Sorrel is seemingly enjoying her retirement after leaving her high powered job at Pfizer recently. Found this picture of her (centre with the sling and balloon on her head) at one of her leaving dos in "my pictures" this morning, I suspect that she will take to retirement very well as ,like me she does enjoys a good "potter"
Mind you the hysteria of the " credit crunch" and sudden cost of living rise, makes life for the newly retired ( and for me who has to budget) that much more difficult.
I have noticed the instability within the big supermarket industry the most, and with the risk of sounding like a real no hoper, I am appalled at the blatant way they manipulate food costs in what seems like a totally arbitrary way.
Last week for example, sainsbury's own firelighters were 10p more than they were the week before! (duh....why?), various other items had similar "vast" increases,which (according to the BBC ) has raised the average family's food bill 800£ a year., We as consumers take this drip-drip erosion of our weekly budgets without complaining, but I must admit it is worrying. I am not surprised that for the first year, vegetable seed sales have out striped flower sales, as more people are having to "grow your own" in an effort to makes ends meet........
Hmm. This is interesting. When I worked in retailing years ago (oh happy days) we had things called KVIs ('known value items'). These were things that were consumer price sensitive, e.g. milk, eggs, etc. - that we would often sell below cost price in order to maintain the impression of lean pricing. Firelighters are certainly not KVIs and (cynically) I would also suggest predominently used by a narrow demographic of people (elderly and low-income groups) hence retailers will find it acceptable to bump up the price on these non-KVI lines to keep the masses happy. The main reason, however, for price hikes has been about retailers maintaining their margins. These (because of overseas exploitation/imports) are far higher than when I worked in retail, and so when combined with food shortages in developing nations and 'talking yourself into a crisis' economic conditions, then I'm not suprised that your firelighters have taken a hit. Nx
ReplyDeleteWhile it hurts me to put £80 of diesel in my car every fortnight I canm also remember when I was a wee lad and household elctronics [that many deem necessities now!] like TVs, washing machines, fridges etc were twice as expensive as they are now!
ReplyDeleteAnd - forget firelighters.. screw up your newspaper - it's free and recycling! lol
I knew you both would make a comment.......
ReplyDeletetee hee