Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kien Tan

@kientan74.bsky.social

320 followers 330 following 1.6K posts

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.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · Nov 13

Right. Where are you at #Retail people? Surely you can’t all be hanging out on LinkedIn and Threads? The best retail bantz is gonna be here.

HMU if you want to be added…
go.bsky.app/ThbCH86

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 13m

Thank you 🙏

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 3h

Would things like turk’y and chick’n be ok, or could Bernard Matthews sue?!

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 3h

TfL “Please use our Journey Planner”

Also TfL: “You didn’t actually expect us to know where our buses stop, did you?”

🤦‍♂️

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 5h

Ah come on, Calder is one of the good guys. He is a Remainer and the Venezuelans point is aimed squarely at Leaver gammons who complain to his Q&As that they have to queue at all.
And you do need to queue twice: for EES then passport stamp, and many airports don’t have enough registration terminals…

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 7h

🛒 This will go down like a tonne of cold sick with my typical BlueSky follower, but IMHO* it’s hard to disagree with the ever direct Clive Black here, writing in @retailweek.bsky.social…

*puts on flame-proof jacket 🔥

‘Why not make a third less profit, Tesco?’

A call for Tesco to make less much money isn't the answer to food price inflation but would mean less investment in Britain, a more insecure food system, and lower tax receipts, maintains Shore Capita...

www.retail-week.com

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 9h

🍺 Respect to the chap at Cannon Street ‘Spoons who’s finished his second pint of Guinness at *checks watch* 9:40am 💪

Looking through the window at a man at a table on the pub

Two empty Guinness pint glasses in front of man

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

😒 It’s for work, I’m already dreading the connection. Any tips? (Already asked for a match)

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

*taps sign again*

🛒 Several supermarkets may have launched “price wars” this week - not just Asda - but the price of shoppers’ trolleys is still going up - as I told @stephistacey.ft.com elsewhere in the FT:

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

FOMO 😒

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

@starflyergold.bsky.social uh-oh… the dark side is calling me… ⭐🫣

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

Portobello too?! Gosh I missed that one...

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 1d

🛒 When is a price war not a price war?
Price cuts are good news for shoppers, but inflation means that grocery baskets will still be more expensive this Christmas than last year, as I told @stephistacey.ft.com for the @financialtimes.com

Asda price cuts hit shares of supermarket rivals

Grocer reduces prices on almost 1,000 products, squeezing margins in fiercely competitive sector

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 2d

Ikr? I'm normally quite good at spotting legit vs phishing, but I definitely paused on these ones, because most of them did not identify that they were an order from Wilko/Range/CDS and none of them said what was inside...

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 2d

📦 Last week I ordered some dull household stuff from Wilko (shoe rack, storage boxes etc). 7 items have been delivered by 7 different carriers! And unless you knew Wilko is owned by the Range, which is owned by CDS Stores, you wouldn't know all these notifications relate to the same order 🤯

Emails from delivery companies

More emails from delivery companies

Text messages from other delivery companies

Reposted by Kien Tan

Tube Mapper- Luke Agbaimoni @tubemapper.bsky.social · 2d

Light & Shadow

I love the secret feature at Nine Elms London Underground station that reveals itself during a sunny day.

If you arrive at the perfect moment, the roundel logo is beautifully projected onto the floor.

So I took Dancer Andreya with me to interact with the scene.

Light and Shadow at Nine Elms London Underground station

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 3d

What a beautiful, hopeful piece of journalism. Please take a minute to read.

Joshi Herrmann @joshiherrmann.bsky.social · 3d

Jews and Muslims in North Manchester: A personal story.

Fantastic piece by @ophiraophira.bsky.social, who has covered the attack for @manchestermill.bsky.social like no other journalist. Read this alongside the other news coverage.

manchestermill.co.uk/jews-and-mus...

Jews and Muslims in North Manchester: A personal story

‘We thought we were the luckiest people in the world to be born in Manchester’

manchestermill.co.uk

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 3d

📦 People getting het up about Amazon. I mean, this was the business model since the start. If you don’t want to buy from Amazon, then don’t! I haven’t bought anything from Amazon in 20 years*

*apart from its soon-to-be RIP grocery stores, where they were losing fistfuls of money (to me, mainly)

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

www.theguardian.com

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 3d

😢 Sad times. No more chip butties. RIP Gardies.

Cambridge kebab shop beloved by students shuts after 76 years

A takeaway, loved by Stephen Fry and Michael Portillo, closes for good, says the college landlord.

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 4d

You, a mere beverage simpleton: it’s squash

Me, a sophisticated Aldi shopper: I think you’ll find it’s a concentrated electrolyte water enhancer…

A bottle of squash

Reposted by Kien Tan

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 4d

In her lunch with the FT the OnlyFans CEO says her company pays more tax than the entire British fishing industry. Quite a stat.

Reposted by Kien Tan

Bryan Roberts @bryanroberts72.bsky.social · 4d

Bit of Peckham Rye art deco. Former Holdron’s department store. Now a tremendous shop in its own right

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 5d

🤳 This, this, 100x this from @harrywallop.co.uk... There is no excuse for paper *anything* these days. Like the time I had to fill out a paper form to register at my GP... which they then keyed into their PC 🤦‍♂️
I don't have a landline. I don't open letters. If it ain't electronic, it's not happening!

Is the UK digitally efficient enough? I wouldn’t bank on it

An enforced trip to the Post Office was like a return to the heyday of late Victorian Britain. If we are ever to boost productivity, we could start here

www.thetimes.com

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 5d

Perhaps, but for the OP to blame consumer choices/cakeism is disingenuous. A fair bit of those costs is regulatory too. Kemi may be getting flak today, but make the green levies optional and see if anybody chooses to pay them (even if you do get tier points…)

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 5d

Well, it isn't *all* due to staff costs... A lot of Europe has high minimum wages but nothing like as high consumer prices for certain items. Rent, rates and utilities as a % of sales are *much* higher in the UK...

Kien Tan @kientan74.bsky.social · 5d

I haven't seen it, but they normally put the online articles into the monthly print editions which they distribute in their lounges!