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.... -----...

  Now that the dust has settled on the election result, it’s worth taking some time to reflect on what the 2024 UK General Election results actually tell us about the way the electorate feel about politics in general, and the individual parties in particular. Although by polling day a change of government was pretty much a foregone conclusion, and we’re all no doubt relieved that the electioneering is finally all over, a look at the results may give us some valuable indicators as to what we should expect to happen in the next 10 years or so. First, let’s take a look at the overall voting statistics for each major party, and compare these with the results for 2019: UK General Elections: 2019 vs 2024 2019 2019 2024 2024   Party %Votes cast Seats won %Votes cast Seats won Conservative 43.6 365 23.7 121 ...

This blog was originally compiled at the time of the Monkeypox epidemic in 2022. A new and more infectious variant of MPox which also has a higher fatality rate, has now hit Africa, and looks as though it may be coming our way. Young children are particularly hard-hit by this variant of the virus. Read on to find out more about how the last epidemic developed, and see also the update compiled this month at the end of the article....hopefully this will provide some insight into what we should expect in UK. T here has been much speculation in the media recently about the current Monkeypox outbreak – not surprisingly perhaps, in view of our recent experience with Covid… Some pundits are even predicting that this could be the fore-runner of the next pandemic   - how realistic a view is this, and should we be worried ? Looking at the evidence objectively, at present the answer to both questions is: Not very so far….but we should not be complacent. First, let’s look at the nature o...