seriously tho it will suppliers like bigm that will be expected to cut there costs. possibly lay off a pile of people make a few up to supervisors and expect them to pump in the extra hours for free as they are on a salaries.
The last company I worked for (utilities) was 51% owned by a Pensions Company. Food, warmth, or ipads, it's just business, with investors (including pensions companies) unfortunately it's the way the system who's yoke we all toil under works. The OFT is tasked with ensuring local competition in a bid to keep prices to the public down/fair. We could argue all day about cahoots or cartels. The picture is far larger than a few fat cats keeping all the money cheated from the poor down trodden proletariat. Maybe start a revolution? Equality for all, or did they try that... Food, fuel and utilities, very soft targets.
I happily pay more in better shops than Tesco's for my shopping. Its like going to the Jeremy Kyle green room at the Local Tesco's round our way and thats just the bloody staff.
I don't think anybody minds when a company does well but people do mind as to how they've done so well. In the case of supermarkets it's because they've screwed every body along the way. They've put smaller retailers out of business, squeezed the farmers and suppliers to a point where they operate on the fine line and the only choice the consumer has is which of the supermarkets to go hand their money to. The reason profits are falling is because they've reached the point where they can't go any further , they've taken over everything, control everything, cut prices as far as they can and are running out of direction. When a company stops growing if either stagnates or goes backwards. For the first time ever the likes of Tesco's are going to have to live in the real world and one that they cannot control.
We live in something that resembles a free market economy where the laws of supply and demand, profit and loss, all apply. Lip service is paid to the idea of anti-trust, anti-competitiveness and such. Supermarkets and similar businesses are a natural progression in this free market. The choice, if you don't like it, is for everyone to vote with their wallets and eschew supermarkets, etc in favour of local traders - never going to happen - or ask for controls to be put in place that restrict how the free market works - god help us then. I only have one question - my local shop, the nearest one to me - is a supermarket. Do I shop there or do I ignore my most local trader in favour of one further away?
I would also add that quoting profit without reference to the turnover and capitalisation of the company is pretty pointless.
I'm not so sure, when people are struggling to put decent food on their table, making 3.3 bn on foodstuffs seems a bit excessive to me.
Good memory @finm, but no sirree. That arose from an ongoing joke that has chizel ( I think) sending me to all sorts of horse races ( i can't exactly remember why, as i dont like horse racing. In fact, the only horse race i have ever been to is the Mendip Farmers Point-to-Point, which is less horse racing, and more Thelwell). Anyway, as one of those interactions, id suggested that i was already going to Ascot races on a corporate jolly, as head of Tescos meat buying division ( after all, why would a meat buyer go to a horse race, its not like the supermarkets use horse meat in their food is it...?) oh, hang on.... Anyway, you get my drift finm, twas a joke and hence your mistaken conclusion No, more recently my CV covers..... well i can't tell you what i do, but here is my passport photo and this is my immediate line manager...
Andy, do you really mean it when you typed that they could reduce their prices by 2/3 and still make a £billion ? So something they sell currently for 99p could be reduced to 33p and they would still be profitable is achievable in your mind ? You may need a bit of a reality check . If you don't like them fair enough, I don't like them either but you should check out their turnover, costs, gross profit and net profit before making comments like that.
You misunderstood my point - and I agree entirely with what you say above - about the drivers for a company being profitable. Many people are far too quick to knock a company for making a large profit, just like they are very quick to complain when a pension fund doesn't make as much money as they think it should. Unfortunately these things are two sides of the same coin and come hand-in-hand with each other. The main driver for any publicly traded company is to make profit for the shareholders. The majority shareholders of large companies are usually pension funds. Profits go up, pension does well. Profits go down, pension does badly. Unfortunately you can't have one without the other... but it doesn't stop the uninformed from complaining!
This isn't strictly true. My local supermarket (sainsburys) have taken it upon themselves to repackage items and charge more. ie halve the weight/quantity and (more or less) double the price. This I find a particularly despicable patronizing practice. They seem oblivious to the fact that people might even notice and continue at random to just take the piss. Making profits wherever possible at whatever cost to Joe Public. Fuck em. I would rather stick my balls in a food blender than shop at Toscos, and am slowly but ever surely deserting JSS in favour of other European owned supermarkets and sourcing meat and veg elsewhere. Fuck loyalty and the corporate fuck sticks that run these shit houses. Cunts.
Our local Toscos introduced these things recently there must be a couple of hundred of em in store fuck knows how much that cost, they'll probably call it progress but I've yet to see any bugger using em
Yeah as a farmer myself, we as suppliers have been putting up with underhand tactics for years. It seems now that they are now extending them to the consumer in a desperate attempt to increase falling profits.
For phuques sake Greyman, get off the fence and say what is on your mind ! You`ll feel much better for it.
Cheaper than employing real people to sit on the tills! It reduces the operating costs as they don't have to pay wages, sick pay, holiday pay, cover fag breaks, pension, training, invest in buying tills, servicing the conveyor belt, etc, etc. Plus those little scanners will work 24/7 without demanding an inflation busting wage increase or moaning about working conditions on the internet It means Tescos can also increase their profit as their operating costs go down, which provides value for shareholders and helps to boost the pension of the guy moaning about how much profit Tescos make. I've noticed that more and more tills are becoming self service these days. Somebody obviously did a whole load of maths to figure out that it was more "cost effective" (ie, cheaper) to give up traditional till space for these things. It always makes me laugh when I go in B&Q though as at least you can pay a lot quicker with them now as there never used to be any bugger on the tills before anyway!
The cheaper super markets are far better IMHO. I started using them a few years ago and they appeared to be popular only with a certain "class" . Not so now, since the down turn many peps have woken up to what good value they are and the quality of the produce. I personally hate the way many of the bigger chains price many things at "just a pound", when they are clearly over priced! Tight, miserable old git me! :Bag:
