This is true but it underlines the extent to which competitive pressures are likely to bear down on the great names of British

This is true, but it underlines the extent to which competitive pressures are likely to bear down on the great names of British retailing. If price comparisons are becoming more transparent, because of e-shopping or even the introduction of the euro, stores will be unable to cover these higher costs and sustain their profit margins by charging their captive customers a higher price.They will have to cut costs so prices can stay ultra-competitive or lure consumers away from rivals by offering a better service - or do both. Sainsbury's is axing a total of 1,800 jobs to save money, a possibly risky move for a business whose future depends on the quality of service.Like other retailers, it will also have to stop spending so much on property. The mad rush to build ever more out-of-town centres has slammed headlong into a brick wall. A few years ago it was received wisdom that British supermarkets had higher profit margins than, say, their French counterparts because customers would pay more to shop in bright and stylish surroundings rather than the tin sheds so common across the Channel. But now those low-cost supermarches look to have been more long-sighted than their British counterparts.Poor old Sainsbury's has the worst of both worlds, with its old-fashioned brown and orange stores and high costs too. Like M&S, it assumed it would remain the retailer of choice to middle-class Britain by right, and not by constant effort in an increasingly competitive world.

But the better- heeled the consumer, the more demanding.It is not enough to stock rocket and balsamic vinegar. You must sell it as cheaply as the upstart down the street, with impeccable service to boot. Those baseball caps had better symbolise more than just a change of image at Sainsbury's.. I LOVE reading other people's diaries.

Those of Mr Pooter, Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones are famously fun and fictional although, curiously, less fictive than those of Virginia Woolf, which record, with both eyes fixed on posterity, the shimmering world of Bloomsbury. The much-maligned, much-maligning diaries of Woodrow Wyatt - written with one eye unashamedly on royalty, the other on royalties - are a racy read, but probably less successful in their waspishness than the elegantly crafted diaries of James Lees-Milne. George Eliot's diaries, however, offer the literary voyeur an altogether more subtle and intimate pleasure. Without the posturings of a cleverly projected persona or any cunning artifice, these are probably as close as you can get to the real thing. Reading them is like dipping into the woman's handbag and finding all kinds of curious cyphers and bits of fluff. Often there is nothing sensational but - given that this is George Eliot's handbag - the contents are all the more interesting for that: "19 Left East Sheen and came to Worthing Took lodgings at 21 Steyne The weather bright and warm.20 Both miserably bilious and headachy.21 Only a little better.Sat.22 Well this morning and bathed The day divine.Sun 23. Long walk on the beach but not a mollusc to be seen!"Sometimes the reader is treated to more instant gratification.