vivweb01blog

The sorry saga of ASDA's 'fall from grace' as one of our most value-conscious supermarkets has served to highlight a growing trend amongst our major retailers in favour of increasing profit margins at the expense of the consumer.  A recent 'Which' report recommends supermarkets offer their customers cheaper alternatives to branded items in all their stores, and ensure these items are well-stocked.  I made similar recommendations when this blog was first published after Jack Monroe's expose of ASDA in April 2022 led to welcome action on ASDA's part.  It is to be hoped that the 'Which' report will shame retailers enough to take action...time will tell whether they attempt to 'tough it out' or not....Read on for more details about what's happened since the cost-of-living crisis hit. See the latest update at the end of this article for a full roundup of ASDA's struggle for survival after yet another hedge-fund venture went bad.... -----

  Modern Warfare – The Future ? Introduction An extra-terrestrial observer looking at the behaviour of Homo Sapiens de novo might reasonably assess our species as: ‘..having a marked addiction to conflict….’ This is certainly not a new phenomenon – evolution has done a remarkable job of embedding the need to compete into our psyche – and our genes. Without it, we would not have become the most successful and numerous species on the planet. It is that very success, however, and the remarkable advances in technology that has enabled it, that now threatens our very existence.... War has been our principal way of solving territorial disputes between tribes and nations for millennia. Until relatively recently, although often brutal in its execution, warfare caused little real harm from a global perspective. The First World War (WWI) was the first real ‘mass killing’ event for our species, and even this debacle, with all its horrors, was confined largely to Europe. Its consequence