Next Round Of The Anti-Tobacco Strategy Soon To Be AnnouncedDuring today's Prime Minister Questions Mr Brown announced that there will be a new Tobacco Strategy Policy coming in to effect in 2009. I think that this will include all the things that were in the consultaion document that the government published earlier this year and the date for implimentation will be October One 2009. We will see:A ban on open display of tobacco in shops.A ban on packets of 10 cigarettes.The introduction of plain packets.Harsher penalties for bad retailers.And this will lead to:Greater security risks for retailers.Fewer legitimate retailers.Higher risk to health from counterfit product.High cost of change for retailers.And on and on and on.There has been much lobbying and the Tories seem to support small...

Time To Cut The RangeKevin Kerry rep and I took another look at sandwich sales this morning to identify the best sellers. Part of the reward package that Kerry roundsman have is to drive stock efficiency, they get a pay hit for waste.So with this in mind we have chopped the bottom half of the Heinz sandwich range out. As these are the products that we are returning and are selling less than one per day this month (and last) there is no loss to us and a gain for Kevin.Each morning this week we have been talking about sending a message to his employers about the need to ditch the current sandwich range, soon. Cutting out the poor sellers is one element and Kevin is encouraging me to join the Kerry Facebook group and posting comments there as he knows that their Managing Director reads the...

The Sandwich Range Is All ImportantThere is no getting away from the fact that the current financial hurricane is blowing into every corner of the British economy. Our customers, our suppliers and ourselves can not escape its effect.We have been here before, the down turn of the early 1990's hurt, but we did not have EPoS then. We now have lots of data and are keeping a close eye on how the various categories are preforming. One trigger for concern is when suppliers change any of the daily product ranges as Kerry did with sandwiches in September. Out went Scoff and in came Heinz. That should have improved sales as Heinz is a well known household name, but the financial huricane landed soon after and sales started to fall off.Kevin their rep and I just thought that it was a result of the...

Richard Green, On The Front LineLast week the Independent had Richard Green on the front page. Their story highlighted the links between individual spending decisions that grow to effect peoples lives. In the bottom half of the report the say of the Solihull newsagent:'Hard hit - the corner shop 'Only half of the neon lights are on in the newsagent's shop. The owner, Richard Green, is trying to save money. A quarter of his weekend trade has fallen off since overtime was cancelled at the Land Rover factory down the road. A big part of his profit comes from cigarette sales. "On a Saturday and a Sunday I used to get 25 to 30 car workers coming in between 5.30am and 7.30am on their way to weekend overtime work," he says, perched on a tall stool behind the counter. "That's been cancelled for...

The election may be over, but I just couldn’t resist reposting this animation on this blog.       ...

Just AnnouncedPensioners and other recievers of benefits WILL beable to use their local Post Office as the place to collect their cash from.This has just been announced by James Purcell, Works and Pension Secretary. The BBC report:'Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell said the Post Office would retain its £1bn benefits contract which faced competition from a private firm. He told MPs post offices were "at the heart of the community" and he would do "nothing to put the network at risk".This is great news as it has been a big worry for Sub Postmasters and their communities up and down the country. For more than two years the most repeated question I have been asked is'Is our Post office safe?'I can now say with out a doubt that it is. Now we need the various arms of government to...

As Siri said, the point about that story - the one when her ex-husband beat her - is that she got away. Telling the story helped her to shed the life. Because life is about change, about being adaptable, about the search for new forms. Death is about getting stuck in a form that is beyond metamorphosis - about a form that has become sclerotic and in which we are incapacitated. In artistic life the search is the same, for new forms. The novel, like all other artistic endeavours, only survives because of its adaptability. And perhaps it’s the same with Theastuene, it wasn’t originally as it is today, the slates on the roof are new; back in its first incarnation the roof was of sod, the glass panes in the windows certainly not double-glazed. And the white paint which preserves...

In my job I'm sometimes surprised by the expectation that I should persuade people to take web engagement seriously.I think the argument is already won - you really don't have to look too hard to find examples of the web being used to engage, influence, and change lives around the world. The Obama campaign showed the web playing a crucial role in the election of the most powerful man in the world. Videos deliverd via the internet are being used to radicalise young men in Afghanistan. And - in our daily lives - social media is profoundly changing the way we communicate with each other. This is mainstream media now.I was at the eDemocracy conference yesterday as part of a panel talking about government web engagement. The conference is a worthy exercise, bringing together practitioners to...

The Mail on Sunday yesterday weighed in at 1228g and the polybagged suppliment pack hit the scales at 941g. Inside this their were 6 loose adverts totalling 367g which is the first time since the new scales came in at the beginning of October that their accumulation factor has kicked in.Under the old sacle we werre paid for the accumulated weight on issues with loose adverts that weighed over 100g. On the new scale it is 300g, so today we will get 7p per delivered copy.The heavy weight loose adverts werefrom John Lewis at 110g and Morrison at 94g.We also will get 3p per HND copy for the Saturday edition of the Mail for the Toy R Us catalogue that weighed...

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The New Man Got The Special TreatmentThe election of Barak Obama was something different and newspapers clearly planned for the event and expected the big increase in sales. The LA Times reports: 'Apparently looking for something old to go with something new (Barack Obama) and something blue (a more Democratic Congress), the American people bought newspapers in huge numbers Wednesday, a day after the historic election of the nation's first black president. rom the nation's largest daily, USA Today, to its more modest broadsheets, newspapers expanded press runs to accommodate enormous sales. Some papers even sold special gift editions and framed front pages. But news racks even if they were replenished with copies became barren in the blink of an eye as people scrambled to snag mementos...

A Missing NewspaperI started delivering newspaper in 1966 and have memories of late running newspapers, but only on days of real heavy snow. In the 1970's and 1980's it was the unions that seemed to cause most of the supply problems. But in 1989 we went independent with HND and really started to find what the problems were.With supply chain reoganisation and the wholesale house that our copies came through moving from 10 miles away to 25 miles things got a lot more difficult. As the 'new boy' I attempted to correct the service failure of the publishers and wholesalers to endivour to give my customers a good service.Of course this could only be a short term solution as we were picking up the entire cost of correcting a systemic industry failure. So we developed a strategy for staying...

New Print CentreI have just had an informative conversation with Des O'Dwyer of News International about my post that I put up earlier this morning. I wrote this, (now changed):'While listening to the radio newspaper reviews this morning the BBC were reporting that some of the titles were bringing out very late editions. I guess that these will be for the main centres of population and clearly NI will be using their street sellers to get them out to the paying public, not the traditional newsagent network.'I have to say that I am wrong and have corrected the post. I do apologies to News International for not checking first and assuming what was happening.Des described to me the significant planning and operation that NI have put in place to provide the late late edition that the story of...

When I watched Barack Obama’s acceptance speech upon receiving confirmation that he had won the US presidency, becoming the first black person to do so, I was very happy. I hadn’t been up very long, this was around 6.30am, and suddenly the world felt a lot lighter, and there was hope where yesterday there was [...]...

We live in strange times. For the past few weeks we’ve been waking up with some dread, expecting another depressing set of economics news, company results or political/global crises. Then comes this morning. I awoke halfway through John McCain’s concession speech then fired up the TV to watch Obama give what I’m sure will go down in history as one of the great speeches of this century. There will obviously come the torrent of questions as to whether the incredibly powerful rhetoric of the president elect will convert to the reality of change. But it’s hard not to share the optimism that in dark economic times there is hope for something better. Some inspiration for all of us, whatever we are trying to...

POCA2 Announcement On Friday?It would seem from the reports appearing in the UK press that we will hear who has won the government Benefits payment contract on Friday. There is the expectation, due to the long delay, that Post Office Ltd will not get the contract that runs from 2011. This will clearly have a devastating effect on the future of the network that will hurt the profitability of the business long term. With the reduction in branch viability that will follow this decision we can expect thousands of branches to shut in an unmanaged manner. So PayPoint retailerswhich upto now have delivered a bill payment service that is about taking money in to their stores will have to learn how to pay money out, safely. taking money in and keeping it safe is relatively simple as the cash can...

DAILY DISTRIBUTION NOTICEFORSMITHS NEWS CRAWLEYWEDNESDAY 05 NOVEMBER 2008MAGAZINE ROUNDS 152 & 172The driver has managed to lose his Customer keysfor both of the above rounds - To ensure securityof product we are sending him to deliver during themorning so this will mean a substantial delay.We apologise for the inconvenience caused.NEWSPAPER INFORMATIONAll titles are in and packed.There are no re runs this morning.Due to arrival of 5 titles close to cut offdeparture times are not early.DEPARTURESFIRST ROUND DEPARTED 4.10LAST ROUND DEPARTED 5.30PUBLISHERS' ARRIVAL TIMESDaily Mail 3.45Daily Mirror 3.00Daily Express 3.50Daily Star 3.50Independent 3.00Sun 2.50Daily Telegraph 3.42Times 2.50Guardian 3.50Sport 3.50Racing Post 3.00Financial Times 3.50 So the USA will have a new President with...

Home Comment at end 4th November, 2008, 23:00 GMT By this time tomorrow night we’ll know, probably, who is running the “free” world I’m not going to say anything more about the Obama birth certificate. There is enough here on other pages, and I just DO NOT KNOW enough about this issue to care any more. But I thought I’d try to add a few factual videos. These are pieces of filmed and recorded information, not “rumours”, political videos or attempts to “diss” anyone. There are plenty more videos on YouTube. Go and do your own search. For me, I haven’t found anything to put me off McCain. Wish I could say the same for Obama. For the international threats facing us, I’d rather have McCain in charge of the FREE WORLD. But the...

Its Going To Be BadAs the government continue to delay the announcement of who has won the Post Office Card Account replacement contract I have been directed by Bill Quango MP to look at Hellmail. They have posted on POCA2 and their thoughts don't sound to hopeful. They say:'One would have thought that if Post Office Ltd has managed to hold on to the POCA contract, the government would have been keen to announce it. After all, the onset of a recession needs at least a nugget of good news here and there if only to lift the mood of the electorate but the silence is deafening on this one.'Sounds reasonable, but they also say:'One subpostmaster I spoke to today suggested that Post Office Ltd almost certainly has lost the tender but that the government won't risk announcing that now and...

Good luck today, America. You’re hopefully about to make change as only Americans can—huge, epic, brash and unequivocal. We know you’re sick and tired of being seen as a bullying country run by idiots, fed up of being dragged into wars when you don’t even have basic health care guaranteed for all your citizens, and mighty [...]...

Handling The IssueAfter recieving King magazine yesterday I emailed Mike Miram at Comag about getting copies of a wrong title for us and got a reply back from quite quickly. He is in Istanbul at a conference, but said he would get it investigated as he could see that King did not fit our customer profile. He will let me know why they allocated the title once it has been investigated.I also phone my contact at Smiths News Worcester Magazine Copy Allocation Centre to ask him to investigate how the title slipped through their system as we are on their range Capacity Trial that should mean that only appropriate titles are added to our range. One of the rules of the trial is that when a new title is added a non seller/poorest seller is removed from our standing order. Hopefully we will stem...

Just finished a few weeks of training in London. One thing I have learnt is that one can never stop learning and developing. One of the courses was ‘leadership’. I offered my views that leadership includes liberating others to fulfil their own potential. I’m glad we’ve greatly increased the training budget in our missions in Nigeria. Helping staff to take learning and development seriously is win win for everyone. I hope the quality of our performance and the high standards we set for ourselves can also have some influence outside the mission. The days are getting colder in Britain so I’m looking forward to getting back to some African heat! I’ve talked to many Government colleagues in different Ministries about our busy work schedule in months ahead. We hope to do a lot...

Tired, Sad And Shut Australian blogger Mark Fletcher posted this about the closure of another independent newsagent in Inverness. The Press and Journal say:'A fourth Inverness newsagents has closed within the space of three months, it emerged yesterday. And businesses leaders warned the situation would only get worse in the current economic climate because new regulations for retailers are set to be introduced. Kingsmills General Store, on Kingsmills Road, closed its doors on Wednesday, and has not reopened since. The same day, the store’s operator, Keith Orrock, was sequestrated – the Scottish term for bankruptcy – at a civil hearing at Inverness Sheriff Court.'Yes the business climate is hard and government have been attacking small independent newsagent over the past decade as...

The concept of the library - a building filled with precious books - the knowledge store of civilisation, has had an enormous emotional pull throughout the centuries. In history, when the barbarians sacked any city the first place they’d inevitably head for was the library. And all they wanted to do was burn it down. The information in those irreplaceable tomes was - and is - vulnerable to destruction and with it civilizations slide back into the dark ages. This idea spilled over from Victorian values to Modernism. No decent town is a proper place to live unless it has a library of its own. The library and the public hospital are at the core of civic pride. But now in this new dark age of accountants and profit, at the ‘end of history’ even, these precious values...

We are in the midst of a reconfigure. The desks are shifting at the end of this week. We are (well, those affected anyway) handing over people we have been working with. In one of those funny twists of fate that I partly attract but for which I can’t remain completely blameless (I might have some issues with ‘goodbyes’!), I seem to be taking over cases at a far speedier rate than I am handing over cases so it’s a bit busy - to put things mildly. In order to ease some of the frantic pace that seems to have pervaded the building, our managers in their wisdom (and I mean that seriously although it might sound sarcastic!) have decided to take on a temporary social worker to assist with some of the less exciting but necessary work needed to close some of the cases of...

More To The Table Than First SightToday's Mail on Sunday was on the heavy side. The total package weighed in at 1286g of which 276g was loose advertising. More than 20% of the total weight!There were 2 that we will get the home delivery payment for, Argos at 124g and the Purfume Shop at 93g. We should get at some stage in the future 5.5p per registered delivered copy.Hum.On the old scale we would have recieved a payment of 4.4p. Maybe there is more to this scale than meets the eye and I will continue to monitor it to see how fair it turns out to be.44p to the...

Cullompton Shopping, Left In The PastWhile we were staying at my dad's a relative from Devon was also there. She has had a life long connection with Cullompton and district having many years ago delivered milk around the town.I asked her what effect the new Tesco had made to the town centre and her reply was revealing. She told me that she had not been to the new Tesco, but she was aware that the town centre had been effected with a dip in trade and the road works between the town centre and the main car park had not helped. She said that the town centre had been fading for some years as most people she knew did their main shop elsewhere.With the economy in a tail spin I fear Cullompton shop keepers are in for a truly challenging couple of years, although from what I read Tesco are not...

Well Done George, My MP is on...

Visit To My DadAt the end of our holiday we spent a few days staying with my father. He still lives in the village where I grew up so I have an interest in the shops that serve the community. In some ways the village has features that are simillar to the one where we live. It has around 3,000 inhabitance, it is surrounded by countryside, a majority of the villagers are over 50 years old and many have lived there for more than 20 years.My father has been telling me that the main village shop had changed hands earlier this year and the new owners had invested a significant amount of money in to redeveloping the store. It has a new shop front, a new floor, a new ceiling and lighting, it has new fixures and refigeration, a new counter and new layout.When we went to have a look it was clear...

I want to draw your attention to UK's Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband's announcement regarding new climate change policies. Simply put, the UK will commit to cut its emissions 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. The Secretary explicitly rejected the idea that the financial crisis should cause the world to pull back on climate change action, saying that those who advise this "misunderstand the relationship between the economic and environmental tasks we face." Aside from committing to dramatically cut emissions, Mr. Miliband is also planning to introduce a 'feed-in tariff' for small renewable energy projects. For those not familiar with electricity lingo, feed-in tariffs are used to help renewable sources of electricity overcome the economic hurdles of...