Some More Stories For Your Enjoyment

Finally, the weather changed and it got a bit cooler outside.

I am not going to talk a lot about it because I'm stating the obvious. However, in looking at the forecasts, I can see the temperatures rising again over the next week or so. It really should not be all that much of a surprise because we are at the end of July and the beginning of August when temperatures are quite warm.

Let me just write about a couple of stories that I have seen recently that I hope you'll find of interest.

GROCERY CHAINS

I am going to be writing a story that you might consider to be a bit different than normal. I am just experiencing some things which seem to be odd to me but I'm not sure that I can "prove" it. Let me explain.

As I am certain that you know from what I have written before, dear reader, I like going grocery shopping. I have a favorite store that I go to once a week. Quite quite often I go to a different branded store in another chain to buy a few extra products because we are starting to run out of them towards the middle of a week.

Let me be a little bit more direct so you will understand better what I mean. My family does a lot of our weekly shopping at Real Canadian Superstore because it has great products at terrific prices. It is a bit of a drive to get there from where we live but we do it once a week. If we start running out of food, rather than drive all the way back to RCSS, we drive to a Zehrs store very close to where we live where we do our purchasing.

Of course, when we shop, my wife and I have a lot of fun. Importantly however, we make sure that we can pay as low a price as we possibly can by purchasing products that are on sale at the low price. Fortunately, RCSS (and a few other grocery stores) allow us to use the advertisements of other grocery stores so that we can use the lower price of products that they are offering to their customers.

Let me give you an example. Assume that the normal price for the product that RCSS is offering to its customers when we are shopping there is $1.75 for it. However, in this week, one of its competitive grocery stores is advertising that product for sale at $1.25 or a savings of $.50. As long as we can show that store's advertisement, then we also can buy that product at the $1.25 price at RCSS.

As you can tell, this is a nice way we can save money since we are able to go to our favourite grocery store and yet, can buy all of the products that we want that their competitors are offering at the lower price. To be direct, we can save a lot of money by using all of these savings from so many stores at RCSS while still getting the discounts that they offer at their store and can take advantage of their lower prices.

However, dear reader, things seem to be different now. Oh sure, we still go through our grocery store in detail looking for bargains. We are usually holding those coupons from other stores which we think get us a better price in our shopping place and are happy when we find the product. The problem though is we don't see very many products on sale anymore. By that, I mean not only in our grocery store but also in the other stores in town as well whose ads we are holding.

Take a look at the recent advertisements from many grocery chains in your newspaper or which was delivered to you or which you can see online. There are a lot of pictures of items that are being offered to customers. The problem is the pricing is generally not discounted at all but is the usual product price. The number of products in the advertisements that are on sale is much lower it seems to me compared with products on sale previously.

Obviously, this means that the stores are not passing on as much money to customers as before on the sales that they are advertising but are keeping more of the funds for themselves. Is there a reason for this? Perhaps it is just so that each of the grocery chains can make a lot more money by not creating as many discount coupons as before.

However, I suspect that there must be another reason for it. What is that reason is not certain to me but I suspect it is to create money for these companies for some purposes that could cost them dearly in the future. They must want to get as much money as possible today for any reason that they need it in the future. What I find fascinating is that it seems that a number of these competing store brands seem to be following this tactic today and at the same time as their competitors.

One day I expect that we will learn the reason.

EMBARRASSING FOR THIS MUNICIPAL ELECTION CANDIDATE

Poor Jim Morrison the Municipal Candidate who is running for Councillor in Windsor in Ward 10. Is his campaign in trouble now based on something that just happened? I must admit that I found it strange that a second story came out about this matter because it seemed to me to be all over in the first story written.

I have written about him a few days ago about the news story that involved him: “ATTACKING A COUNCILLOR.” Actually, I spoke more about his office manager, Paul Synnott, in that story. Just go and take a look at it so you will understand what I mean. Now, what happened before is being publicized again.

Just go and take a look at this new story, especially the first paragraph:

“City officials not looking into alleged campaign violations

The City of Windsor is not looking into allegations that Coun. Paul Borrelli violated municipal policy by promoting recent accomplishments in Ward 10 just before an election.” (Craig Pearson, Windsor Star, July 19, 2018)

There was a lot of publicity expressed in that previous story but the City is doing nothing about it. So far anyway. Now here is what is being said by Morrison's office manager. It is similar to what he stated before:

“Synnott said he did not file a complaint with [integrity commissioner Bruce] Elman.

“I don’t want to waste a lot of time and money on this,” Synnott said. “Ultimately, I just wanted to bring it to the fore.”

After reading this new story several times, I have to admit that I still do not understand why it had to be written at all. There really wasn't anything all that new that was added to it compared with the first story. Well, I should not say that exactly because here is what Mr. Synnott said about the only matter that was of significance;

"He takes issue only with Borrelli mentioning the ward funds he used for new bus shelters, since Synnott claims Borrelli didn’t tout that accomplishment when it was approved in April.

Instead, Synnott said it was only after his candidate Jim Morrison announced June 29 he was running in Ward 10 that Borrelli publicly promote his bus shelter work.”

I wonder now if anything will happen with Mr. Borrelli since he is running for re-election. We will just have to wait and see.