Younger readers may find it hard to believe, but when I was young there were still gas lights in our town. When I was very young my Grandma's street in Smallbridge still had gas lights, and Rochdale station had them until 1970. But they were already long doomed. As soon as electric lighting became widely available, gas lighting was inevitably on its way out, and the sooner the better. Yet I am sure it had its fans in its day. #89755805 / gettyimages.com I mention this because I am wondering if there's a similar picture with the milkman. I'm probably of the first generation that has never had a milkman. My parents did as a matter of course - and at one point it made a kind of sense, when most households didn't have fridges, so you really needed fresh milk every day. But things are different now. I had always assumed that people still used the milkman because they were prepared to pay a few pence more for the convenience, but I was shocked the other day to di...

If we can accept it's okay to use vouchers, why not haggle? British people are infamously bad at haggling. On the whole we tend to accept the price and just buy something - and yet all the evidence is, especially at tight times, that people who are selling goods and services are prepared to negotiate on price. I've experienced this from both sides. When I give creativity training to a company I have a list price for my services, but I am well aware that some customers will discuss modifications to this. What surprises me is the ones that won't. I don't mean the companies who just pay up the full price - I have no objection to them, not surprisingly. I mean the ones who say 'Sorry, we won't be using you, you are too expensive,' who haven't even attempted to negotiate on price. This I really don't understand. When I was was at British Airways, our purchasing people where like razors. There is no way they would limply say 'Ooh, sorry, we can...