🚲 I told everyone that cycling was a pandemic bubble, and everyone told me I was wrong... Ooops. "Bikemaker Accell files for insolvency four years after €1.8bn KKR-led buyout" www.ft.com/content/3cf1...
Kien Tan
@kientan74.bsky.social
Retail consultant and analyst by day, gym instructor and beer drinker by night. All about shops, pubs, planes, gyms... and the views are mine, all mine.
This. Bluesky is a “nice-to-have” for economics, beer, avgeek, politics chat. But what the fall of X has really done is drive my “must-have” work communities (for me, retail & fitness) to LinkedIn & Insta. When I’m busy, I don’t open Bluesky in the way that I HAD to open Twitter. That’s a shame.
Felicity Hannah@felicityhannah.bsky.social · 2d agoI really like my Bluesky bubble because I have mostly recreated my Twitter bubble of journo and thinktank tweeps. However, it is a fun place to post for me - not a professionally valuable place. It needs to become more mainstream to be useful that way. And maybe others don’t want that - but I do.
Apologies for the parochially North London skeet, but none of the electronic signage is working anywhere in Camden Town station, and hasn’t been all day… which means nobody - including a LOT of tourists - has any idea which platform anything is going from. Total chaos. IYKYK.
🥪+🥗 Ok, I know I’m the first to criticise Pret for its prices having gone *out of control*, but a small sandwich or soup PLUS a side salad or protein pot for under £5 is pretty good value. Shame it isn’t in all shops yet.
Oh look, another Chancellor blaming supermarkets for the cost of living crisis, and not the plethora of this government's policies (eNICs, NLW, EPR, et al) that have caused their costs to spiral.
Healey’s profiteering warning on food and fuel risks row with retailers
Chancellor says the government wants to prevent shoppers being ‘taken for a ride’ at the pump or till
theguardian.com
Kien Tan@kientan74.bsky.social · 3mo agoTHIS is the problem. The public *believes* that supermarkets make 50% profit margins. If only! Surely the government should be educating people on why they're wrong *by a factor of 20*, instead of milking public ignorance to impose price caps www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/brits-b...
Hard agree with @pollymackenzie.bsky.social. Toying with business rates won't save our high streets. We need more people working, studying and living there... as I said to @retailweek.bsky.social in its deep dive on high street revival earlier this week (see www.retail-week.com/stores/the-d...)
Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 3d agoHow to save the British high street ft.trib.al/Gep6DvU | opinion
🍻 ...and today? Today would be a Teg day for me and @citradelica.bsky.social (with thanks to @boakandbailey.bsky.social for the reminder!). At the Sutton Arms, obviously.
TfL is having a really bad week, isn’t it? Because it’s delightful being stuck under the SCORCHED EARTH during a heatwave
An unbelievably, but predictably poor take from the Spectator… The sale of Harvey Nichols is proof of *Harvey Nichols' decline*, as the likes of Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason have risen to take its crown. Presumably, the success of Fortnums, Selfridges, Next and Frasers are proof of London's rise?
The sale of Harvey Nichols is proof of London’s decline
Harvey Nichols used to be one of the most glamorous department stores in the world. But now the business has gone up for sale – and it looks as if only the retailer Next and Frasers Group – owned by M...
spectator.com
🎄 Are you the sort of person who, on a balmy July night during the 4th heatwave of the year, thinks “you know what I really need: to fill my living room with a sea of Christmas-spiced LED-light up candles”? 🎅 Don’t worry, Sainsbury’s has got you *more than covered* 🕯️
🛒 Why doesn't the UK need the Mamdani grocery plan? Don't make me tap the sign again... 1. Food is already MUCH cheaper in the UK. Thanks, Competition! 2. We have discounters and price match. Everywhere. 3. If you really can't afford Aldi, we have food banks and enterprises like Company Shop.
Mamdani plans to offer 30% discount on meat and produce at city-owned grocery stores
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says he plans to offer 30% discounts on meat, produce and other pantry staples at his proposed city-owned grocery stores when they open for business.
apnews.com
Kien Tan@kientan74.bsky.social · 3mo ago🛒 It’s not as if UK food prices are expensive in the first place. We spend less on food as a % of household spend and less in absolute terms than most of the rest of Western Europe. If the govt is worried about the cost-of-living, there are much bigger costs to address (e.g. housing, energy...)
📻 Everyone on here seems obsessed with Today, but 5 Live (and Times Radio) have quietly been building formidable speech radio alternatives. @rachelburden.bsky.social was the first to lure me away from Radio 4 15 years ago, sad she’ll be leaving breakfast, but great to still have her late mornings
Naga Munchetty to co-present BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast as Rachel Burden takes on new weekday show
Naga will co-host the station’s flagship morning programme from January 2027
bbc.co.uk
I know, I’m really old, I still use Yahoo! for one of my email addresses (millennials are, like, wtf is that?) Anyway, they’ve started gamifying my email inbox, FFS… 🤦♂️
How old am I? I'm "Carly Simon's Live from Martha's Vineyard album was the perfect live album" years old... 😔
Carly Simon shares Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and says music has ‘rescued’ her
Singer-songwriter also had surgery to treat carcinoma on her face, leading her to ‘withdraw from public view’
theguardian.com
👕 I don't care what the PM wears. But the issue with the "it's not expensive, it's high quality" argument is that plain T-shirts are £2.50 at Primark. So Andy's £60 one would need to last 25 years (it won't) to make economic sense, even if his Primark one fell apart every year (it won't)...
📈 From @sstapczynski.bsky.social on the other place… For everyone celebrating UK inflation undershooting last week, and hoping it will influence the BoE rate decision this week, guess what’s (not) coming…
🙅♂️ I left the Other Place to stop hearing about Elon, and now my timeline is filled with him... I am literally contemplating going back to X* because nobody I follow talks about him or X (or indeed BlueSky) And for all you "but the algorithm" people: you don't look at the algorithm here, do you?
Why do I know more about the PM and Chancellor’s pub snack choices than their *actual economic policies*? This is Not Normal…
🛍️ Highest quarterly retail sales growth since the end of the pandemic? Before anyone gets too excited, it was fuelled by heatwaves, World Cup, higher wages, a temporary dip in inflation, and Amazon shifting its Prime Day a month earlier. Not a sign of things to come, alas... Read my comments here 👇
pwc.co.uk
📉 One of the biggest challenges for the new govt? Gen Z has stopped believing that the UK economy is working for them: their confidence is falling and their concerns about job prospects are rising. What will the new PM do for them? I spoke to Bloomberg about what the data tells us:
Gen Z Is Losing Confidence in the UK Economy
The UK economy is fragile and some of its weaknesses are particularly tough on younger people.
bloomberg.com
🚨 Excellent news from PM for Wetherspoons and PE owners of large pub chains! Watch out for supermarkets pretending to be pubs and vape shops pretending to be gig venues! Charging Vinted sellers VAT, but still letting Temu and Shein get away without paying! www.gov.uk/government/n...
Kien Tan@kientan74.bsky.social · 3w ago🍺 Are British pubs in crisis? While pub numbers are falling, more people work in them! And LFL pub sales have grown faster than restaurants all but 4 times in the last 2 years. Reality? Bigger, better pubs are booming. Top work from @tomcalver.bsky.social here: www.thetimes.com/article/bfdc...
Not generally a fan of price controls, but IMHO £2 bus cap is a sensible one, and much better than VAT cuts for the rich (!) ⚖️ Targeted at less well off & regions 💷 Relatively cheap ~£400m 🚐 Helps get NEETs to work... 🙃 Reverses Starmer's 2nd most unpopular policy (after WFA - already reversed)
Cheaper travel for millions with a third off fares
Millions of people will save a third on bus travel as Prime Minister Andy Burnham announces a cap on single bus tickets at £2 during his first week in office.
gov.uk
Apparently if you use the word "England", you could get a cease-and-desist letter from the FA, in case anybody mixes you up with the national football team... Babe, it's three branches of a frozen food retailer 🙄
Iceland 'shocked and deeply disappointed' over World Cup store rebrand spat - Grocery Gazette - Latest Grocery Industry News
Iceland has said it was left “shocked and deeply disappointed” after receiving a cease-and-desist warning from the Football Association over its World Cup
grocerygazette.co.uk
The problem with purging so many cabinet ministers is that they know where the bodies are buried... x.com/i/status/207...
NEW: VAT To Be Cut From Electricity Bills To Bring Down Cost Of Living www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/vat-to...
VAT To Be Cut From Electricity Bills To Bring Down Cost Of Living
The move will cut £45 from the energy price cap.
huffingtonpost.co.uk