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More reasons to shop at MORRISONS. Yes, really!

… And no, really! The management is blissfully unaware that I’m penning this. So, I don’t suppose I’ll  earn a week’s free shopping!

Of course I was snootily sceptical. Last year it was a just another branch of a ‘middle-brow’ chain of supermarkets which happened to be opening within walking distance of where I live.

O.K., I was very impressed when we visited on their opening day.

But I couldn’t be bothered to change my regular routine of visiting the Prestwich branch of TESCO by car, where I couldn’t see under the horrid lighting and I shouted unnoticed at the half-stocked shelves and everything else I loathed about the store.

But I soon changed my mind.

In fact, the new branch of MORRISONS at Stanley Road, Whitefield, Bury, Lancashire, really does put the ’super’ back in supermarket. It achieves this without any of the pretentions of its smart-ass rivals, but by working quietly and diligently to please people like me.

The store is large and airy with a choice of two entrances. The aisles are blissfully wide and the shelves appear to be permanently fully stocked with most items I need and with what seem to be real bargains. It also offers a packing-service at the till, a custom long-discontinued by TESCO.

The kosher and vegetarian sections (of major importance to me) are no exception and although there are a good number of items I can’t find to match those I did manage to buy at TESCO, I appreciate that a change in shopping habits means some compromises. I can live with those.

I can also live without TESCO’s Clubcard points as the pennies we’re supposed to save are simply loaded on to the cost of everything we buy.

I’m impressed further by MORRISONS apparently sincere sense of community. Not only has the Whitefield store’s management  created a wonderful relationship with our syanagogue - its near-neighbour - this week, they also included the local MACCABI sports club in a charity collection at the check-out.

Thanks, fellas! I’ll be back next Sunday.

msniw

I was watching the umpteenth story about  TV reality  show star, JADE GOODY,  when our ‘phone rang.

On the line was the ineffably sad but resigned father of a 49-year-old woman who had just died from a lingering leukaemia.

‘S’ had been a long-serving but little known  member of our congregation. Only those involved in such arranging such matters were aware of the situation and knew that according to Jewish tradition no funeral arrangements could be made until after her death, although it had been expected for months.

Here was a woman who had led a blameless, quiet life and who will be buried tomorrow in the simple presence of her grieving family and close friends. She leaves behind, not only inconsolable children but desperate ageing parents who surely would have expected her to bury them.

What has happened to ‘S’ will also - barring a miracle -  befall JADE.

But there will be no huge financial help for those who survive ‘S’; no hangers-on; no money-grubbing publicists, cod alternative health advisers or paparazzi  to record  either her passing, the prayers intoned at the graveside or indeed the heartfelt hesped (tribute) which our rabbi is no doubt composing even as I pen this.

I wrote in similar vein some years ago when another congregant (a woman who had died from the multiple illnesses  of old age) shared her funeral day with GEORGE BEST. The Irish footballer, readers may recall, had killed himself with booze but, like GOODY,  enjoyed being worshipped like a Greek god even to the end.

If I’ve got my sums right, JADE has moved in the national psyche from hated racist moron to ‘Little Nell’ in less than 18 months.

Does she deserve her horrible illness? Of course not!

Do her  new husband, loving children and devoted parents deserve to lose their wife, mother and daughter? Don’t be silly!

But does she deserve all this fatuous adulation and unwonted attention?

Perhaps MAX CLIFFORD’s accountant will answer that.

 msniw

WE’RE IN a deep world recession.

Right?

Kids are most probably being told by adults everywhere that pocket money and treats will continue to get thinner than a super model’s thigh circumference.

Right again?

So what’s just happened to me at Bury Towncentre Bus Interchange?

Well, I’ll tell you.

I was waiting patiently in the queue for the famously elusive No. 135 (that’s the one that’s supposed to arrive and depart every 10 minutes if only the drivers could tell the time) when I saw the kid in front of me drop a five pence piece.

O.K., it was only five pence.

But when I picked it up and tried to hand it to him  he shook his arrogant little head in disdain and REFUSED TO ACCEPT IT!

So, I gave it to his mother who had the decency to thank me.

The incident reminds me of two things:

• How my mother once made me walk back into Solihull Village (near Birmingham) from Streetsbrook Road where we then lived to buy a postage stamp from my own money as I’d lost the original on the way home from a shopping expedition. This was quite a long walk for a pudgy, short-legged 10-year-old.

• How a few weeks ago, when  I handed a £5.00 note to a cashier at the Bury branch of the Britannia Building Society and she remarked how rare a commodity such notes had become, I recalled that when I was a nipper, farthings and threepenny bits were still in circulation.

‘Ecky thump! Am I really that old?

Crikey O’Wotsits! Aren’t children taught to care about money any more? Is it really that ‘un-cool’ and is this the real reason why the economy is in such a mess? No-one really cares how hard it is to earn that ruddy 0.5p!

This has to be when I sign off with: “I don’t believe it!”

 msniw

Latest report from Bloomberg, 18 February 2009:

“Brent crude for April settlement traded 81 cents lower at $44 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange today”.

Very nice!

So will someone please explain why pump prices keep increasing.

My husband paid:

89.9 p/l at Tesco Express yesterday (Tues. 17 Feb).

It has now risen by 0.7p since early January.

Furthermore, domestic fuel giant, E.ON is still trying to increase customers’ direct debits despite announcing a drop in tariffs from the end of March.

This must be a classic case of ‘better in my account than yours’ and I’ll continue to fight this until E.On’s customer advisers are sick of hearing my voice and name.

Oh, what’s that? They already are? So why doesn’t the company behave …?

msniw

GLAD to hear that domestic fuel prices are beginning to drop - just like I predicted.

But I wonder for how long.

As I’m still keeping a gimlet eye on petrol pump prices, I must report:

• Feb. 12 TESCO, Walkden, Salford:     88.9 per litre

There you go (if you can still afford to do so!),  filling station petrol has now risen by 0.5 p/l since January.  Don’t say you weren’t warned!

msniw

So, the big boys of British banking have just had to say ’sorry’ in public.

Ugh, how pathetic!

‘Sorry, Sir’ does not restore the homes and livelihoods of hundreds and thousands of ordinary people.

It’s like the wriggling excuses from television presenters, JONATHAN ROSS and JEREMY CLARKSON following their various unpleasant remarks; or  like kids and  workmates being forced to make false apologies on pain of reprisal from those in authority.

Once bad things are said or done, at best they are glossed over; they can’t be erased as they’re simply another form of bullying and the scars remain for ever in the heart and soul of the victim.  

Which reminds me:

Next, I’d love to see the fuel giants feel the cane instead of striking oil.

When are they going to admit they’re still robbing the public blind?

Today’s rueful post includes another note on the inexorable rise in petrol pump prices:

• Feb. 06 TESCO, Hindley, Lancs:     87.9 per litre

This means it’s risen by 4p per litre since the New Year.

Let’s all beware!

msniw