Write to the editor

I would like to start by thanking you for your efforts in preparing the weekly shopping trolley and tips.

As I have been a GDN subscriber for almost two years now and eagerly wait for the great articles and information in GulfWeekly, I would like to highlight a few minor comments that could be considered for Susan’s Shopping Trolley.

*Add the highest and lowest cost by choosing the most expensive and cheapest items for each item, e.g. from this week the trolley could have cost up to BD24.170 or could have been as cheap as BD20.280.

*This could make it a lot easier for your readers to see the supermarket of their choice and compare it to these numbers.

*Maybe you could highlight the cheapest and most expensive item in each row, e.g. highlight in red the most expensive and in blue the cheapest in each row.

*Also highlight the cheapest and most expensive overall supermarket in the same way.

*Finally, some kind of history to give points to each supermarket every month, e.g seven supermarkets, the cheapest this week gets seven points, the most expensive gets one point, a running total for the last four weeks shows overall which supermarket is better (more points = better).

I hope these recommendations are considered as they will add a lot more value to Susan’s Shopping Trolley and give more insight than just numbers for the week.

Salman Al Rasheed,
by email.

Editor’s note: Thank you for your suggestions which we will consider. The shopping list is a snap shot of prices on one day of the week and does not take into consideration other aspects of the shopping experience such as the variety and range of items on offer, the cleanliness of the store, and ease of access to the aisles and such.
 
Readers should remember that prices change frequently but can be assured that Susan visits each store individually as any normal shopper would, without interference from the management of the stores featured on her list.

I wanted to bring the following to your notice. The total basket price of Waitrose have been reported incorrectly. The sum total has been done wrongly for two consecutive weeks and on both occasions the prices have been reflected lower than they actually are. The actual basket price is BD23.415 and has been totalled as BD 22.915.
 
I am sure the readers will be happy to see a note in GulfWeekly acknowledging the mistake.

Saif Naseem,
by email.

Editor’s note: Apologies for the mistake – Susan’s calculator suffered from the gremlins but has been fixed now.

In a step to achieve transparency in its operations and processes, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has issued a public consultation on the potential regulation of wholesale international inbound calls.

Wholesale international inbound calls are supplied by licensed operators in Bahrain to foreign telecommunications operators to enable the completion of international telephone calls to subscribers in Bahrain.

In recent years, wholesale international charges for these services have been falling, reducing the cost for foreign operators to supply international calls into Bahrain. However, it appears that these cost reductions have not been passed through by other GCC operators into their retail call charges. As a result, end-users in Bahrain have not benefited from lower costs of being called.

The authority therefore proposes to establish minimum price floors for wholesale international inbound services supplied by licensed operators in Bahrain to GCC operators. The authority is inviting interested parties to provide submissions by February 23.

Since its establishment in 2002 the TRA has been working with government, consumers, operators and investors to develop Bahrain into the region’s most modern communications hub and to facilitate the growth of the market.
 
The consultation document on the regulation of wholesale international inbound calls can be found on TRA’s website at www.tra.org.bh

Abdulelah Abdulla,
Communications Manager.

AFP news agency (Agence France-Presse), a global news agency which claims to deliver fast, ‘accurate’, in-depth coverage of events shaping our world is whinging this week about one of its reporters being unable to obtain a visa to cover the first anniversary of the anti-government protests in Bahrain.

It filed a report across the wires stating that the decision comes as activists announced plans to march to Manama’s former ‘Pearl Square’, I kid you not.

If there is one thing that infuriated Bahrainis during the height of the unrest was the way so many international news gatherers couldn’t grasp the fact that not all protests have to take place in squares.

And they still cannot appreciate the difference between a roundabout or road junction to a public square. How pathetic - so much for accuracy?