Yes, I once spoke at an event in Manchester where the public body organising it booked a Britannia hotel. I met up with a local friend afterwards who said, "isn't that the place that rents rooms by the hour?" It was pretty grim and, yes, a dorm room would have been preferrable!
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CharlieSpotted
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There used to be a 'hotel' that used dorm rooms when the students weren't there... Days Inn? I distinctly remember one in Manchester?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yeah, Weston Hall I believe. I've stayed in there during the Olympics. It was a standard student halls, nowt wrong with it for the price, though while in use as a hotel the shared kitchen was locked off.
I stayed in one horrible Travelodge (musty smell, black mould on walls, 10m from an A road). I hadn't checked the reviews beforehand. I checked them later, and there were some which also said it was horrible, and others which said it was fine. I think those were in a different wing at the back of the hotel.
I read a summary of the reviews, sort them by the most recent, and then look at some of the bad ones. The same hotel can be good or bad for different people. Grumbles about parking might be important for me if I'm coming by car, or irrelevant if I'm not. They might have rooms with a different state of repair. Refurbishing the hotel will mean there are complaints about noise. I stayed in a brand new Premier Inn where the heating controls were either "oven" or "fridge". A few weeks later it might have been fine.
Long before I left IBM in 2008, and before I moved to Manchester in 1996, the only hotels on the “approved” list were the Britannia and Sachas, the latter owned by the same people I think. Both of them dire then, I’m glad to say I have no recent experience of either.
jon81uk
Member
Many universities offer their halls for summer accommodation, not sure about Manchester but University of London, UCL, King's, Imperial and many other London ones do, most of them sell direct.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
In Weston Hall's case there is a permanent hotel there that expands into the student accommodation outside term time, so it makes sense to sell it under the hotel brand.
It is a "Pendulum Hotel" at present, not a common brand. There's also an adjacent but unconnected Ibis.
I considered living there when I was a student but decided against as due to this secondary usage you couldn't get a contract that covered the holidays and had to move out for Christmas and Easter.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Liverpool hotel prices are rising fairly rapidly. Unless Liverpool had a big match at home the city was, until fairly recently, much cheaper than Manchester, but not any longer. Most weekends it is as expensive as, if not more so, than Manchester. And one thing it doesn't yet have is a true premium hotel, the closest is the Hilton at Liverpool One.
I don't know about a JW Marriott specifically, given just how high-end it is. But Manchester has a wide range of premium hotel brands- IHG have 270-ish rooms at the Kimpton Clocktower and the same number again at the ex-Hilton, and Radisson have over 200 rooms at the old Free Trade Hall.
On the wider subject of hotels, though, one thing that is definitely worse is the recent design trend for sliding doors into bathrooms. Great if you're on your own but they're not really brilliant for romantic weekends away- they have no sound-proofing properties at all.
I stayed at the Titanic hotel a few years back and that was a nice hotel and similar pricing to the Kimpton Clock Tower. I'd also argue that the Municipal is a nice stay and a gorgeous building.
I'd agree by sliding doors but I'd one-up that with the current trend of lightly frosted or see through doors!
I'd agree by sliding doors but I'd one-up that with the current trend of lightly frosted or see through doors!
This is turning into a re-run of the budget hotels discussion: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/budget-hotels-discussion.267076/
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's a bit of a tour of other threads, I guess there's a lot of discussion about en*****ification across the board!
On this page I thought it was that discussion until you pointed it out and I checked the title
It wouldn't surprise me if Uber Eats went downhill if it went the same as their private hire service. Propped up by capital investment subsidising fares until people get hooked, then once the money is gone, pull the rug and jack up the fares.
I stopped using Uber Eats, Deliveroo, etc ages ago because I decided I didn't want to support such unethical business practices. Pretending their workers are self employed contractors rather than employees in order to pay them less than minimum wage, no holiday pay, no pension, etc needs sorting out. And paying per delivery rather than per hour encourages their couriers to do everything possible to make a delivery, including running red lights, cycling on pavements, riding "illegal e-bikes" (motorbikes, legally speaking). Not to mention that being an independent contractor they have a right of substitution so they can let undocumented people make deliveries using their accounts without right to work or criminal records checks.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has become even worse over the years as more people learn how to game the system.
I stopped using Uber Eats, Deliveroo, etc ages ago because I decided I didn't want to support such unethical business practices. Pretending their workers are self employed contractors rather than employees in order to pay them less than minimum wage, no holiday pay, no pension, etc needs sorting out. And paying per delivery rather than per hour encourages their couriers to do everything possible to make a delivery, including running red lights, cycling on pavements, riding "illegal e-bikes" (motorbikes, legally speaking). Not to mention that being an independent contractor they have a right of substitution so they can let undocumented people make deliveries using their accounts without right to work or criminal records checks.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if this has become even worse over the years as more people learn how to game the system.
Come to think of it, I think streaming services like Netflix have also became worse over the years by raising subscription prices and not needing to be as unique once people get hooked on it.
Yesterday on a video I watched YouTube automatically changed a video from English to Portuguese and I had to restart the app to watch in English again. YouTube works better than in its early days, buffering seems non existent it only happens when the app crashes or something. However I wonder if it’s maybe a bit worse than few years ago.
If we are going with the 24 ts people don’t seem to like when they hear the announcements as they more sound text to speech than previous tube stocks. But I’m assuming that’s probably a money thing.
Yesterday on a video I watched YouTube automatically changed a video from English to Portuguese and I had to restart the app to watch in English again. YouTube works better than in its early days, buffering seems non existent it only happens when the app crashes or something. However I wonder if it’s maybe a bit worse than few years ago.
If we are going with the 24 ts people don’t seem to like when they hear the announcements as they more sound text to speech than previous tube stocks. But I’m assuming that’s probably a money thing.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Amazon is probably an example. Too much random Chinese tat of unknown quality, it can be quite hard to know what you're buying is decent.
Remember when it used to just be a bookseller? I bet it sells hardly any books now compared to other stuff - it's more like a less curated Argos now. (A friend is a buyer for Argos and a lot more thought goes into that than we might think).
Actually, Argos itself is probably an example, Sainsburys have run it into the ground and it's questionable if it will survive when separated back out without half its properties.
Remember when it used to just be a bookseller? I bet it sells hardly any books now compared to other stuff - it's more like a less curated Argos now. (A friend is a buyer for Argos and a lot more thought goes into that than we might think).
Actually, Argos itself is probably an example, Sainsburys have run it into the ground and it's questionable if it will survive when separated back out without half its properties.
Amazon is worse than it used to be because it's trying to compete on price with places like Temu, who now have warehouses in the UK. Temu is incredibly hit and miss with products and Amazon is becoming the same. It used to be extremely reliable.
At least Amazon doesn't have that awful Temu interface where they try and con you into spending more money by "winning" on spins and lucky dips and whatever else.
I also find Amazon returns to be dead simple, with Amazon having my back every time.
I have noticed that many 500ml bottles of Pepsico products manufactured by Britvic (marked "Made in GB") do not have this feature.
Traditional fully removable plastic caps remain!
100% agree, I used to ride for Uber and Deliveroo for a few years starting just before COVID as it was a good "second job" that I could pick and choose my hours around my full time job and earn a nice little amount of money. It was also very little stress compared to my main job, basically just riding around in my car with podcasts playing and saying hello to food workers and customers in the late hours of the night when I couldn't sleep.
Unfortunately what happened after Covid is that Uber and Deliveroo started onboarding way too many people leading to more than enough drivers in each area, at the same time they also kept cutting the fees that riders would get. This leads to "multiapping" which is where either a rider will have multiple phones and take multiple deliveries - this is why your food now seems to end up arriving cold - or they'd be doing both Uber and Deliveroo at the same time - again so your food is cold. I had all the correct insurance and also declared all my money to HMRC and whilst in the first few years I'd easily earn over £100 for a 4 hour shift, by the time I stopped doing it you were more likely getting £40 a shift.
I don't condone any of the illegal stuff they do (poor driving, not getting insurance, renting their accoutns etc.), but I can see why they're doing it because they're being forced to by the people taking a mega wedge of all the money.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'd be very tempted to do a bit of Roo on my pushbike to get paid for getting fitter, but it's a pain when you're a car owner because you have to disclose it as a second job on your insurance and it tends to whack premia up (or cause refusal of cover) because they assume you'll end up doing it in the car anyway because lots of them do, usually still claiming on the app it's on a bike. Which is a shame.
If it had existed when I was a student (and like most students not a car owner) I'd absolutely have done it for extra pocket money.
Absolutely, when the riders weren't being absolutely squeezed it was a really great side 'hustle' as they call it. My understanding from some current riders is that they can get paid around £2-3 per delivery which when you consider you're not getting paid for the journey to the restaurant or going back to the area if your drop off is in the middle of nowhere it's quite shocking.
There also used to be loads of quests (do x deliveries and make an extra £x) and "surges" where all orders would be at 1.5x rate or so on because there wasn't enough drivers - all of this is now pretty much gone. When I did ride I usually did the early hours of the morning (11pm - 3am) as I'm a bit of an insomniac and I'd try and go to towns where there was a big student population as those daft people have more money than sense or they're high and get munchies. I remember once delivering a tin of rice pudding and a small pack of toilet roll to some student digs or another time when it was literally an order of a chocolate milkshake - the cost of the delivery must have been more than the items.
I too contemplated doing it as a side gig getting paid to keep fit when I was living in London but the hustle was unreal. People running multiple apps on multiple phones, moped riders pretending to the apps that they were delivering on pushbike, etc.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
For what it's worth, I once ordered in central Bristol and thought the rider was doing this as they were moving far too quickly to be cycling. What turned up however was a superfit young student on a very fancy road bike who explained he was doing it for triathlon training and thus had genuinely been riding there at car speed (helped by it being partly downhill, but not all of it was). I gave him a pretty generous tip as I was really quite impressed!
Oh I'm sure it happens sometimes, but I've had couriers turn up on untaxed moped who are down as cyclist couriers!
The platforms don't care. From their point of view it's self employed contractors and they don't have responsibility for their substitute couriers.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I've seen "cyclists" turn up in cars far more often, though I've never bothered checking if they were taxed/insured/MoTed (I suspect some probably weren't). This was a one off but I was still very impressed
I followed a Deliveroo or something similar apps rider tracking which went directly across a busy green space in Woolwich near where I lived. Moped of course. I also found one on a bike using the Blackwall Tunnel which is unbelievably dangerous and reported the instance to the app, who I think had made them deliver across the river.
And this is the key, they feel like they can shirk all responsibility because "we told them what they should do as part of the onboarding process and they ticked to say they agree" and I'm guessing legally they probably can.
I'm really surprised there hasn't been more political pressure placed on the companies to restrict them doing this considering that any Spotted Facebook comments section pretty much always mentions the scurge of the ebike delivery drivers.
barringtoncem
Member
Definitely Cadburys Chocolate since the Septics brought the brand and i believe Marmite has gone the same way i only purchase Aldi or Lidl's chocolate as i find that they are a lot better
jon81uk
Member
I think Cadbury would have gone the same way even without being part of Mondelez.
Also it is interesting that Mondelz also own Milka chocolate (and did so long before they acquired Cadbury) and that is still European standard milk chocolate. Whereas Cadbury has always had its own distinction as British milk chocolate is known as family milk chocolate in EU law.