Thibault

I didn't realise this was an old thread and started reading from the first page and what a roll-call it was of old familiar names and avatars from the past. Where are they all now?

As the subject of this thread is a British supermarket which does not have stores in France, what's wrong with people who are not French residents, but who have experience of shopping in said supermarket, contributing to this thread?

There was an excellent article in the business section of The Times yesterday by Ian King in which he looked at the reputation of Aldi and Lidl. One of the things he mentioned which people might find surprising is to do with the horse meat scandal. Most people assume that one of the the main culprits was Tesco. But in fact, some of Aldi's products were 100% horse meat, whereas the Tesco products affected were much lower. However the damage to Tesco's reputation has been much greater. He also looked at reasons for the cheapness of products at Aldi and Lidl. It's worth quoting a bit from his article: "Competiters, stung by the loss of market share to the pair...have their suspicions about how the pair achieve what appears to be such fantastic value. One of the more printable is a tactic of claiming to stock champagne at knockdown prices: the champagne is, indeed, available, but only at a handful of stores. Customers are attracted to the stores by such offers, only to be told that the champagne has sold out, even though it probably never there in the first place." Later King says, "Equally curious, when the likes of Amazon, Google and Starbucks have been lambasted over the relatively small amount of tax they pay in the UK is the way Aldi and Lidl have attracted relatively little opprobrium for a shocking lack of transparency over the taxes they pay." Undoubtedly Tesco in particular has suffered from the advance in the market by stores like Aldi and Lidl, as well as their own structural difficulties, but I wonder how long it will take before Aldi and Lidl lose their almost 'perfect' reputation among customers and we see another competitor stealing market share.

I see that Isis has trotted out a French hostage. As France usually pays a ransom, will they stop the air strikes as requested to save the hostage?

Then show them a half-full bath and add 'France isn't!'

It seems that last time, people voted for Hollande simply because he was not Sarkozy - and look what that led to..... There must be a competent, non-corrupt French politician somewhere..........mustn't there?

I may be a tad cynical but it seems to me that if illegal migrants express a wish to get to the UK, for example, the receiving countries are only too pleased to send them on their way.

[quote user="woolybanana"]The reason these routes are closing is that the boats would have to have scrubbers fitted to reduce pollution levels and it is just not economical. Scrubbers come dear these days![/quote] On that basis, I wouldn't hold out much hope for Newhaven-Dieppe as the ferry there is the sister ship of the one currently used between Portsmouth and Le Harvre.

The new format is difficult, although there are promises to bring back such useful things as a 'new posts' button. Something seems to have happened to Bentley as someone enquired after him and was told he was persona non grata......

I think the problem of having large numbers of Scottish MPs sitting in the Commons (regardless of what party they represent) is the fact that they can vote on England only issues, where the area concerned has been devolved to the Scottish Government and where the UK Parliament has no say. That is a big injustice.

There was a startling statistic quoted in the French papers the other day - since the beginning of this year, 100,000 illegal immigrants from Africa have landed in Italy.

It's good for anyone wanting to collect donations.......

Stinging nettles are an excellent compost accelerator - just don't put any of the roots in your bin.

What concerns me is that while there is intense media interest in cases involving high profile people, underneath the radar there are probably hundreds of cases involving 'ordinary' people and 'ordinary' families which escape notice.

Mesdames used to be a correct form of address in English for 'plural' ladies, in the same way that Messrs was used for some business letters - presumably a corruption of the French form of address. However both are rather old fashioned now.

Lovely, Betty. I guess no-one asked the 'UK is the pits and getting worse by the second' brigade who live in France, then!

What sort of an independent Scotland will it be if it: a) keeps the Queen as Head of State b) keeps sterling as its currency c) keeps the BBC? It would appear that Mr S wants to both have independence but also the security of familiar things, so the Scots won't feel totally different.......

It seems the system won't let me identify the political party started by A Hitler - so fill in the letters N A Z I

Nothing is new. Think of Nazi Germany where there was a clearly identifiable group of people - the Jewish population. The Nazi began saying who are these people who come here and take our jobs, buy our companies, steal our wealth for themselves - people with a different language and religion, who eat different food, who are alien to our Fatherland but who want to impose their own way of life on the rest of us. These people wish to take over institutions like the press and control government so that they get everything they want. Does this sound familiar in today's context?

Quillan said: I believe in the federalisation of the EU and we know it works just look at Australia, Canada and America"................... What you have to remember with places like Australia for example is that the whole country started with the same legal system, the same economic system etc. Therefore the development of a federal system had a common base. In Europe there are many differences between the various nation states, not the least of which is language. There is also a difference in economic performance. Turning all these into a single federation is rather more difficult than the situation in Australia.

[quote user="richard51"]Re the house buying bit of this thread. Call me cynical, but I would need to know a lot more about the circumstances before passing judgement. Was it bought from a friend? Was the house bought for 200,000 and a car thrown in for 50,000 whereas the house value is 245000 and the car 5,000? If there is indeed more to it than meets the eye, then there are actually similar laws already in the UK. And so there should be.[/quote] The house was bought in the normal way from people my friend only knew as vendors. It was done properly via a solicitor - not under the table fiddles or anything shady involved. The solicitor told my friend that the Spanish Government was looking for anything that could raise money because of the economic situation.

Not driving, but Spain and the ways they are trying to claw back money: A friend has just purchased a second home in Spain. The sale and all the legal formalities went through without a hitch. Then she was contacted by her Spanish lawyer. A government body notified them that they did not consider she had paid the 'right' price for the property - she had paid too little. So a tax was to be imposed on her for the difference between the price she paid and what the government body considered to be the 'right' price. As you can imagine, this came as a big shock. She has appealed but her lawyers don't think she will win.

We bought a dongle from EE. This allows you to buy a Eurobooster - £10 for 50Mb which you use and then buy another one when that runs out. We didn't think it would work because we have a very intermittent mobile phone signal, but it does and we have been very happy with it. It's easy to top up on line. There are a number of different options to choose from.

Came back on this service yesterday. Why is unloading the ferry such a shambles?

It is amazing how incompetent, on its knees Britain can actually complete work to standard and time, isn't it?