What is the point of Woolworths? (BBC)

So woolies with a failing business model for the last few years has finally become the latest victim in the credit crunch/ recession / down turn or whatever it is being called today. As an aside it is comforting to know that the end of the world will be accompanied by a media friendly name which is supposed to make everything more acceptable.

Anyway woolies has lost its way and the decline has been ongoing for the last few years. You might say it started with the fall of the CD single although that was not the only reason for the fall from grace.

Fundamentally Woolies have tried to compete with everyone and in doing so has made the usual mistake of having too many general products and not enough niche products. What it does well is that it is the retail version of the post office on the high street. In my town apart from Tesco it is the only place on the high street you can buy things like light bulbs. One of the last things I bought from woolies was a kitchen bin which was a third of the price of the equivalent one from their only competitor on the high street.

Even I have started being put off by woolies, the stores seem cluttered and un modernised, the parquet flooring they all used to have is now replaced by cheap flooring. Woolworths is an institution like M & S and like M & S it needs to go back to its roots and discover the reason it was there in the first place.

Any radical revamp would involve cutting its lines by at least half, it needs to concentrate on key areas such as home wares, stationary and children's clothes. It needs to cut the rubbish like books, electrical goods and most of the entertainment isle etc. If the product category doesn't fill a good 5m row of shelving it should go. By all means have two different store inventories based on store size but products need to be comprehensive and fill customers needs. Dare I say it most of the cheap products also need to go. Price the own brand range based on the competitors, don't be the cheapest in the market place, be one of the cheapest with a reputation for quality and good value.

Stack it high and sell it low was never a good strategy for woolies, it never had that kind of brand. Woolies made the mistake of trying to compete against companies on the business parks which had lower overheads. Woolies key strength is that it is on the high street at the centre of the community, it has a range of products which can only be found in woolies on the high street, you didn't need a car to go get what you wanted. This is its strength and this is its core business and this is the home it needs to return to.

Woolies is not dead merely lost in the wood. It has a lot of potential and only needs the right person with the vision to push through the changes.

Christmas Box

I am all in favour of starting Christmas traditions and this one is one I am going to start this year.

To give a bit of background this comes out of several discussions about what I might want for Christmas. I like to think of simple presents for Christmas and I have fairly low expectations.

For my Christmas to be complete all I need are three things a good fiction book, a nice pair of socks and a bar of chocolate. As long as I get that I am content.

Christmas Box

This is a modern day version of a stocking.

1. The book must be a novel, no non-fiction allowed.

2. The socks must be nice and warm, no novelty or Christmas socks allowed.

3. The chocolate must be large and suitable for eating with the book.

No other items are allowed in the box. They must all be put in a box and wrapped up, outside decoration is left up to the gift giver.

Snow Watch 2008 leg 2

On Sunday morning there was a heated argument in the Northern Oxfordshire Snow Watch HQ about whether there had been any snowfall . Which contrasted well with the freezing temperatures outside.

There were definitely no snow clouds around outside, but there was a heavy frost or was it? The only evidence against it being a heavy frost was a small accumulation of ice on top of a bush. Frost does not usually occur in icy clumps on top of a bush so the natural conclusion is that at some point on Saturday / Sunday night in the wee small hours we had a small flurry of snow possibly leading to a light ground covering. As the snow turned to rain it washed all the evidence away.

So an early leg 2 turned out to be a bit of a damp squib at least in the south east of england.

However the bookies are giving 6/1 odds on a white christmas in london, not in actuality based on a weather forecast but more on the betting public who are putting far too much money on a white christmas so the bookies lower the odds to avoid paying out billions.

Local news...Fast Ticket Machines out of use due to a recent spate of thefts (Chiltern Railways, UK)

This is the kind of petty criminality that really, really annoys me.

I use these machines all the time and they are really useful, you generally don't have to queue at the ticket office window which generally saves about five minutes when you are running for the train.

Well it would seem that some gang of petty minded oiks have decided that the machines are soft targets for breaking into and stealing the cash. Sadly, Chiltern Railways have done the sensible thing and replaced them with machines that will only take cards. Although this does mean they may now become a target for card scammers.

Plus thanks to this gang the machines have been out of action for weeks inconveniencing thousands of people. Its at time like this I like to think that karma will soon catch up with the gang and they get exactly what they deserve.

When petty criminality affects the way we conduct are lives to such an extent somebody should really do something about it. The question as usual is exactly who?

2010 switch-on for wave project (BBC)

Cornwall may not be the centre of the universe but it is now going to be the centre for wave energy projects at least from 2010. A great big adapter is being laid on the sea bed so wave projects can just plug into the grid. Over 30 projects can be plugged into the socket.

The £28 million projects is currently in the planning stage but is expected to go live in 2010. It will be used as a test bed to see if ideas work. The benefit is there will no need to be create some expensive grid connection for a project that may not even work as the infrastructure will already be in place.

So good news for the environment, renewable energy, the UK and Cornwall.

Obama Dilema: Camp X-ray

Obama has rightly pledged to end the illegal detention of suspected terrorists in Camp X-Ray (Guantanamo Bay). It has been an insult to Human rights and democracy since the start.

However, Channel 4 news raised an interesting dilemma for Obama. Obama can try some of the suspects in a hybrid court where there is evidence but for about 100 detainees there is either no evidence or evidence compromised as it was obtained under torture. For these 100 the only fair course of action is for release, the only question is to where?

No country will accept them back and they cannot be released in the US. In both cases the public would be unlikely to stand for it and hence the dilemma.

100 detainees who can not be tried.
100 detainees that will not be accepted by any other country.
100 detainees that can not be released on US soil.
President Obama what are you going to do next?

If you happen to know the answer to that, feel free to email the White house, I am sure they are open to suggestions.

Leaders welcome G20 action plan (BBC)

Has the credit crisis bought about a new world order, is the G8 now dead, long live the G20.

Only time will tell but at least on economic matters the exclusive club has got a little more inclusive.

"There was a common understanding by all of us that we should take pro-growth economic policies. Whatever we do, whatever reforms are recommended, we need to be guided by this simple fact - that the best way to solve the problem is economic growth, and the surest path to this grown is free-market capitalism. "

-President George Bush

A quote which confirms that the world's most capitalist country still believes that economic growth can solve everything. If you believe in sustainable development this was quite a depressing sound bite. Sustainable development suggests another way of growing in harmony with our resources, neighbours and the environment.

What President Bush can not answer is what happens when we can not grow, or to grow costs too much as resources become scarce. This credit crunch may well be the first of many as anything we do today will only put a crash off and it will make it bigger and longer. Regulation can only delay the inevitable, it will not solve the problem, it is not a fix more a sticker plaster. Capitalism has a flaw in that it involves the relentless pursuit of growth.

The future in this case is not ours to see, que sera sera.

Osborne stands by economy warning (BBC)

Apparently George believes it is his job to tell everyone the truth about the economy.

George ' Mass Hysteria' Osbourne is basically going around doing a private Frazer from Dad's Army, "We are all doomed".

George, this is not helpful and not clever so frankly shut up. In essence unless you have some new ideas or a solution just keep quiet. Leave the people with some brains to continue this conversation and get on with sorting out the economy rather than scaremongering.

"The reason why sterling has fallen by more than 25% is because they don't believe Gordon Brown when he says Britain is better prepared than other economies..."

-George ' Mass Hysteria' Osbourne

I admit it took me a while to remember why the value of a currency drops, the reason is that when interests rates decrease investors withdraw funds from sterling and head for other countries with higher interest rates. The whole premise of capitalism is that the money chases profit, therefore less profit in the UK then the money goes elsewhere. It is not really a judgement on Gordon Brown, it is the equal and opposite reaction from dropping interest rates.

Obviously if as a politician you say that you cant get votes, our political system seems sometimes to be based on having equal and opposite opinions. Getting cross party agreement is the stuff of myth and legend.

Its also interesting to note that the conservative party itself don't have faith in Osbourne's economic skills having drafted in his predecessor to help with some of the fine detail of party policy. Big vote of confidence for poor George there.

The end of the world as we know it..

OK may be not quite the end of the world but the end intellectual debate and the dumbing down of the English language.

I am designing some new assessment materials at work based around communication skills, part of the folio is some group discussions. These group discussions have now gone out to consultation with our partner groups and I am collating the feedback.

One topic included the world "eradicate", one comment has suggested that we use the word "remove" instead, as people may not understand the word "eradicate".

I am all in favour of not over complicating things, I started nodding and thinking what a good piece of advice that was. Then I had one of those record screeching moments where the needle is taken off the record scratchily (that reference probably lost 90% of the audience but I shall struggle on, if you are not sure what a record is try wikipedia). If someone doesn't know a word it is not cruel or unfair to use it or a reason for me to change it, that is a reason for someone to pick up a dictionary or use the internet to look up the meaning.

To me the two words have distinctly different meanings so I feel it is important to use eradicate. The English language is currently rich with many great words for all occassions, we should not reduce it to a language where there is only one word for everything. What next, get rid of blue and call it light black, where do we stop, eradicate is a good word and I say it stays.

"Say no to the eradication of eradication"

My point is that everyone, if they dont know something should take the opportunity to learn and look it up. It should never be that if people dont know something its the other persons fault for not using the right word. Individuals need to take responsibility, develop themselves and protect the richness of the english language.

Another comment was that I cant use a discussion topic about insurance because some people might not understand the concept. Well if they dont that should form part of the discussion and if they dont, why dont they? Insurance is virtually fundamental to several aspects of life and surely it is a fairly simple concept. Even if you cant explain how insurance works you know about premiums, claims and have a vague knowledge of risk. Again we shouldnt avoid discussing things because people might not know, the things people don't know are the exact things we should be discussing. Humanities job is to learn and develop, there is nothing wrong with ignorance if you do something about it, if you ignore it and hope it goes away then the only person you are failing is yourself.

End of moan, join me next week when I tell you about the new course I have been on, "Effective moaning for professionals". Apparently it even comes with roleplays.

Twas the night before the American Election result

Twas the night before the American election and we the people of the world stand at a fork in the road. One way lies more of the same, the other lies the beacon of change, of hope and the dream that no one dared to dream.

One man tomorrow will be the president, one man will hold the future of millions of people in his hands, one man who has the potential to change the world beyond all recognition will, hopefully, take power.

Barack Obama is the one man to step forward, the one man to step up to the plate and to swing for all his worth. As the crowd clamber to their feet, they wait watching to see where the ball will land.

Today we stand on the precipice of history, tomorrow we fly or fall.

The future may start tomorrow, the future dreamed by Barack Obama and shared by the electorate he spoke to and who have heard his words.