Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Fishfinger,

I agree - it's a headache. The problem is that, when you are successful for a long period as the England cricket team were up until quite recently, it's difficult to get rid of established and experienced players who form the backbone of the team. You then invariably find that they all depart in quick succession and you have to start all over again from scratch, which is what's happening now.

But, Australia were in that same position just 18 or 24 months back...

22 July 2014 Last updated at 12:32

Five ways Aldi cracked the supermarket business

By Magazine Monitor
A collection of cultural artefacts

Karl Albrecht, the co-founder of German discount supermarket chain Aldi along with brother Theo, has died. But how has Aldi become a household name, asks Chris Stokel-Walker.

1. Basic store layout
Walking into an Aldi is a totally different experience to walking into a gargantuan superstore such as Tesco or Asda. Bright, spacious rooms decorated with huge gaudy hoardings are replaced with small, dimly-lit shops with narrow aisles and sparse shelves. The chain sells a fraction of the items bigger supermarkets do, focusing on a single own-brand variant of any given product. As German newspaper Der Spiegel wrote in 2010, talking about Aldi's first forays into retail in Germany, "this nation of sensible shoppers got the grocery market it deserved: as cheap as possible, practical and with absolutely no frills."

2. Sell bursts of unusual items
The supermarket is famous for its flash sales. Ski poles, cycling equipment and tablet computers have all made fleeting visits to Aldi's shelves - but only in limited numbers. These higher-price items, available for a short time only, are "a great way of getting people to come back to the store," says retail analyst Graham Soult. "It's random stuff but it taps into the quirkiness of Aldi, that they sell items the other supermarkets don't."

3. General penny pinching
The financial fastidiousness of the Albrecht brothers as they led Aldi to success in their native Germany was well-known. Checkout staff had to hand type product codes into their tills in Germany until the early 2000s because the firm didn't want to pay for swish scanning systems that had been standard in other supermarkets for decades. Staff at its headquarters were said to have been chastised for using brand new pencils, rather than wearing out the lead on older ones. And the site where both brothers are buried in Essen was spruced up after complaints with new rhododendrons - bought, on offer, from Aldi's own store.

4. Satisfying middle-class shoppers
Aldi's customer base has changed as savvy middle-class shoppers started using the store. Its proportion of shoppers in the UK classified in the AB social category has increased from around 13% in 2012 to 19% today. The supermarket has altered its stock to cater to them. Alongside continental cheeses and meats - already seen as exotic - it has branched out into more luxury items. Late last year it introduced cut-price fresh lobster tails and serrano ham in time for Christmas. Last month it began stocking trendy Wagyu beef steaks at a reduced price.

5. Be in the right place at the right time
Aldi's massive growth in the UK coincided with a time of tightened purse strings. Low price is still the key. "In the last few years everything seems to have aligned," says Soult. Reportedly the only public statement that co-founder Karl Albrecht said in the entire history of the company was made in 1953, but was as pertinent to British shoppers in the post-crash world of 2007 as it was to German shoppers in the wake of World War Two: "Our advertisement is the cheap price." It has also benefited from a change in what shoppers want supermarkets to be. "In the 1990s, supermarkets were getting bigger and bigger," explains Soult. "Now the trend has shifted, and smaller stores like Aldi are what people want."

Indeed indeed Hilary. We ruled the World for what about 3 to 4 years and then the South Africans came to the fore.

Well worth a look at the Woolworths Museum. Brings back memories. Still going in the USA and Australia. Much much smaller company.

http://www.woolworthsmuseum.co.uk/

For all those Tory voters upset by the pic of George Osborne with drugs & a hooker, here it is again. pic.twitter.com/juNcjpwqC1” #Skypapers '

http://www.channel4.com/news/tony-blair-in-london-michael-crick-gaza-labour-20th

Well you can't call him a racist , not Blair George

He's at it again!

Class War 2014: The Rich Kids of Snapchat
Posted on July 19, 2014 by David Hencke

ETON posh boys before the Hunt.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh sit down, shut that door everhard.....

Nice picture. Fine group of future leaders.

Difficult choice! Them or maybe this group.

You just leave Millilitre alone.. tis hungry work this sitting down lark you know -):

Tories those hays. Your forgetting Millwall fans come from higher middle class familys. !!!!!!!!!!!!

George Osbourne apologising to his party re- hooker and drugs......

The Lead of Europe!

just watched a video of hamas firing rockets from a play ground for children and the children on the back ground cheering it on .
hamas are terrorists and the people who voted them in are worse than the thugs they look up too . Israel should wipe them off the face of the world hamas are just scum terrorists make no mistake ,

schools in Birmingham the fact is every one in power was to scared to speak out because they did not want to upset MUSLIMS . THE RACE CARD ONCE AGAIN DESTROYING THE UK . IF THEY DO NOT LIKE THE WAY WE LIVE IN THE UK THEN FCUK OFF BACK HOME

Haze,

Post 44194

Does your family know you are posting their images on Moneyam?

Be your own boss, employment minister tells pupils

Esther McVey tells Telegraph that self-employment should be given the same social status and respect as the more conventional university route into employment.


Miss McVey, who joined the Cabinet in the recent reshuffle, strongly defended self-employment, saying that for many people setting up their own firm is “better” than working for an employer. Photo: GETTY




By James Kirkup

10:00PM BST 22 Jul 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/10984595/Be-your-own-boss-employment-minister-tells-pupils.html


Middle-class children should believe that setting up their own business is every bit as good as going to university and working for a big company, the employment minister has said.


Esther McVey told The Daily Telegraph that self-employment should be given the same social status and respect as the more conventional university route into employment.


The Conservative Party should be championing those who have the “spark” to create their own businesses and become “little engines” of wealth creation in their communities, she said.


The minister, who has a law degree from Queen Mary, University of London, was discussing figures that show strong growth in employment levels, partly driven by a big rise in the number of people becoming self-employed.


Some economists have suggested that self-employed workers often earn lower salaries and end up claiming tax credits.


Miss McVey, who joined the Cabinet in the recent reshuffle, strongly defended self-employment, saying that for many people setting up their own firm is “better” than working for an employer.

Asked if middle-class parents should encourage their children to view self-employment as a viable alternative to a degree, the minister said the different routes to work should be seen as equals.

“I believe in choice. If that is your route, to go to university and get a job that way, that is fantastic. If your route is that you are practically minded and that is what presses your button and you do an apprenticeship and you get a job that way, that is fantastic.”

She added: “But if you have this seed, this idea, this creativity, you want to set up a business, then that is what you should do and we as a Conservative Party should be able to support those people.

“That is what we should be doing, liberating everyone’s potential, whether it’s a self-made individual, whether it’s someone taking the university route, whether it’s the apprenticeship route. They are all equal and good and worthwhile.”

The Coalition has introduced a New Enterprise Allowance to provide money and support to people on benefits to start their own business.

So far, 46,000 have claimed the allowance, and Miss McVey said that a significant number are aged between 18 to 24.

“To think that we are all the same and going to follow the same journey, that is wrong. We are going to support and liberate people, to give people as many opportunities to succeed as possible, without being prescriptive,” she said.

Official figures last week showed that the UK unemployment rate has fallen to 6.5 per cent and the number of people in work stands at 30.64 million, just short of an all-time record.

The same figures show that more than 4.5 million people are self-employed, the highest since records began in 1992. The number of people working for themselves rose by 404,000 over the past year.

Critics, including the Trades Union Congress, have said that many new self-employed jobs are of low quality, suggesting that people working for themselves are doing so out of necessity.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, last week questioned the value of self-employed posts, saying that such workers have “seen their earnings drop by nearly 15 per cent in the last five years”.

Miss McVey, who grew up in Merseyside as the daughter of a self-employed property developer, said: “For my family, the people I know, they set up their own businesses, they looked after their wives and children — it set them free.”

She also cited an independent survey, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, as showing that only a fifth of people who start their own companies say they do so out of necessity.

The Department for Work and Pensions said that 60 per cent of the growth in self-employment since 2010 has been in the professional and skilled managerial sectors.