Lillies in the Garden Tearoom

If you are visiting the cemetery and looking for somewhere to have a tea or coffee before or after the service why not visit Lillies in the Garden Tea Room.

Debbie Clack has opened the tearoom in memory of her daughter Lillie who sadly lost her life following an horrific accident on Christmas Day 2021 at the hands of a drink driver and sadly passed away in January 2022.

All proceeds from the tea room will go to Eyes Wet Now that is a charity that helps bereaved families in the community.

The tea room is located at Merton & Sutton Joint Cemetery in Garth Road, Lower Morden SW20 - as you enter the main gates it is situated first on the right.

If you would like to read a bit more about Debbie and the loss of her darling Lillie please click here

Pret a Manger customers left fuming over end of ‘free drinks’

Chain calls time on five-a-day coffee subscription it launched in UK after Covid pandemic

Pret a Manger is axing its subscription offering members “free drinks”, almost four years after the deal launched in the UK to attract customers back after the Covid pandemic.

In a move that has upset some customers, the coffee chain said it was “time to rethink” the Club Pret offer, and that instead of providing five drinks a day and a 20% discount on food for a cost of £30 a month, it would charge £10 for a subscription for half-price drinks.

Its offering of five free hot or iced barista-made drinks has been running for four years. Last year it increased the price and added a discount for food, which led to two sets of price tags on its shelves.

Pret said it would eliminate this dual pricing across food products, something the company’s UK managing director, Clare Clough, said the chain “never really got comfortable with”.

The new subscription will be introduced in September. For existing and new subscribers, the fee will start at £5 a month until 31 March 2025 and then rise to £10.

“We know this is a change. But with Club Pret subscription, our coffees, teas, coolers, and iced drinks will continue to be the best offer on the high street, and at a much more accessible price than the £360 a year people have to pay for the current scheme,” Clough said.

She added that “given the majority of our customers are not Club Pret subscribers, our priority now is to focus on better value for everyone”.

There was a hostile reaction to the change from some quarters, with people airing their frustration on social media.

One X user directed their response to Pret, saying: “You are making a huge mistake. There is time to rectify it. Otherwise, I am cancelling my subscription.”

Another said: “I’m genuinely shocked that you think that it’s acceptable to try to auto-enrol people off of the current subscription plan to your … 50% off in September. This should be an opt-in system due to the level of change to the scheme.”

Last year, Pret a Manger returned to profit for the first time since 2018, with the launch of its subscription service helping the coffee and bakery chain bounce back after the Covid crisis.

The group, which suffered during the pandemic lockdowns when office workers stayed at home, said sales jumped 20% to £430m in the six months to the end of June 2023.

Pret’s subscription service generated 57.9m redemptions globally in 2022, up two-thirds from a year before.

A Little Thought:

This was misleading as the drinks were never free, you had to pay the subscription otherwise you did not get the so-called ‘free’ coffee.

Now that the lull from covid has passed they want your money, hence the change.

I as a point of principle very rarely buy coffee from Pret and other outlets - why pay their excessive prices when I can have a home brew coffee for a fraction of the cost and probably enjoy more.

And another bonus is not having mums and their screaming kids next to me.

Eric Pickles

Lord Pickles has denied that a focus on deregulation under David Cameron contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire despite being criticised in the inquiry report released yesterday.

The public inquiry chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick found that a preoccupation with the idea of deregulation in the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in the years running up to the Grenfell fire resulted in fire safety being neglected.

Between 2010 and 2015, Eric Pickles led DCLG.

The Grenfell report said that a “deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the secretary of state, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.

It added that “during that period the government determinedly resisted calls from across the fire sector” to increase regulation.

Sir Martin said there was a “wealth of material” to show Lord Pickles was an “ardent supporter” of deregulation, and “the pressure within the department to reduce red tape was so strong that civil servants felt the need to put it at the forefront of every decision”.

Lord Pickles told the inquiry that he would have viewed it as “ludicrous” if civil servants thought the drive for deregulation covered building regulations, but Sir Martin said documentary evidence supported claims by officials that deregulation was “a dominant influence within the department”.

However, asked by i whether he accepted the deregulation agenda had gone too far under the Cameron government, Lord Pickles said that the report noted that “fire and building safety was out of scope” of the “red tape challenge and the housing standards review”.

Lord Pickles added that while he was still in the process of going through the Grenfell report, he had been unable to “find an example of deregulation being used on fire or safety”.

During the inquiry, Lord Pickles was forced to apologise after telling the lead counsel not to waste his time because he had a “busy day”.

He told Richard Millett QC: “Feel free to ask me as many questions as you like, but could I respectfully remind you that you did promise that we would be away this morning and I have changed my schedules to fit this in.

“I do have an extremely busy day.

“But this is more important than anything, but I would urge you to use your time wisely.”

Lord Pickles also apologised for incorrectly stating that 96 people died in the fire while being questioned. The final death toll stood at 72.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, told i there had been “a complete failure at central government” and an “obsession” with deregulation which had created “the regime that allows Grenfell Tower to become unsafe”.

He said that ministers responsible for the decisions at the time “should be held to account for that”.

Eric Pickles is an individual who I have always had little respect for and following the release yesterday of the Grenfell Inquiry Report he has sunk even lower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMRKeCbwYi4

Last night he issued the post below on X formerly Twitter and more or less immediately locked it down so that members of the public could not post replies, personally I always think a cowardly and petty thing to do, you may not like what the public say but it’s called Freedom of Speech.

The Independent in April 2022 - Read here

Grenfell Tower Inquiry Report - Read here