Jottings
News from the UK and around the World
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New Year Resolutions
It ’ s that time again : the time to make a promise to improve your life in the coming twelve months , to eat sensibly and drink less , to exercise more and to be nasty less , and in general to become a happier person . Your Jottings team was planning to give up procrastination but we ’ ve put it off until next year .
However , we would like to offer the UK ’ s Tesco supermarket chain a suggestion for their New Year Resolution . And if you thought 2020 couldn ’ t have got any dafter , read on .
Sandra Greenwood of Bradford , West Yorkshire , ordered groceries from Tesco on-line at the end of November , but when but she went to collect them , she was told that she had exceeded the item limit on such pre-ordering .
How could that be , she wondered , because she had only ordered 18 items ?
The answer is that the two kilos of loose Brussels sprouts which she had included in the order were counted as 71 items – that ’ s 71 individual sprouts – thus pushing her total number of items way over the limit . Packs of sprouts counted as one item , she learned , but loose sprouts were counted individually .
Sandra said that Tesco customer services told her it was an “ issue ” with the system and there was little they could do to fix it . So , Tesco , a word : you run the system , not the other way around .
Your New Year resolution is “ Fix it !”
Good News
The best news from the UK during December was the first deployment of a vaccine to tackle Covid-19 and the euphoria spread quickly when it was discovered that the second patient to receive an injection was 81-year-old William Shakespeare , a patient in Warwickshire .
The puns came thick and fast on social media . Mr Shakespeare was pleased not have been “ bard ” from
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