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Poundland launches huge 75% off sale as 12 stores shut their doors this week

Poundland launches huge 75% off sale as 12 stores shut their doors this week

Scottish Sun5 hours ago
Has a store near you closed down? We would love to hear from you please email: money-sm@news.co.uk
SHUTTERS DOWN Poundland launches huge 75% off sale as 12 stores shut their doors this week
POUNDLAND has launched a huge 75% off sale as 12 stores will shut for good this week.
The bargain retailer is preparing to close its branch in the Killingworth Centre in Newcastle this week.
1
Poundland is preparing to close another branch
Credit: Alamy
The store is set to shut this Sunday, August 24, with the chain slashing prices by up to 75%.
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The news has come as a blow to locals who said they were "sad" to see the store closure.
But other bargain hunters encouraged shoppers to check out the sale, with many items selling like "hot cakes".
It won't be the only store Poundland shutting this weekend.
Up to 12 sites are set to close and a further 11 stores will shut the following week.
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It comes after the beloved British store confirmed it would be shuttering 48 locations this month.
The bargain chain closed 15 stores yesterday as part of the process.
You can check out the full list of impacted stores here.
Closed on August 17:
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Bedford
Bidston Moss
Broxburn
Craigavon
Dartmouth
East Dulwich
Falmouth
Hull St Andrews
Newtownabbey
Perth
Poole
Sunderland
Stafford
Thornaby
Worcester
Poundland to be sold for JUST £1 as frontrunner for shock takeover is revealed after wave of store closures
Shutting on August 24:
Brigg
Canterbury
Coventry
Newcastle
Kings Heath
Peterborough
Peterlee
Rainham
Salford
Sheldon
Wells
Whitechapel
Shutting on August 31:
Blackburn
Cookstown
Erdington
Kimberley Kimberley Shopping Centre, Nottingham
Horsham
Hull Holderness
Kettering
Omagh
Shepherds Bush
Southport
Taunton
As it stands, Poundland operates 800 stores nationwide, but the company hopes to significantly reduce this number to between 650 and 700.
This includes the 68 stores closing by mid-October, as well as additional stores shutting when leases expire and are not renewed.
These restructuring plans were outlined in June by the investment firm Gordon Brothers.
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This came after the company was sold to the firm that month as part of a deal that included major restructuring and an £80million cash injection.
All change at Poundland
The bargain retail chain will make a number of changes following its sale.
Come September 16, shoppers will no longer be able to buy products off its website and its loyalty scheme, Poundland Perks will be axed.
Loyalty scheme customers signed up to the Poundland Perks app have until January 15, 2026, to use their rewards vouchers.
Poundland's new owners have said they also want to:
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Close its frozen and digital distribution centre in Darton, South Yorkshire, later this year
Ditch frozen products from stores
Reduce the number of chilled food items sold
Close its national distribution centre in Bilston, West Midlands, in early 2026
Provide more womenswear and seasonal ranges
These changes are subject to High Court approval with a hearing set to take place this month.
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Corner shop bosses celebrated in new picture and film series
Corner shop bosses celebrated in new picture and film series

North Wales Live

timean hour ago

  • North Wales Live

Corner shop bosses celebrated in new picture and film series

National Portrait Gallery photographer Serena Brown and award winning director, Ross Bolidai, have unveiled a new portrait and docu-series - 'Local Bosses' - celebrating the most British of all retailers - the local corner shop. The series brings the people behind the counter into the spotlight. Whilst the high street has dwindled in recent years, corner shop owners have thrived, with over a third of Brits saying their corner shop is an essential resource in their everyday life, according to research by Coca-Cola. Almost a quarter of Brits said they depend on corner shops more than any other retailer. The 'Local Bosses' portrait series is unveiled as Coca-Cola marks 125 years of operating in communities across Great Britain. Six entrepreneurial bosses and their families have been immortalised by photographer Serena Brown, known for her work on subverting perceptions of the working class. Director Ross Bolidai produced mini-documentaries following the family dynamics, personal bereavement and community spirit felt by the retailer. The Bosses The film and photography series, entitled The Bosses features: Sunita Aggarwal, Spar, Leicester Bobby Singh, BB Superstore & Post Office, Pontefract Keith Tomes, Costcutter, Swanage Sophie Williams, Premier Broadway, Edinburgh Kaual Patel, Nisa Local, Catford Bay Bashir, Go Local Extra, Middlesbrough Ross Bolidai said: 'Shooting these documentaries with Coca-Cola was a real pleasure. We got to the heart of British communities and were honoured to be trusted with stories like the challenges of immigrating to the UK and grief, but also the triumphs of their businesses and communities. The films are raw, emotive and stunningly honest. We think we know our local convenience shop owners, but do we really know them? We hope this series gives the nation a glimpse into the people behind the counter.' Photographer, Serena Brown, said: 'Each of the families I captured in this portrait series had unique stories to tell and I wanted to present them as they've never been pictured before. It's so important for global brands to focus on the people who ultimately make them successful - those often overlooked or taken for granted. A lot of my work is around lifting the veil on marginalised groups or vilified working class subcultures, and burning through stereotypes of corner shop owners by making them the centre of a visual story felt like an act of rebellion.' Dusan Stojankic, Vice President and General Manager of Great Britain & Ireland at Coca-Cola said: 'We're proud to be celebrating 125 years since Coca-Cola was first served in Great Britain, and with 97% of our products sold here manufactured and bottled here, we're invested in local communities. 'The Bosses' series is an ode to that, celebrating the businessmen and women ushering in a new era for the underestimated corner shop. We'll continue to champion and mentor community retailers far into the future, and hope they continue to find a sense of camaraderie through our network.'

Is Italy really doing better than Britain?
Is Italy really doing better than Britain?

Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Spectator

Is Italy really doing better than Britain?

Dante's Beach, Ravenna News that Italians now enjoy a higher standard of living than the British made me think: my God, life must be truly awful in Britain. Yes, the Italians do have much to feel good about in terms of the quality of their lives thanks to the beauty of their country, the splendour of their history, culture and cuisine, and their impressive defence of the traditional family and way of life from the threats to them of the modern world. But on the face of it the Italians would seem to have precious little to crow about on the economic front. Italy is the only G7 country, for instance, where real wages have not increased at all, and in some cases decreased, since the launch of the Euro in 1999. I speak from personal experience. I gave up being a freelance journalist in Italy in 2015 because we ended up like hand-loom weavers in the industrial revolution with the arrival of the Spinning Jenny in 1764, paid worse than dishwashers and bog cleaners. It happened overnight, more or less. In 2003, when I first began a weekly column called Fumo di London (London Smoke) for an Italian national newspaper they paid me €350 net per column which was not bad by Italian standards. I also worked for a regional newspaper that paid much more because, in addition to a more frequent column called Zuppa Inglese (English Soup, a.k.a Trifle), I had an editing role as well. But as a result of the internet revolution and the collapse of print journalism, accompanied as they were by the global financial crash, and then the Euro crisis, my national newspaper fee was halved, then slashed again. So I quit. The regional newspaper, meanwhile, went bust. Yet, apparently, regardless of tales of woe such as mine, Italy's GDP per capita, when adjusted for the difference in the cost of goods and services, has overtaken Britain's. Last year, it rose to $60,847 (£44,888) ahead of Britain's $60,620 (£44,721) for the first time since 2001, according to World Bank figures. Prior to that, measured by this key yardstick, the Italians had enjoyed a better standard of living than the British since 1987 when their GDP briefly overtook Britain's. But that was before they signed up for the Euro. The technical name for this standard of living yardstick is GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) and it measures purchasing power per person. GDP per capita, on the other hand, measures economic output per person. But trust me. I speak as one who has lived in Italy for nearly 30 years: there is no way that the superior purchasing power of Italians is related to their wages. This can be seen by looking at jobs which have not suffered devastating change, as has freelance journalism, such as waitering. My eldest son Francesco Winston, 20, is working this summer as a waiter in a restaurant by the sea in the village a mile from our house. He does a five-hour evening shift, five days a week, a double shift on Sundays, and has one day off. He gets €1,400 (£1,208) a month net for this and it's regarded as a good wage in Italy, especially as he has a proper contract. Such contracts are like gold dust because they guarantee national insurance contributions and tax are paid and employers try every trick in the book to avoid handing them out. He's certainly far better off than my second eldest daughter, Magdalena, 17, whose summer job this year is in the village bakery, where she does a seven-hour shift, six days a week, She gets paid an obscenely low €5 (£4.32) an hour for four hours of each shift in regola – i.e on a proper contract, however inhuman – and for the other three hours €9 an hour in nero, i.e. contractless. But Francesco Winston's wage, let alone Magdalena's, would be regarded as a pittance in Britain. So the most important reason why Italy's GDP per capita at PPP is higher than Britain's is because the cost of living in Italy is much lower. Things that matter, especially, are far cheaper. When I'm drinking, which I am not at the moment, I buy a superb local Sangiovese for €2.60 a litre dispensed into plastic mineral water bottles from a huge cask in a wine shop in Ravenna run by a man whose nickname is God. On a rare visit to London the other day, I went to El Vino's in Fleet Street for old time's sake where I used to be a familiar face in the 1980s and 1990s. I can't for the life of me remember what it cost in those days to get sloshed in EV1, as we used to call it, but nowadays a bottle of house red costs £28.95, a glass £7.80. I struck up a conversation with a striking blond-haired woman from New Zealand at the next table, a university lecturer specialising in the rights of rivers, as it happened, and her friend, a Maori tribal leader, who spent his time punching my arm and hugging me, as if he were itching to get me on the ground for a spot of wrestling. I used to smoke 60 a day – Camel Yellow soft pack – until they took me to death's door and I stopped in 2019. In Italy they still only cost €5.70 a pack, compared to £17.75 at Tesco's. In the bar we frequent in the village, where my youngest daughter Rita, 16, is working (she's paid €9 an hour in regola), an espresso brought by her to your table will cost you €1.20 and a cappuccino €1.50, compared to £1.95 and £4.40 at a Costa coffee shop in Britain. The most expensive fish dish on the menu at Francesco Winston's restaurant, a grigliata mista di pesce, costs €28, an entrecote steak €18, a plate of taglietelle al ragù €8 or spaghetti con vongole €13. The most expensive pizza is €9, the cheapest €5.50. A litre of house red or white (still or fizzy) is €10, and bottles €14 to €22. Unquestionably, that's a heck of lot cheaper than an equivalent restaurant in Britain. On my recent trip, I had dinner with my niece in the village pub near my recently-deceased father's home in Limpsfield Chart, Surrey, and it cost £106 for what looked like a regurgitated beetroot salad and a burger which was as black as the plague plus a couple of bottles of sort-of-okay wine (my new rule is I am allowed to drink when away from Ravenna). What else? A second-class train ticket from London to Edinburgh costs £162 to £253, the equivalent ticket from Rome to Milan a mere €102 to €139. Italy's health service is far more efficient than Britain's, though only treatment is free, not tests. Okay, so the Romagna where I am is not Tuscany which pullulates with foreign-owned stone farmhouses. But a pleasingly spacious restored one in the countryside in my neck of the woods will cost you just €350,000 (£300,000). In Ravenna itself, outside the old city, one bed flats can be rented for €500 a month. Italy's economy remains very sluggish – but so does most of Europe's. GDP grew in 2024 by only 0.7 per cent and this year is forecast by the OECD to grow by only 0.6 per cent (compared to 0.6 per cent in France, 0.4 per cent in Germany which last year was in recession, but 1.3 per cent in Britain). At 136 per cent, Italy's public debt as a proportion of GDP, remains astronomically high (second only to Greece in the EU and in the world's top ten) but remains relatively static while France (111 per cent) and Britain (97.6 per cent) steadily catch up. But since Giorgia Meloni's right-wing coalition came to power in October 2022, one million full time jobs have been created in Italy, by among other things cutting taxes and abolishing long-term unemployment benefit for all except those with non-working dependents. The all-important spread between the interest rates paid on Italian and German government ten-year bonds has plummeted from 236 when Meloni came to power to just 83. The lower the spread between the Italian and the German bonds the more confident the markets are in the stability of Italy's economy. Italy's first female Prime Minister already heads the fourth longest lasting of the country's 69 governments since the fall of fascism in 1945 – just over one a year. If she survives another year, as looks likely, her government will become the longest lasting of all. Significantly, her government has also slashed the budget deficit from 8.1 per cent when she came to power to 3.4 per cent in 2024. Italy's inflation rate at 1.7 per cent is much lower than Britain's which is 3.6 per cent and expected by the Bank of England to increase to 4 per cent in September. Unemployment among young Italians under the age of 24 is still very high at around 20 per cent nationwide and much higher in the deep south. But overall unemployment has decreased to a historic low of 5.9 per cent – 1.6 million people – compared to only 4.7 per cent in Britain – 1.7 million people. But that unemployment figure for Britain is deceptive because in total 6.4 million are on out-of-work benefits: and the unemployment figure only includes those looking for work. The other reason for Italy's higher standard of living is that while Britain's population has rocketed by ten million (17 per cent) since 2000 as a result of mass immigration, most of it perfectly legit, Italy's has declined by 1.5 million since 2014. Italy has far more migrants arriving by boat and pretending to be refugees than Britain but the number of legal immigrants it takes in is dwarfed by the millions who have arrived in Britain. Britain's fertility rate, like that in most European countries, is not much higher than Italy's but its population, thanks to immigration, is expected to grow to 78 million by 2050. If a country's GDP remains the same, and its population goes up, then its GDP per capita goes down, as it is measured by dividing GDP by population. But if its population goes down then its GDP per capita goes up. I'm not an economist, as is obvious, but this does seem to challenge the default view of the experts that without a growing population a country is doomed. Of one thing, I am sure. I would not come back to Britain – even if you paid me. I'll just have to make do with working for British and foreign newspapers and magazines from Dante's Beach.

The best (and worst) universities in London have been named by the Daily Mail
The best (and worst) universities in London have been named by the Daily Mail

Time Out

timean hour ago

  • Time Out

The best (and worst) universities in London have been named by the Daily Mail

It's that time of year when 18-year-olds all over the country are gearing up for a whole new part of their lives. They've received their A-level results and decided on their university and now, all that's left to do is take a trip to IKEA and join the enormous freshers 2025 group chat. Soon, a new batch of school students to follow in their footsteps. Universities start taking applications for 2026 in September, and to help students start to narrow down their options, the Daily Mail has released its ranking of the UK's best and worst. The paper has scored 128 British universities based on research, student life, graduate prospects and each subject they offer. Here's how London's institutions did. For the third consecutive year, Imperial College London trumped all other universities in the country (including Oxford and Cambridge) to be crowned number one. The Mail ranked it first in the categories for research quality, high-skilled jobs and graduate salaries well as for chemistry and mechanical engineering. The Mail said: 'Imperial's success is rooted in academic excellence and an unparalleled record in graduate destinations where high-quality jobs and high salaries are the norm.' It added that after years of scoring poorly in the National Student Survey, Imperial has put more effort into improving student satisfaction and has started to build a 'reputation for providing an excellent student experience'. The next best London university was London School of Economics, which landed in fourth place overall. The only other capital-based uni to make it into the top 10 was University College London – King's College London landed just outside in 11th place. At the other end of the spectrum, London Metropolitan University was the city's lowest ranking institution. It place 124th our of 128 (joint with York St John University). Made up of a main campus on Holloway Road and smaller campuses in Shoreditch and Aldgate, London Met was placed 123rd for high-skilled jobs, 100th for research quality and 125th for first year completion. It did better when it came to specific courses, ranking sixth out of 53 for art and 10th out of 63 for film and photography. Despite its low overall ranking, London Met was praised for its student experience, student support and for the opportunities it gives to people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The paper said: 'Just under half the students are from homes where neither parent went to university and even more are mature students aged over 21. Courses often include a foundation year to widen access to include pupils without the grades to progress straight on to a three-year degree.' The only London uni not featured in the ranking is Birkbeck, University of London. The Mail says that it's unranked 'due to the largely part-time student population and the university's highly flexible approach to studying – both admirable features but ones which make it hard to compare with other institutions'. London's universities ranked best to worst for 2025, according to the Daily Mail Here are all the London unis in the Mail 's latest ranking, including their placement in the UK-wide list. Imperial College London (1) LSE (4) UCL (5) King's College (11) Queen Mary University London (15) City St George's, University of London (26) Royal Holloway, University of London (48) London South Bank University (54) University of West London (70) SOAS University of London (74) University of Greenwich (74) St Mary's University, Twickenham (85) University of the Arts London (89) Kingston University (95) Brunel, University of London (98) Goldsmiths, University of London (103) University of East London (103) University of Westminster (112) University of Roehampton (119) London Metropolitan University (124) See how the rest of the UK's universities ranked in the Mail 's guide here. Imperial also beat Oxbridge in the QS World University Ranking. Read more about that here.

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