The M&S app has a ‘scan as you shop’ function for the food hall with Apple Pay integrated, so no need to visit the checkout at all. It’s extremely handy when just nipping in for one or two things at lunchtime when even the self-checkout queues can be lengthy.

I see Waitrose is planning to open around a hundred convenience stores and refurbish a number of existing stores too. I think convenience stores in the UK are generally quite poor so this’ll be interesting to see.


I guess it depends how they're done. The existing Little Waitrose at Jesmond is ...

The Gosforth one opened as M&S Simply Food, was rebranded to M&S Foodhall, and is now M&S Food… three brands, and it’s not even been open a decade.

And the online store finder still lists it as Gosforth Simply Food.

I noted that an “Asda Supermarket” near me—the brand they used for former Netto stores which I guess are smaller than typical Asda stores—is now just an “Asda”. I’m not sure if that’s changed in all of them.

Nationwide's press release about the Branch Promise said:

The Promise ensures the Society is protecting branches and we will only close a branch when we absolutely need to, for example a lease expiry enforced by the landlord.

They repeated that line when announcing the Virgin Money offer ...

I’m especially enjoying the chat in the Gary Linekar thread about the “old days” when BBC stars were “responsible”, “innocent”, and “just focused on their industry and specialism”.

To which the suggested counterpoint is Lenny Henry, who had the temerity to establish Comic Relief.

on the subject of fragrances, are the harrods beauty stores something elsewhere or just in Edinburgh? I thought it was the lessees from the debenhams beauty hall clubbing together to get a location in St James's Centre.

I appreciate I could google but i didn't. so there.


There are five of them ...

I’ve still got an iPhone 11 I purchased in October 2019, and to be fair, it’s still really smooth and responsive, no cracks or major scratches, it’s in generally good shape… problem is battery health is now at 80% and if I’m somewhere where the signal isn’t great, it seems to die very quickly and ...

Nationwide's new 'bragging about not closing branches' advert features its new logo. Gone is the serif typeface, now it's fine for the vogue of minimalist design. I really don't like it. Having it all lowercase doesn't strike me as formal, and the house icon is barely discernable. The negative ...

Jacket wrote: Sat 07 Oct, 2023 11.56
It wasn't a church but a "tall building to represent industry", according to their history page. https://www.nationwide.co.uk/about-us/our-history/

Well, blow me down with a feather!

I'm perplexed by it, too.

I'm continually baffled by the pretence that 'man' and 'woman' have a single, fixed meaning, even though we all use them ambiguously all the time. When I talk about man landing on the moon, or the chairman of a company, or the foreman on a building site, or 'that young ...