Costa Coffee - first world problems

[Tangled Metal]

Just read a MEN article about people furious about a price increase at Costa. Made me laugh! Costs increasing for some time and companies can't increase prices?

The best comment was one probably affluent customer said they were not going to Costa anymore but will use their waitrose card for free coffee there instead.

Are we as a nation getting more disconnected from reality or self absorbed?

[simonineaston]

Of all the animals, the human is the one that most loses grip on reality, most often - boy, will it come as a shock to them when The Great Cull starts ! Yikes !!

[Nearholmer]

I’m not sure why, or even whether, this example of shopping around for non-essentials should be thought remarkable, given all the millions of other acts of shopping around for non-essentials that go on every day.

If you enter pretty much any place of shopping in Britain, from the humblest corner shop to the most glitzy luxury emporium, you will find vast numbers of things that we could all, if push came to shove, manage without.

Have you been in a bike shop? Sheesh! 90% of the bikes have nothing to do with getting people to work or school, or lugging the essential shopping about. And as for the clothing and sccessories!

And, it’s not a new thing. Have you ever seen pictures of the stuff that was on show at The Great Exhibition in 1851?

We live in a consumerist society. No new news.

Not good news in terms of sustainability or psyche, but not new news.

Oh, and the midst of that, some people in this country still genuinely can’t make ends meet when it comes to essentials. They can’t afford what they need to manage, let alone what they can manage without. Go figure, as Americans say.

[Cugel]

I’m not sure why, or even whether, this example of shopping around for non-essentials should be thought remarkable, given all the millions of other acts of shopping around for non-essentials that go on every day.

If you enter pretty much any place of shopping in Britain, from the humblest corner shop to the most glitzy luxury emporium, you will find vast numbers of things that we could all, if push came to shove, manage without.

Have you been in a bike shop? Sheesh! 90% of the bikes have nothing to do with getting people to work or school, or lugging the essential shopping about. And as for the clothing and sccessories!

And, it’s not a new thing. Have you ever seen pictures of the stuff that was on show at The Great Exhibition in 1851?

We live in a consumerist society. No new news.

Not good news in terms of sustainability or psyche, but not new news.

Oh, and the midst of that, some people in this country still genuinely can’t make ends meet when it comes to essentials. They can’t afford what they need to manage, let alone what they can manage without. Go figure, as Americans say.

It would be an interesting exercise to attempt a list of essentials and a corresponding list of non-essentials. We could start with fud & drank. I'm interested as such lists would be one underpinning of a calculation that came up with a base or minimum "minimum wage", a notion I feel could solve many current issues in Blighty around poverty and deprivation.

In my yoof, hundreds of years ago (feels like) there was still post-war rationing and only a small proportion of the range of things currently available. Although there were times when we were "deprived" of enough coal, gas or lecky (getting cut off was not unusual for many of the working class, even those working with two badly paid jobs) life was generally quite good. Part of the reason for it feeling good was that there was better community and mutuality as well as more opportunities to prosper, even if the prosperity would now be considered another kind of poverty (none of that proper coffee, only Camp). One could afford and eat nutritious if limited and often bland, grub. School dinners were especially good in South shields. Whyaye!

But I digress.

Anyone care to compose a list of essential eats and sups, naming type, amounts and costs? How about the list of inessentials?

I'll start a list of the latter, 'cos that's much easier:

Anything alcoholic
Anything with added refined sugars
Exotic fruit and veg grown thousands of miles away
Anything once alive and tortured as part of its role in the food chain
Live things on the brink of extinction, such as many varieties of seafood

Continue, pray do.

Cugel

[al_yrpal]

The most significant part of the price of a Costa is rent.

If you visit with your partner take a spare cup or one of those folding ones and buy one coffee and split it, its quite enough. I got a letter of the month award from Which by sending in that suggestion.

Al

[reohn2]

......Are we as a nation getting more disconnected from reality or self absorbed?

Both!

I saw the article and laughed out loud BTW.

PS,it's cheaper for two cans of ale than a Costa coffee,why would anyone want to drink coffee!

[reohn2]

The most significant part of the price of a Costa is rent.

If you visit with your partner take a spare cup or one of those folding ones and buy one coffee and split it, its quite enough. I got a letter of the month award from Which by sending in that suggestion.

Al

That doesn't surprise me

[Nearholmer]

What is and isn't essential shopping-wise is always fair game for a debate, but not long ago we had a law that told us roughly what the government’s emergency planners thought was essential. Remember Lockdown 1?

I think it excluded DIY materials, furniture, and possibly books, maps, and clothes, so might need to be expanded upon for longer-term practical purposes.

Bike shops were allowed, but they instantly ran out of vital things like tyres, so that wasn’t perfect.

Within the heading “food”, IMO Cugel suggests some good potential exclusions, to which I would add Brussels sprouts and swede, neither of which I like.

Can I suggest a few other reasons why life might have felt more positive “back then”?

- you were young, which generally means optimistic.

- a war had recently ended, which must have given some feeling of relief to all;

- until possibly 10-15 years ago, there was always an underlying assumption that ‘life would be better in the future, even if it’s fairly OK now’, a general positivity about the future, which has gradually tipped over to become a general anxiety about the future, a feeling that those growing-up now might not ‘have it better’, and may struggle not to ‘have it worse’ especially when it comes to the affects of climate change.

[Jdsk]

I’m not sure why, or even whether, this example of shopping around for non-essentials should be thought remarkable, given all the millions of other acts of shopping around for non-essentials that go on every day.

Yes.

Some other people like Costa Coffee. They don't want to pay more for it.

Those both sound reasonable to me.

Jonathan

[Ben@Forest]

Over this Platinum Jubilee weekend l have spent £75.00 on two meals (one a lunch and one a dinner) for two. The dinner included two glasses of wine, each of which would have come close to buying a cheap bottle of wine in a supermarket.

Was it essential? - absolutely not - has it contributed to the economy and employment in the UK? (especially compared to those who have spent their UK-earned £ abroad this weekend) - absolutely.

Do l ever spend £1,000 on a set of bike wheels? Also absolutely not, but if they were made in the UK someone's benefiting from that too...

[Cugel]

(snip)

Within the heading “food”, IMO Cugel suggests some good potential exclusions, to which I would add Brussels sprouts and swede, neither of which I like.

My brother-in-law is a swede and now feels hurt at your unjustified dislike. I know they're a bit dour sometimes but they are often quite funny albeit unintentionally.

As to brussel sprouts - I love 'em! I know that each one expands into a vast bubble of methane 89 times as big as the sprout but I can't help eating at least 27 a week anyway. Becky the Fruit always has great big green ones, she does.

Can I suggest a few other reasons why life might have felt more positive “back then”?

- you were young, which generally means optimistic.

- a war had recently ended, which must have given some feeling of relief to all;

- until possibly 10-15 years ago, there was always an underlying assumption that ‘life would be better in the future, even if it’s fairly OK now’, a general positivity about the future, which has gradually tipped over to become a general anxiety about the future, a feeling that those growing-up now might not ‘have it better’, and may struggle not to ‘have it worse’ especially when it comes to the affects of climate change.

Whilst all that's true, I feel that the largest factors making me happy were:

* It's built-in, I can't help it;

* I was ignorant of just how nasty humans can get, despite reading about nasty baddies in Rover & Adventure comic for boys, as well as getting beaten up quite regularly by Geordie Stobbs and Ernie Clements (later gaoled for murdering a German tourist by throwing him off the cliffs at Marsden, as a "joke"). I thought me dad and all the other RAF, army and navy heroes had seen the bad men orf, see? I blame those jingo-history books they made us have in school, not to mention The Wizard, Hotspur and the aforementioned Rover & Adventure.

It turns out we still had bad fellows right here at home! Some very bad indeed. Who'd a thunk it? But there I was thinking Geordie and Ernie were just a two-off aberration. An innocent abroad, me, see?

Cugel, now somewhat disappointed in Blightyland.

[Nearholmer]

The School Probably-Psychopaths.

They were called the Mc****** Twins at our school, last heard of working for some shady part of special branch as agents provocateur, starting ruckuses to justify the use of snatch squads during the miners’ strike (so quite a long time ago, thankfully).

[Tangled Metal]

School psychopaths? Two schools in our village and town/village next to us, merge into one. The other one to ours had two brothers called the "xxxxxxx twins". Every kid in our village avoided them for very good reasons. Even older kids several years older than them went the other way when they were seen.

As to psychopaths. I'm no expert but all the indications my amateur psycho detection criteria got ticked before they reached double digits for their age. Violence, no empathy, thievery, extortion, no emotion when committing torture, parents distant probably because they were terrorised by them and animal cruelty (they killed the family golden retriever in a dumped bath in a shed, slit the dog's throat with the sole purpose of getting maggots for fishing. Fishing was the only activity they did that caused no harm to other people just their dog). BTW that's a true story. If i had stayed there I would have gone to the local failing high school, not being religious there was no other option, the same school as them. 3 or 4 years of hell that would be until they left, being 1 or 2 years older than me.

There are really scary people around and I met those two as a kid and I hope they're locked up on full life tariffs or institutionalised at Broadmoor with their own type like Brady.

Sorry for my digression. It's just that I think the term psychopath get bandied around but if you ever met one you'd really know what it means. <I have a real shiver up and down my spine typing this. That's 40 years after I last saw them!>

[ossie]

Just read a MEN article about people furious about a price increase at Costa.

What's a MEN article ?..am I missing out on something.

Anyway there's always another coffee shop (probably within 6 feet) to hoover up their customers

[Tangled Metal]

Manchester Evening News. Main sponsor of the MEN arena venue. Thought that was known even south of the North-South border!