A big thank you to those who voted for Brexit

There tend to be no deliveries of shopping or take aways in our part of France. You can order on line and go and collect your order - this is called Drive - but as we would need to go to the supermarket area to do that I would prefer to choose my food too.
Local shops are doing OK I think and most restaurants now have a take away service.
U.K. is much better at the deliveries. Even in parts at least of US the grocery is an order and pick up service rather than delivery to homes.

I’m sure there are plenty of others who feel the same gangy5 but they have watched the relentless outpouring of doom and gloom from a certain number of prolific posters determined to see negativity in everything and have decided instead to just let them wallow in their own misery!

We will budge up and make room for you gangy5!
?

Callistemon

Supermarkets have now taken over so many aspects of our shopping habits, not just food but fuel, clothes, alcohol, pharmacies, cafes etc.
They have huge buying power and dominate the retail world.

Is it necessarily a good thing? Convenient, yes, especially during a pandemic when they will deliver.

But the little shops have also prospered in the pandemic too. Many bakeries, fishmongers, farm shops do click and collect or home deliveries now. I'm alternating them with supermarket deliveries. It is easy to to both. The British food market is very entrepreneurial, open to changing ideas and looks for other avenues and openings. I think that is lacking in Europe.

Supermarkets have now taken over so many aspects of our shopping habits, not just food but fuel, clothes, alcohol, pharmacies, cafes etc.
They have huge buying power and dominate the retail world.

Is it necessarily a good thing? Convenient, yes, especially during a pandemic when they will deliver.

Some time ago I realised the futility of commenting on any posts concerning Brexit. I read them and it is as much as I can do to sit on my hands and refrain from posting. I knew it wouldn't be long before a 'certain someone' felt the need to spread her doom and gloom on here. Anyone with any sense cannot expect short term improvements and we were all aware that there would be initial hiccups. Optimism is lacking. My thanks to allies lemongrove and Urmstongram

So where did those sticky pink stamps you put in a book come from? Was that the precursor for loyalty cards? Quite innovative for its day.
I remember you could look in a glass cabinet at the entrance to the supermarket and choose your gift?
Europe was a lot slower to introduce personalised shop cards. One reason being credit was frowned upon and also their customers were inherently loyal without incentives.

From the London Economic:

-Conservative MPs have overwhelmingly voted down an amendment to the Trade Bill tabled to ensure the NHS is excluded from future trade deals – on the deadliest day of the pandemic so far.

Just moments before MPs cast their vote on whether to disagree to Lords Amendment 4 a further 1,610 people in the United Kingdom were revealed to have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test – the highest number recorded on a single day so far.

The total number of deaths from the virus has now surpassed 90,000 by the Government’s official count – though the real figure is likely to be significantly higher.

Another 33,355 new cases were also recorded as the health service becomes overwhelmed by the pandemic.

Shameful
It will make a vote in the House of Commons today a bitter pill to swallow for frontline staff.

MPs first voted against the amendment to the trade bill that sought to protect the NHS in July 2020, but held a second vote today after the House of Lords backed it in December.

MPs voted 357 to 266 against the amendment today. MPs also voted against an amendment to the bill which sought to ensure that parliament is able to scrutinise trade deals before they are signed by the government.

SNP MP Kenny MacAskill had argued that it is “absolutely essential” for the NHS to remain free at the point of the delivery.

He told the chamber: “We have to ensure the integrity of the NHS and ensure that it is not being undermined.”

MacAskill also pointed to the Brexit trade bill, which he said “really was shameful in terms of the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny”.

He added: “The almost total absence of an opportunity [for Parliament to scrutinise trade deals] cannot be allowed to be replicated.”

“Disgraceful”
Campaign group We Own It, which has been lobbying for nearly 18 months to secure protections for the NHS in trade deals, hit out at the lack of support for the amendment, labelling it “disgraceful”.

Campaigner Johnbosco Nwogbo said: “It’s frankly disgraceful Conservative MPs have steamrolled through a Trade Bill that offers absolutely no protection for our precious NHS.

“We’re now at risk of higher drug prices, private companies having increased access to our NHS and those same companies being able to sue the government if it tries to limit their ability to profit from our healthcare.

“Worse still, parliament now won’t even have a say in any future trade deals – meaning our NHS could be offered up on a silver platter to the highest bidder, and we wouldn’t know a thing about it before a trade deal is signed and sealed.

“Conservative MPs have prioritised the interests of private healthcare companies over patients and public health. It’s a slap in the face to all of our heroic NHS staff, and every person who has relied on the NHS to help us through this pandemic. They should all hang their heads in shame.”-

Amazing what happens when we are all looking in another direction....

They may not have sold avocados, mangoes, or kumquats though.

That made me giggle

I knew Waitrose has been going a long time, but didn’t realise it was that long. I wonder what the first Waitrose shops were like. I remember as a child, in the fifties, we had a small Co op supermarket near our home. Only certain goods were available to ‘self serve.’ It was mainly tins I think. You had to go to the counter to get the cheese, eggs, bacon or ham and of course, milk tokens. We had a Co op milkman and we left out the number of tokens each day for the required pints of milk, so every week mum had to buy the milk tokens.
All our fruit and vegetables were bought at the green grocers, and bread or cakes from the bakers. I think you could get white sliced from the supermarket, and let’s not forget, white sliced was considered a luxury then. How things change!

Never mind. The government have decided to allow lower food standards in the U.K. So that’s good then

And if Waitrose was a supermarket in 1904 I'll be the most shock person ever...
No, I was merely noting when it began.
Waite, Rose and Taylor
They probably delivered by horse and cart as did DH's family (they didn't go on to be supermarket owners).

Food shops: the good old days when someone served you but you couldn't choose your own fruit and vegetables

Supermarkets: you took a trolley and walked round aisles helping yourself, paying at a checkout. They first arrived in the UK post-war, about 1950.
They may not have sold avocados, mangoes or kumquats though.

I think you're confusing food shops with supermarkets, Cal. They did exist before supermarkets... We did buy food in shops before supermarkets existed.

I'm not confused at all; I do know where I shopped when I first married (1960s) and I didn't post a long list, just the four I remembered, then Waitrose in another post.

Waitrose started in 1904 Acton London.

biba70

BTW, Woolies is still going on in South Africa and very posh too. Felt like Waitrose.

And in Australia too - just food.

They still have Big W there too, selling household goods, books, clothes etc.

P.S You left Presto off your long list. They had a branch in Sheffield in the late 1970s, it was behind The Moor, as I recall...

Callistemon

^Waitrose & Partners first appeared on the high street in 1904 when Wallace Wyndham Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor opened their shop in Acton. They managed to create a successful business selling a wide range of grocery products^.

I used to shop for fresh food in Woolworth's after work because it was near the bus stop.
We even had department stores

I think you're confusing food shops with supermarkets, Cal. They did exist before supermarkets... We did buy food in shops before supermarkets existed.

I'm very sceptical of the long list you posted earlier. A link would be useful.

And if Waitrose was a supermarket in 1904 I'll be the most person ever...

BTW, Woolies is still going on in South Africa and very posh too. Felt like Waitrose.

Waitrose & Partners first appeared on the high street in 1904 when Wallace Wyndham Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor opened their shop in Acton. They managed to create a successful business selling a wide range of grocery products.

I used to shop for fresh food in Woolworth's after work because it was near the bus stop.
We even had department stores

maddyone

Imported tomatoes are bland and flavourless because they are picked whilst green and transported in refrigerated trucks where they gradually turn red, but fail to develop any flavour whatsoever.
British tomatoes on the other hand, are only picked when ripe and ready to eat, which is why they develop their full flavour, on the vine, not on in the refrigerated truck.

Dinahmo you obviously prefer the flavourless tomatoes produced and transported to the UK in refrigerated trucks. Perhaps that’s because they come from the EU and you appear to have started a thread to denigrate British food and praise all food from the EU.

I think that you have misunderstood me. I said that I didn't agree that English tomatoes are wonderful (your statement)
unless they were homegrown (my statement) in which case they are wonderful. Where did I suggest that I preferred imported tomatoes? Did you read the next paragraph about Israeli grown tomatoes? Obviously not.

In any case, living in France my OH grows tomatoes. I know someone who has seeds of 160 varieties and I can chose from 10 or 12 different varieties in season and that includes ones that look a bit manky but are absolutely delicious.

Why you should think I started a thread to denigrate British I don't understand. The only food I mentioned in my opening comment was the good quality cheddar that I was able to buy in my local supermarket and no longer can.

I was decrying the fact that there are some things I can no longer buy in England and have sent to France but not for selfish reasons because there's always a substitute (maybe not British). What I hate, with all my heart, is what is happening to the country of my birth.

I would suggest that you read the whole and the rest of posts before you start accusing erroneously.

We had a huge Co-op in the depths of Devon!

There was a deli, a bakery, lots of fresh produce.
As I've never bought a kumquat I don't know if they sold those too.

Fisherman in Hastings getting 2p a kilo for huss

Cornish fishermen are selling locally, having had to find new outlets due to COVID.
They are making better money by cutting out the middleman.
This Fishing Life 18/1/20 BBC2

Imported tomatoes are bland and flavourless because they are picked whilst green and transported in refrigerated trucks where they gradually turn red, but fail to develop any flavour whatsoever.
British tomatoes on the other hand, are only picked when ripe and ready to eat, which is why they develop their full flavour, on the vine, not on in the refrigerated truck.

Dinahmo you obviously prefer the flavourless tomatoes produced and transported to the UK in refrigerated trucks. Perhaps that’s because they come from the EU and you appear to have started a thread to denigrate British food and praise all food from the EU.

I have to say that supermarkets barely existed in Britain in 1970. The few there were were small compared to the big ones we're now used to.

Supermarkets were indeed smaller in the 1970s than they are now but as for barely existing; well that's nonsense! I have a photograph of my sister and I, taken in a Fine Fare supermarket in 1967, having won a competition in store. There was also a Liptons supermarket, Gateway and Co Op and MacFisheries supermarket in our town. The large supermarkets didn't become popular until the 1980s, when a monthly shop became more popular than the weekly shop. Here's a list of supermarkets that were trading in the 1960s & 1970s:
These are some of the supermarket and grocery chains from the 1970s:

Allied Suppliers (Liptons)
Asda
Batemans - South Wales & West England
Co-op
Fine Fare
Gateway
David Greig - London & South England
Hintons (Amos Hinton) - North East England
Gem Super Centres (part of Asda)
Grandways (part of William Jackson)
Jackon (William Jackson) - Yorks, Lincs, Notts
International Stores
Key Markets - South England, Midlands, Wales
Low (Wm Low) - Scotland
Mace
Mac Fisheries and Mac Markets
Marks & Spencer
Moores Stores
Pricerite
Safeway
J Sainsbury
Tesco
F W Woolworth & Co
Spar
Vivo
Mace
Kebby's Supermarkets (Unigate)
VG
Waitrose
Woolworth