June 06, 2005
Supermarkets selling fish that face extinction
The draft of a new Greenpeace report, which has been circulated to supermarkets, claims that chains such as Asda and Morrisons have no policies at all about which fish are caught in the most sustainable manner... The leaked report says that Asda still sells cod from the North Sea and the north-east Atlantic, even though scientists have been calling for a ban on fishing North Sea cod for the past three years.
A spokesman for Asda said: "As far I am aware all our fish - including the sharks which we used to sell but do not sell any longer - are from a sustainable source. In terms of them being endangered, I don't know where Greenpeace are coming from."
Given that there are no common/desirable fish available from 'sustainable' sources, it's hard to tell where ASDA is coming from. Given that most of the desirable fish stocks are somewhere between overfished, extremely rare, and all but extinct, it's surprising that fish is still on the menu.
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June 03, 2005
Modelling High Street diversity
D = f (m,b,c) (means Deptford is the place to go shopping)D (High Street Diversity) = f (m,b,c) where m is a wide mix of businesses best suited to normal spending patterns; b is the availability of everyday goods; and c is the presence of a wide number of businesses selling the same kind of thing
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April 03, 2005
Government relaxes ban on new out of town supermarkets
Under pressure from the Treasury, John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister announced that developers could get permission to build on greenfield sites if there is no suitable inner-city land available in particular areas.
Oh where have you gone John Gummer, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you...
This is just so stupid to be unbelievable, although given this government nothing really does surprise me. Out of town shopping centres kill existing retail developments, and make it harder for the poor and the less mobile to buy cheap food.
And one does wonder what on earth this has got to do with the Treasury... is the Treasury really the guiding hand behind all government policy, or just a convenient scapegoat?
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Stores have suppliers by 'short and curlies'
Despite this minor wee problem, the OFT seems to have decided that retailers were treating their suppliers fairly... rather than continuing their investigation 'till they've actually figured out what is going on in the supermarket business...
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April 02, 2005
On the link between bedsheets and inflation
Virginia Postrel: How Changing the Sheets Can Make a Hotel Room 'New'
A good analysis of how many of the basic statistics we take for granted are built on a series of compromises and value judgements which disappear from view by the time we get "results".
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March 29, 2005
theboxtank
theboxtank: a weblog focusing on big-box retailing.
[Similarly, check out the new urbanist...]
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March 23, 2005
Foods with outlawed dye still on sale in Edinburgh
As seems usual in the UK these days, store owners have been 'warned' when they should have been 'prosecuted'.
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March 19, 2005
There is no such thing...
What it doesn't say is that the offer terms will expose you to reams of spam and marketing solicitations, that the user survey is actually a lengthy marketing ploy, and that the sponsor offers needed to qualify for that free music player will almost certainly cost you money.
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March 15, 2005
Groceries on wheels
Produce to the People!
A San Francisco/West Oakland non-profit uses a 'Mobile Market' [aka a grocery store on wheels] to serve people who have little access to cheap nutrituous foodstuffs [i.e. they suffer from 'food insecurity'] due to a lack of inexpensive and/or convenient food stores.
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March 14, 2005
Banana wars
Banana farmers in the Windwards face economic ruin
Ah, the humble banana. My grandfather used to grow bananas, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the yellow tubers we buy in the UK are just absolute rubbish.
Come to think of it, most of the fruit you get over here is flavourless rubbish.
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February 17, 2005
London tolls chief attacks capital's 'rush job'
Yes, that'd be putting it mildly.
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January 17, 2005
Macy's prison cell...
A department store with its own holding cell???
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December 28, 2004
Chip-and-pin retail chaos looms
From Saturday, retailers can refuse to process a card purchase if the buyer does not know their four-digit personal identification number (PIN). Surveys suggest that millions of people have no idea of their number"
While this [C&P] does have disaster written all over it, I am rather more confident about it than I was two weeks ago, having seen just how badly implemented the US version of C&P is. The logic of C&P is that retail staff don't provide an adequate check of the card's signature [true, particularly in the US where clerks often never look at same] with the signature on the receipt, and so an alternative has to be found which forces the consumer to more accurately identify themselves - hence the need to enter a PIN number.
Now half of this problem could have been solved if more card issuers had just put people's pictures on the cards, but that was too simple. So now we will have to constantly use our PIN numbers if we want to buy anything in the UK, which is almost guaranteed to make it easier for other people to steal same, and since it will be much more difficult to prove this has happened, fraud costs which were previously passed on to the retailer will now be passed onto the poor consumer. Result, if you're a bank that is.
The worst implementation of C&P [or equivalent] that I've seen so far [and it was so bad it was absolutely breathtaking] was in a Duane Reade drug store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. A woman in line in front of me paid for her purchases with a card, and was instructed to enter her PIN number on an 8" x 12" LCD touch-screen, mounted at head height in front of the cash register so that everyone standing behind her [and there were probably twenty or thirty of us] could see her tap in each number.
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December 19, 2004
The whys and wherefores on online shopping
WRONG.
We know, as there is plenty of empirical evidence to back it up, that
- the longer you have been on-line, the more likely you are to be comfortable with the net and therefore shop online
- that the longer you have been online the more probable it is that you have broadband
We also knew that #1 was true several years before we knew that #2 was true, and that there is no evidence that #2 invalidates #1.
But we also know that the BBC tends to re-write press releases as news stories, rather than thinking about them in any great depth, so we can surmise that, as usual, they have got it utterly wrong once again.
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November 23, 2004
Tesco, home of the faux grocery store
Britain's biggest publishers, which include IPC, Emap and Dennis are reluctant to publicly criticise Tesco, which has rapidly built its share of the magazine and newspaper market in recent years. It will become Britain's biggest magazine retailer, pushing WH Smith into second place, if current trends continue.
Tesco's moves into small 'food' stores [i.e. Tesco Express etc.] bear closer scrutiny.
This is widely regarded as true, despite being completely inaccurate. Tesco's smallest stores aren't really food stores, despite beliefs to the contrary: they're really newsagents cum off-licenses [liquor stores] which happen to sell Tesco branded food. Now, in most neighbourhoods these stores open, there are already plenty of newsagents and places to buy booze: however, there often aren't many places to buy food.
And when up to a third of a 3,000 square foot store is devoted to alcohol and newspapers, that's a lot less food choices for your local consumer.
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November 15, 2004
Congestion fees are working, or not, maybe.
Congestion fees in London are reducing congestion, and radically reshaping how Londoners use both cars and public transport. This we know. The other effects of charging are, to put it mildly, less well understood and if we are honest they are also largely unexamined.
In particular, we know very little about how charging affects retailers. Charging does have some significant positives for retailers - in particular it is very good for their logistics systems. The negative impacts are, however, very poorly understood.
While retailers [particularly John Lewis] argue that the charge is behind a drop in sales, we know that consumption patterns in the UK are still rather fluid and that:
- mobile customers are still migrating away from inner city retailing to out of town shopping centres
- direct retail competition to central London is growing, particularly in other city centres [especially in Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow
- online shopping is still growing fast in the UK: this is money that isn't going directly into high-street stores
So, how much of the retail decline in central London is the fault of the congestion charge and how much attributable to wider patterns of retail restructuring...?
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November 12, 2004
Vow to fight Princes Street tanning salon
No Mr Anderson, it's not, and that's why they want to open there. Princes Street has been in decline for quite a while, a decade by my estimate.
Major retailers are either bailing out being priced out, or considering large-scale reconstruction. Even Mr Anderson recognises that much of the street is unusable .
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November 10, 2004
Surging Net sales impacts U.K. inflation... or not.
This would probably have a lot to do with a combination of rising interest rates and ludicrously high house prices... people just don't have the extra money, which forces retailers to keep prices down.
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November 05, 2004
Transport guru in call for free shop parking
Which is of course completely useless for shoppers who park on the street...
Transport guru my ****. But then we are talking about the man who allowed cars to park in bicycle lanes, so we shouldn't be too surprised.
A better alternative would be to tax out of town parking. That would even things up a bit...
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October 26, 2004
MP attacks banks 'profiteering from poorest'
MP attacks banks 'profiteering from poorest'
It is nice to know that a MP has recognised that things are cheaper for the [relatively] rich, a fact that has been true in the UK for a very, very long time. But then this MP has probably spent too long reading the BBC's online news, where the digital divide is only something that happens in the third world.
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September 28, 2004
Food labelling
Inaccuracy of food labelling exposed
I do find it strange that in a country that has an Advertising Standards Authority to make sure that ads are correct and not misleading [and which prevents you from saying "my widget is better than brand x's widget], food manufacturers are seemingly allowed to put whatever labelling they like on food products. What is the point of regulations that control lablelling of 'lean minced meat' but not 'minced meat lean'??
Proper, accurate food labelling is long overdue - the Americans can do it right, so why can't Europeans??
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September 15, 2004
Not exactly paying attention...
iTunes under fire over UK pricing
And it only took them 3 months to notice...?? Was the math that difficult??
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September 07, 2004
Clueless retail analysts, Part 2
Ah, no, Mr Mulligan of Jupiter 'Research'. The selection in a Virgin Megastore is dependent upon a wide variety of things, including the quality of its local competitiors, the state of Virgin's love affair with the DVD (still waning, it seems...), their interest in computer games and, most prosaically, the size of the actual store.
Online, however... music services should have everything. Within reason of course, which for the sake of argument I'll define as more than 95% of the music that has been released since, hmm, 1982 (i.e. the birth of the CD market) and say 80% of releases between then and 1960, which should cover the vast majority of what music is still in copyright.
And if the music's still copyrighted by the music industry, it should be available to buy online in whatever format suits me/you. If it's not, then the industry shouldn't bleat about people stealing/illegally downloading it.
And if it's not online, then the music industry should be rather leery of artists' whose royalties are being (virtually) witheld.
PS. remember that Hooverphonic album that I couldn't find in Edinburgh? Couldn't find it in Glasgow either, but did get it through an Amazon.co.uk reseller. Total VAT paid to HM Treasury: ��0. Even Gordon Brown should be concerned that not enough music's for sale online...
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September 02, 2004
When is free not free?
So, students will get, for free, software which is already free. And they will be able to buy music online with a 0% discount. Ooh, what progress.
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August 24, 2004
Just pay by direct debit...
British Gas puts up energy prices
And the BBC uncritically tells people that they can save £50 by switching to payment by direct debit. Which they could, if they all had bank accounts, and we already know many of the people most affected by this increase don't, and if they could also afford the risk of having the contents of their bank accounts seized if they aren't able to/don't pay their bills, which they can't, which is why many of the poorest people in the UK pay these types of bills by cash.
But hey, middle class news for the middle classes, because everyone worth knowing already has a bank account, n'est pas?
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August 21, 2004
The value of a back catalogue...
Hooverphonic: Blue Wonder
Is ZERO if you can't get it when you want it. Not a single record store in Edinburgh has any Hooverphonic albums, not to mention the particular one I want. And the music industry wonders why sales are down?? Hopefully somewhere in Glasgow will have it...
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The value of music
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Newspaper CD giveaways attacked
I love the music industry, I really do. Where else can we get so many people who are obviously from a different planet than the rest of us?? Music "managers" are upset that newspapers are giving away CDs - apparently this "give[s] an impression that music is free". Well, this "music" is free, just like all that stuff on the RADIO...
It also sends a message that music is cheap and disposable
Well well. Since when hasn't popular music been cheap and disposable?? Are you proud of every CD/LP/tape you bought? Don't you wish the ones you want to get rid of had a resale value of more than 50p? In many cases the resale value of something determines its true worth, and in the case of most music that's bugger all.
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August 16, 2004
Defending the indefensible
Council Leaders defend a bigger Kinnaird
A massive expansion of the Fort Kinnaird shopping centre will be "in the best interests of the whole city"
Well, the expansion won't be massive, and it won't be in the best interests of the city as a whole, but it will certainly be in the best interests of the City of Edinburgh Council, who are desperate to get every penny in taxes out of retailers that they possibly can.
Another two fingers to the city centre retailers, but then the council doesn't seem to think much of them anyway, so that's no real surprise.
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August 11, 2004
On the decline of urban architecture
Marginal Revolution: Has urban architecture declined?
Wandering around Edinburgh, Tyler ponders a perceived decline in semi/modern urban architecture. There are a couple of reasons for this he misses:
1. Postwar architecture developed free of the design constraints inherent within the pre-war planning system in the UK. The post-war need to rebuild meant that local authorities lost the ability to refuse planning permission for eyesores [etc.].
2. Postwar planners developed a love for eyesores, and a deep longing for the ability to redesign cities in a 'rational' way [particularly to suit the needs of the automobile...]. It will take at least another 50 years to fix these mistakes in the UK.
3. The regeneration of housing stock, particularly the very poor housing for much of the working class, was the impetus behind much post-war suburban design/development, rather than the continued development of upper/middle class suburbs.
Tyler is right to say that we do idealise times past - in urban terms not only do we idealise past times but we also often profoundly misunderstand them. The Royal Mile today is very much not a "historic" street, but a product [mainly] of the 1890s and the 1990s.
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/964722
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