DE: Lufthansa Jumbo 747
I was 1 meter away from touching the face of this below Lufthansa Jumbo 747 at Frankfurt airport, even I flew with this machine many times before, but I was never this close to its cockpit from the outside.
Month: May 2007
Oldies But Goldies
I was looking back during my last trip to how technology evolved for the last few years and the changes that took places mainly in the electronic world and I remembered many of these gadgets I used to enjoy during my early my childhood.
My First Computer
My First Video Game Console
My First Walkman
My First Hand Held Game Consoles
My First Mobile Phone
My First Pocket PC
US: DOD Bans 12 Sites
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WASHINGTON, May 14, 2007 – The Defense Department is blocking access to many popular Internet sites from department-owned computers due to bandwidth issues, U.S. Strategic Command officials said today. |
| Joint Task Force Global Network Operations, which directs the operation and defense of the Defense Department’s global information grid to assure timely and secure capabilities in support of the department’s warfighting, intelligence, and business missions, blocked 12 popular sites on government computers today. | |
UK: Pharmacies, Chemists, Drugstores
| Pharmacies, also known as Chemists or Drugstores, are part of the British culture, below is a small list of few of them that I visited during my stay in London. |
Alliance Boots plc (LSE: AB.) is a British based pharmaceuticals company, operating as a high street retailer, pharmacist and pharmaceuticals wholesaler. Alliance Boots is the dominant pharmacy chain in Britain with a 17% market share[1]. Retail operations are carried out under the Boots The Chemist and Alliance Pharmacies brandsNote 1. Alliance Boots is also the largest pharmaceuticals wholesaler in the UK through their UniChem subsidiary with a 40% market share. Alliance Boots are a constituent of the FTSE 100. As the third largest pharmacy chain in Europe, Alliance Boots employs around 100,000 staff and operates around 3,000 retail stores, around 2,700 of these have pharmacies. Around 380 depots support this retail network. Alliance Boots is headquartered in London, England. In terms of retail space, Alliance Boots ranks as one of the largest high street retailers in the UK. |
Lloydspharmacy is a pharmacy chain in the UK. It operates over 1,520 pharmacies, located primarily within local communities and health centres. Lloydspharmacy is owned by Celesio, which recently raised concerns of the July 2006 merger of Alliance Unichem and Boots the Chemist that formed Alliance Boots. Lloyds pharmacy was founded by Allen Lloyd from Atherstone, England. It is estimated he made a £32 million fortune from the Lloyds Pharmacy empire. |
Numark Ltd is a chain of independent pharmacies in the UK. With over 1800 outlets throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland they are the largest such chain in the UK. Each pharmacy business within Numark is an independent outlet, but membership of Numark allows individual retailers to take advantage of group purchasing deals to reduce their costs. Numark also offers marketing support, including demographic research for product targeting purposes, to its members. Numark also has a range of Own Brand products such as vitamins, otc medicines and toiletries. |
Superdrug is the UK’s second largest health and beauty retail chain (behind Boots) and the sixth largest overall (behind Boots, Tesco, Sainsburys, ASDA and Morrisons). Superdrug is a national company with over 740 stores in the UK employing over 13,000 people with retail jobs. The stores serve over 4.5 million customers each week with over £1 billion per year. Its mission is to provide up-to-the-minute heath and beauty products. Superdrug has over 10,000 products in its stores; it supplies vitamins, toiletries, drinks and snacks, photographic film accessories, newspapers, magazines and household accessories. Superdrug’s own brand manufactures do not commission animal testing on any own brands, products or ingredients, although they no longer guarantee that these ingredients have not been tested on animals previously. |
UK: Who Pays ?
Three-quarters of the food is purchased in supermarkets. Their dominance on the UK high street means producers and suppliers in developing countries have little choice but to deal with them in order to reach the UK shopper.
This gives supermarkets tremendous power, power which is often being misused. The pressure on suppliers to deliver more for less is passed on to workers in the form of low wages, job insecurity and poor working conditions. It is women in particular who find that their already disadvantaged position in the labour market makes them vulnerable to attempts by suppliers to drive down pay and conditions.
“We are paying for the price wars between supermarkets in your country.” Costa Rican banana supplier to UK supermarkets.
UK: The BIG 4
Tesco plc is a UK-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain. It is the largest British retailer by both global sales and domestic market share, is the world’s third-largest grocery retailer, and is the fourth-largest retailer behind Wal-Mart of the United States, Carrefour of France, and The Home Depot of the United States. Originally specialising in food, it has diversified into areas such as discount clothes, consumer electronics, consumer financial services, selling and renting DVDs, compact discs and music downloads, internet service consumer telecoms and most recently budget software. |
ASDA is a chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom offering food, clothing and general merchandise products. It became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart in 1999, and is currently the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco. ASDA is Wal-Mart’s largest overseas subsidiary, accounting for almost half of the company’s international sales. As of January 2006, there were 21 ASDA/Wal-Mart Supercentres, 243 ASDA superstores, 37 ASDA supermarkets (including town centres), five ASDA Living stores, 10 George clothing stores and 24 depots (distribution centres). ASDA has 150,000 employees, who it refers to as “colleagues” (90,000 part-time, 60,000 full-time). |
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd, commonly known as Sainsbury’s, a chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The group also has interests in property and banking. The group has an estate worth about £6 billion (October 2006). For much of the twentieth century Sainsbury’s was the market leader in the UK supermarket sector. However in 1995 it lost its place as the UK’s largest grocer to Tesco and in 2003 was pushed into third by ASDA. The company’s fortunes have improved since the launch of a recovery programme by CEO Justin King in 2004. Despite predictions that Sainsbury’s would regain second position and a narrowing of ASDA’s lead in recent months, the latest figures released by Taylor Nelson Sofres in October 2006 showed Sainsbury’s losing share slightly, from 15.9% to 15.7% compared to ASDA’s 16.6%. Tesco’s share was 31.4% and Morrisons’ 11.1%. |
Wm Morrison Supermarkets plc (LSE: MRW) is the fourth largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. The company is usually referred to as Morrisons and it is part of the FTSE 100 Index of companies. Morrisons is now one of just four supermarket chains that dominate the full-size superstore market in the United Kingdom. In descending order of size the other three are Tesco, ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart), and Sainsbury’s. Morrisons strategy is based on doing the basics efficiently, selling predominantly food at low prices, and doing so only from large stores. |
UK: Tesco OR Tescopoly
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Tesco now controls 30% of the grocery market in the UK. In 2007, the supermarket chain announced over £2.5 billion in profits. Growing evidence indicates that Tesco’s success is partly based on trading practices that are having serious consequences for suppliers, farmers and workers worldwide, local shops and the environment. |
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The Tescopoly Alliance is calling for: * A block on any new take-overs by Tesco or other major supermarkets. |
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Tesco currently operates in 12 countries and has plans at various levels of development to enter a further 3. After a gradual expansion into Ireland and an unsuccessful expansion into France in the 1990s, Tesco began a rapid expansion in the late 1990s into emerging markets focusing on Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia. These areas have relatively undeveloped grocery retail markets but are undergoing rapid changes and provide huge potential markets for companies such as Tesco. Tesco has succeeded in becoming among the top retailers in a few Eastern European countries, has ambitious plans in China, is attempting to enter India, and is also soon to open its first stores in the US. Source: www.tescopoly.org |
UK: Rainy London
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I have been in London for the past few days. I will be writing few posts about it hopefully during the weekend. Unfortunately, I had a bad weather during my stay.
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