Steady on! They still have little men in plus-fours and boots walking in front of cars carrying a red flag by day or a lantern by night.
On that note my Brother has "refered " to Nationwide the deal is I switch my/a current acount and they give both £100 plus 5% on up to £2500 balances for a year Thanks very much
Im deliberating a move from Lloyds but I will do it once Asawa has ILR. Was initially looking at Santander 123 account. I will add Nationwide to the list
I have been with the Nationwide since they were "The Anglia, Hastings and Thanet, way back late 70s early 80s.
Returning to our muttons I have a Filipina friend who knows a lot about branding and designer goods, as she is a buyer for one of the Philippines' leading store chains. She spends literally half her time travelling, mostly to China. (Needless to say, she isn't married!) Her thoughts on the subject are these: 1. Branding on low margin items like groceries - the world of Procter and Gamble, Kelloggs, Unilever, Hershey, and such - is becoming steadily less important, everywhere, as shoppers go for "value" 2. In the fashion business - and she is a fashion buyer - the brand / designer is all important, representing more than half the total value added, but it does change all the time. This applies to men as well as to women.
We have a local Kellogg factory and new employees aren't on as much as old-contract employees, significantly reduced wage and benefits, which reflects your point.
People are going for value that is very true, sad because even in the low margin items there are standout winners that are simply better than any of their competition and they are not very expensive these days, they also represent better value when you know how to use them properly. As I mentioned in another thread Domestos and Fairy liquid are but two, but it is certainly true that many generics are just as good as their branded counterparts, packaging and packaging design costs a lot of money and is often the only difference. You have Aldi and Lidl and our own Iceland and their offshoot 'The Food Warehouse' if you shop carefully amongst the value retailers, being careful not to buy, for example, packaged onions instead of loose, or packaged potatoes instead of loose potatoes then you can live very cheaply in the UK and of course if you completely avoid ready meals and simply cook your own then it starts to become almost as cheap to live here as it is to live in the Philippines. Regards your second point Andrew, that's one of my biggest bugbears in life, people have a strong innate desire to belong to some identifiable group, a tribe, and brands are the modern day way they use to segment themselves into those tribes. I don't like it, because the whole deification of designers and brand ambassadors is largely just a way to con the gullible into paying vastly more than they need to for quality goods. You know me, I judge a company and its products on their engineering, at least I try to, I will pay for quality but it has to be recognisable and concrete in some way, when the choice is between shiny expensive fashionable and dull expensive but functional I will go for dull and functional every time.
I used Maglight and Zippo for that reason Engineering even if I lost the product I could be sure the new finder could ,if they wished,continue to use the product With Mag that has now passed as there are a number of good small powerfull torches with Aliminum cases and new LED that have eroded the Mag Cost/Benifit
Interesting; both American products. I was another customer for them. I'll add Leatherman, and, perhaps controversially, Apple, whose products are not made in the USA but who I think adopt the same approach of engineering something that bit better. My iphone sits in a Catalyst case (made in California) which is another example. Not the cheapest but the best. Its done two years, been dropped in water, fallen out of pockets, for two years and the phone inside it is still perfect.
Swiss Army is another brand that does what it says on the box have quiet a few of those Opinel as well but have to be carefull where they are
