since Padre Pio after his work in reinvigorating Ireland's football fortunes.
"The colour of the city has completely changed in the last few days," said Krzysztof Grobelny from the Poznan tourist information centre. "Normally it's defined by blue [the dominant colour of its Saints Peter and Paul coat of arms], but now it's a sea of white, orange, green, and red," he says, also referring to the Polish colours of red and white.
Emphasising what the people of both countries refer to repeatedly as their "special relationship", are the Polish bars and radio stations that make a point of pumping out songs like the rock ballad Kocham cie jak Irlandie ("I love you like Ireland"), by the band Kobranocka, Ajrisz ("Irish") by T-Love or Irlandie Zielona ("Green Ireland") by the electronic musician Kowalski. There are even some Poznan bars that seem to have turned into "Irish pubs" overnight.
The Polish effort has certainly not gone unnoticed by the Irish, veterans themselves of dishing out céad míle fáilte at every opportunity, who respond by painting the Polish flag on their faces.
"I heard they're putting on a special mass for the Irish fans on Sunday ahead of the Irish-Croatia game," said Francis Murtagh, 30, an accounts assistant at a Dublin insurance broker, who had arrived in Poznan on Friday on a €480 Ryanair flight. "Let's say if the sun's out and I'm nursing a pint, I don't suppose I'll be there myself, but there's no denying it's a lovely gesture and typical of the welcome we've received so far."
His friend Mark Bergin, 30, a senior associate of reconciliations and cash management for a financial company, admitted a major motivating factor in coming to the championship was the opportunity to escape from Ireland's economic woes. "It's a chance to forget about the economy, and the euro bailout, to regain a bit of national pride. It's a bit of escapism, I suppose," he said.
While the Irish are looking to temporarily flee their fiscal concerns, the Poles for their part are hoping Euro 2012 will help them escape from the constraints of history. "This is basically the biggest occasion in the history of modern Poland," said Krzysztof from the tourist office. "We have for so long been defined by our communist past and before that by our time under Nazi occupation and this is now a chance to escape all that and place ourselves firmly and squarely in Europe, to prove 'we can do it'."
Pauline Clifford, 32, a civil servant with the department of health in Dublin who is in Poznan with her friend Orla Kennedy, 29, a civil servant in the department of social protection, admitted: "There's a lot we have in common.
"Poles are the biggest export to Ireland where humans are concerned," she said, adding, "and Irish people have also been Ireland's biggest export in the world, so we both, Poles and Irish, understand a lot about things like the pain of emigration, of leaving your homeland, and the whole religious heritage is also similar."
The two, clad in green T-shirts, one of which reads "Irish Dream Team", in cloud-like lettering, are staying in Niedzwiedziny – a remote settlement deep in the forests around Poznan – with a Dublin barman friend of theirs who several years ago bought an old farm house there which he's in the process of converting into a holiday house.
"It's near Gmina Skoki," says Orla, helpfully. Everyone's an expert on the local geography now.
Similar stories abound – of Polish girlfriends, Polish workmates, Polish holiday homes – and reinforce what has changed in the years since what is sometimes referred to as the "glorious odyssey" of 1988.
"Some things haven't changed: just like in 1988 we had to change currencies when we got here and there's a miserable economic backdrop, but in other ways things have changed immensely in the last 24 years," says Liam O'Neill, father of Sean.
In the darkened confines of Brogan's Bar on Szewska Street with the strains of Dirty Old Town seeping out of the juke box, Joe Bonner, 34, a town planner, his brother Donal, 30, and their friend John McElroy, also 30, both of whom have been forced to find employment outside Ireland on construction sites in Scotland and London, are enjoying pints of the Polish beer, Zywiec. Joe, whose girlfriend Monika is from Poland, can even order it in Polish. "I know the beer well. I buy it in crates from Aldi back home in Dublin," he said with a smirk. "I know I'm not being very adventurous ordering the same here, but 10 years ago if you'd asked me to name a brand of Polish beer I wouldn't have had a clue. Now I could name at least four in my sleep."
He admitted it was comical that the Polish Monika had had to stay at home finishing her masters in psychoanalysis, while he gallivanted around Poland with his mates. The three Donegal lads, who also happened to be on Donal's stag weekend, were still waiting to hear if they'd get into Sunday's match.
"Some guy called Wojtech who we've met via the internet through a friend is going to drive up from a distant part of Poland and sell us his tickets," says Joe. "I know it sounds a little crazy, but we think we can trust him to come up with the goods, and if it all goes wrong, we're sure the craic will still be mighty."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
image: © andybrannan
Source: hereisthecity.com
Second supermarket for Kiama? - Illawara Mercury
The most recent was in March this year when negotiations between developer Winston Langley Burlington and Westons to buy the Shoalhaven St property stalled.
By purchasing the 1915sqm Weston property, the council will be the sole owner of a 5152sqm development site.
The price the council paid will remain confidential "due to the commercial implications with any future negotiations".
Kiama council's acting general manager Bryan Whittaker said the area had been identified as a key strategic site in 2002.
"The properties at the rear of Terralong St were identified as key for additional parking and also for access through to Terralong St," Mr Whittaker said.
"Also it provides a site that in combination with our council car park could enable a future mixed-use development, which might provide for another supermarket, other specialty shops and a residential component.
"Having the council own both sites is a good investment ... having the one owner of the land obviously makes developing it easier."
The council intends to classify the land as operational and may then put the site out for expressions of interest.
Councillor Warren Steel said he was "ecstatic" with the outcome. "We had to do it, bite the bullet," he said. "That is what the people expect of us.
"Personally, I would like to see a Coles or even an Aldi, just so we can have some competition."
Source: www.illawarramercury.com.au
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