Sainsbury’s + Asda = ?

We shop fairly regularly at Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Aldi and the Co-op but prefer Tesco even though Sainsbury’s is much nearer. We try M&S occasionally and very rarely Waitrose because there isn’t one nearby. 

So where is Sainsbury/Asda going? To my lowly shopper’s eye Sainsbury’s does not seem to know what it is supposed to be. For our general requirements it is neither as cheap as Tesco nor conspicuously middle class in the manner of Waitrose and M&S. The days when Sainsbury's was definitely middle class seem to have gone. Now it is just another supermarket chain and not a particularly appealing one at that.

Our local Asda is grim. Fairly cheap but not as cheap as it pretends and with a strong flavour of tabloid values it isn’t a pleasant place to be. When we visit Asda we know what we want, we buy it and we leave. That’s it.

No doubt retail bods have crawled all over the deal and pronounced it a Good Thing, but it feels a little desperate to me. Pulling the two supermarkets together while the world changes, while Aldi and Lidl continue to make inroads and Amazon lurks on the horizon. If it is done it needs to be done quickly and well.

The genius of our civilization

All this early kid stuff is passing, a sorting-out process. We get over it. Every fellow does, or ought to be able to, if he’s worth anything, find some one woman that he can live with and stick by her. That makes the world that you and I like to live in, and you know it. There’s a psychic call in all of us to it, I think. It’s the genius of our civilization, to marry one woman and settle down.

Theodore Dreiser – Twelve Men (1919)

As posted earlier - in 1919 Theodore Dreiser published a series of short biographies of people he had known collected together in a book entitled Twelve Men. The first biography was about a young man he called Peter and this quote is Peter’s view of marriage.

It was not a throwaway remark by a clever man. He meant it, acted on it but died too early, leaving a wife and two young children.

A lone voice

Catherine Blaiklock has an interesting article in Conservative Woman. I'll add a couple of quotes to pass on some of the flavour but the whole thing is worth reading - it's quite short.

This week I went to a sixth-form college in a small Norfolk town for a ‘Question Time’ event.

I didn’t sleep very well the night before. I knew what was coming: two hours of torture...

...And then we got to the question that summed up the afternoon for me. As an aside, few people know the following. In the referendum, in almost all age groups there was not a lot of difference in voting between sexes. But the big difference was in the 18-24 age group. Young men voted 60 per cent remain, 40 per cent out. Now although this is a majority, it is not massive, and from what you would have heard from young people, you would never believe that 40 per cent of young men voted to leave. But the really staggering statistic is that women aged 18 to 24 voted 80/20 to remain. And when I go to these events, it is the girls who are often extremely aggressive and vocal social justice warriors.

It takes courage to do this kind of thing, I certainly wouldn't do it.

Friday 13th

I see Donald Trump is due to visit the UK on July 13^th.  From the BBC -

US President Donald Trump is to visit the UK on Friday 13 July, after previously cancelling a planned trip amid claims he would face protests.

It will not be the full-blown state visit Mr Trump was promised when Prime Minister Theresa May visited the White House in January last year.

But an invitation to a state visit still stands, the BBC understands.

He will hold bilateral talks with Mrs May, Downing Street said, with further details to be "set out in due course".

The July date follows the Nato summit in Brussels which the president is expected to attend.

Bound to be embarrassing as shouty folk will see it as an opportunity for a spot of politically correct virtue-signalling. They will see that as far more important than the success of the visit. The BBC will probably fail to give the visit worthwhile coverage too. Fortunately I'll miss that.

Not an event to relish. I’ll be glad when it’s over.

Bells and gongs

‘Was not that the breakfast bell? Why does not your papa get a gong? — it is so hard to know one bell from another.’

Sheridan Le Fanu - Uncle Silas (1864)

The things we don’t notice. Until I came across this quote it had never occurred to me that bells generally summoned those below stairs while gongs summoned those above. They must be easily distinguished - can't have guests bumping into servants. 

We never had either - a raised voice was generally adequate. 

Competent followers

One of the most fascinating and revealing aspects of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership qualities is that he doesn’t have any. He could neither organise nor inspire the proverbial piss up in a brewery.

However, his followers are competent enough to keep the circus going. They put him there and maintain the leadership facade which keeps him in place. Yet there is no leadership – the old coot isn’t up to it.

There are wider lessons to be learned here, but that's the trivia out of the way. Now what about possible names for the latest royal baby?

It’s a grotesque country

For those able to stomach more stories about the seemingly unending conflict in Syria, CapX has an interesting article.

Both Western and Russian security analysts have long documented the utter decrepitude and disintegration of Assad’s forces. Tobias Schneider, an analyst who follows internal regime dynamics very closely, wrote in August 2016 that “the government’s fighting force today consists of a dizzying array of hyper-local militias aligned with various factions, domestic and foreign sponsors, and local warlords. Among these groups, only a handful are still capable of anything close to offensive action”.

Thanks to recent interviews with Russian regular and special forces as well as commanders and fighters from the more opaque Wagner mercenary group, we know that these assessments broadly reflect the reality on the ground. A recent Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interview with three Wagner commanders gives an insight into just what the Russians think of their comrades-in-arms.

“The Syrians can’t fight,” said one commander. “I’ve seen it many times. At the drop of a hat they’ll abandon their positions and flee. ‘Go, go, Russia, go!’ they’ll yell. Where are you going, god damn it, let’s defend the position! But no. When there’s an assault, for instance, we’ll take the high ground, hand it over to the Syrians in the evening, come morning, no Syrians.”

The Russians regard the poor fighting capacity of the regime forces as connected to what they see as moral failings. “It’s a grotesque country,” said the commander to RFE/RL. “Faggotry flourishes there. They’ve all got it to a man.”

It is worth reading the whole piece.