My sister-in-law Sarah runs a small business from her house in Scotland. She makes ‘Logshifters’ – essentially large, jolly handy wicker baskets on wheels you can trundle in from woodshed to hearth.In her advert, the delivery charge is set at £10, which is what she thinks is the most the average customer can bear to pay to have door-to-door delivery of this labour- and jersey-saving device, and true country living essential.Three weeks before Christmas, however, her carrier put in new technology and also decided to ‘volumise’ deliveries – charging by volume, instead of weight. As a nation we shop online more than any other country - but our delivery systems cannot match the pace and expectation of this furious, frenzied Klondike economy (file picture)Sarah’s Logshifters (when boxed) are bulky: the smallest is 43in long (there’s a sticky-out handle), 24in wide and 20.5in high. They weigh 17.5lb, but after ‘volumisation’ this scales up to the equivalent of 128lb, and Direct Express said it would cost £40 to deliver each Logshifter, a rate that would put Sarah out of business.IN panic, and anxious for her loyal and impatient customers to get their festive deliveries in time, Sarah logged on to a website called We Deliver The World, which compares quotes. City Link came out lowest, so Sarah used them to send out the last few Logshifters – at £25 a pop, she took the hit – before Christmas.But City Link declined to open an account for Sarah – thoughtful of them, as it turned out. It went into administration on Christmas Eve, and a spokesman explained that the company had ‘incurred substantial losses over several years’.
Dec 12, 2013 Merry Clickmas! Make presents for everyone in the world and save Christmas! Meta Filter community weblog. Basically the Clicking Bad Christmas Special December 12, 2013 3:13 AM Subscribe. Search for var decorations for the list of decorations, for instance. Posted by Nelson at 8:34 AM on December 12. A Christmas tree, 'tree' A partridge in a pear tree, 'partridge', 'pear tree' Tinsel, 'tinsel' Baubles, 'bauble', 'ball' Glass ornaments, 'ornament', 'glass decoration' A star, 'star' An angel, 'angel' A fairy, 'fairy', 'faerie', 'faery'.
ShareSarah and I went online, putting in postcodes and sizes of item, to compare prices to see how expensive and how fast we could get a Logshifter to a customer on Exmoor. The next best quote was UPS, with a rate of £51 and an ‘express saver rate’ for next-day delivery of £101.Sarah has a barn full of Logshifters now that she can’t afford to shift, as she can’t charge her clients the full cost of delivery, which is realistically £40 an item.Here, I feel, lies the paradox of the online gold rush.As a nation we shop online more than any other country. From the £810 million spent online on Black Friday to last week’s Boxing Day sales – when internet shoppers are estimated to have spent a further £750 million – it’s been the same story all year. We like to slump on the sofa, one hand dipping into the Quality Street tin, the other dabbing the checkout button on our laptops, with one eye on the Downton Abbey Christmas special and another watching an auction on eBay. This is the way we expect to live now, and it’s mad. Tara needed a nanny, not the Keystone CopsHow could it have taken eight armed officers to restrain one 7st Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (right) outside a first-class lounge while rubberneckers filmed the fracas on their phones?
What overkill.If I was in charge, I’d deploy retired nannies rather than Keystone Cops.Far better if ‘Nanny Heathrow’ had come to the rescue and led Prince Charles’s goddaughter gently away for a nice cup of tea, thereby sparing the ‘socialite’ (press euphemism for ‘well-heeled waste of space’) a multi-platform meltdown.I feel sorry for Tara – pictured at Heathrow before her arrest – and ashamed at how the authorities over-reacted to her panic attack. Sometimes I wonder whether we live in a Christian country at all.How much 'room' can one couple want?Many of us fantasise, I expect, about the living arrangements of Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton, just as we did about Mick Jagger/Jerry Hall and the literary couple Michael Holroyd and Margaret Drabble, who all maintained separate dwellings.How perfect, and perfectly civilised, not to have to share a roof – let alone a bathroom – but only a party wall.
The lifestyles of the rich and famous! But now it appears that each having their own house next door in trendy Primrose Hill isn’t Lebensraum enough.The actress and the film director need still more space. Quotes of the Year‘There’ll always be a donkey telling the racehorse how’s he’s doing in the race.’Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll rounded on TV critics in February who do not enjoy his popular comedy.‘What do you want me to do? Sit under a tree and read Karl Marx every day?’The late union boss Bob Crow defended his £10,000 holiday in the same month ahead of a Tube strike.‘I said to Simon, “You will love that child more than you love yourself.” He replied, “That’s not possible.” ’David Walliams, congratulating his Britain’s Got Talent colleague Simon Cowell on fatherhood in February. Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow (left) and Roy Hodgson (right) both featured in the Quotes of the Year‘Never underestimate the tremendous healing power of sitting down together to speak frankly and openly about the marital difficulties facing other couples you know.’In May, writer Tim Dowling suggested that a little schadenfreude can restore a rocky marriage to health.' Conscious uncoupling.'
26 December 2011 News Archive.Monday 26 December 2011.