Tesco will be the exclusive stockist of the new Dyson Hard (DC56) when it hits the UK on 31 October. Designed specifically for those with hard flooring, the Hard belongs to the same wireless vacuum cleaner family as the DC44 and DC59 Digital Slim models, but with a new head that allows a user to wipe grime at the same time as vacuuming up dust. Read: Hands-on: Dyson DC44 review It features a lithium-ion battery that will deliver up to 15 minutes of fade free performance - in that it will not slowly lose power, instead alerting you when the battery is nearly dead for you to put it in recharge. Plus, a number of other attachments are included, so you can use it as a conventional hand vacuum should you not need the wiping tool. A detachable wand can also help you get to hard to reach places. Other features include a Dyson digital motor V2, which spins at 104,000rpm, and bundled wipes for Hard floor cleaning and Wood nourishing. ABS Polycarbonate makes up the vacuum's body.

As for the wand, Dyson engineers made it from aluminium, which allows for "extra push force in picking up grime". Those same engineers also conducted exactly 5,896 slap, drop and knock-over tests on the vacuum on a variety of hard flooring to ensure durability. "Good technology should make everyday tasks quicker and easier. Dyson's high-speed motor technology has enabled Dyson engineers to develop a cordless machine capable of vacuuming dirt and wiping away grime simultaneously. petrol vacuum cleaner outdoorsOne machine doing two jobs, in one action," said James Dyson, company CEO and founder.vacuum cleaner robot ukIt will be priced at £249.harga vacuum cleaner rumahLooking to treat yourself this weekend? With Mother's Day over, spa booking site Wahanda are offering big savings on treatments, including full spa day packages, manicures and dermatologica facials all over the UK.

Plus, get £10 off when you spend £25 or more on the Wahanda website with code MARCH10.Amazon are offering £55 off the red NUMATIC HVR200-12 Henry Vacuum Cleaner , with energy rating A, bringing the price down to £94.98, from £149.99. Shoppers that want to save even more can order it on the website second hand from £77.88.Get free next day click and collect when you order before 3pm, standard home delivery costs £3.95 or is free when you spend £50 or more.They're also offering 12 months half price unlimited broadband , now down to £3.75 a month - £20.15 a month including line rental. The incentive is limited to new customers only, there is a £6.95 router delivery charge, and the minimum contract length is 12 months.Pack also includes a measuring cup and recipe book.I might be missing something here. Over the past few years, luxury expensive food shop Donnybrook Fair has been popping up all over wealthy Dublin suburbs. Most recently, they’ve appeared up in Stillorgan shopping centre, right beside Tesco (on a side note, I wonder what Stillorgan’s anchor tenant thinks of its new neighbour).

It doesn’t seem like the most ridiculous location for Donnybrook Fair. First, the two shops ostensibly appeal to different demographics. Second, some people might pick up most of the groceries in Tesco and get a few more in Donnybrook Fair. Here’s some price comparisons, carried out on Friday July 29 between 1pm-2pm. I’ve mostly stuck to basics like bread, butter, jam, milk, and tea.* *Yes, of course Donnybrook Fair, an independent retailer without the buying clout of transnational corporation Tesco, is going to cost more, and it’s great to support the smaller, more innovative guy if you can afford it. Yes, their fresher food is better quality. Yes, their bananas might be nicer, if you can afford them. **Pineapple in Donnybrook Fair was larger There’s a few conclusions you could make. Either some DF shoppers are happy to pay significantly above the odds for a product they could get next door, or they’ve too much money to think it through. Certainly, judging by the very crude stereotype of the number of people hopping into BMW SUVs with DF bags, there’s still plenty of money in Ireland.

Maybe DF is hoping they won’t want to go and queue in Tesco so they’ll just get the the damned butter here – but with unemployment high food prices rising, people are shopping around more and checking the bargains. Of course, Donnybrook Fair is more about the fresh food products you can’t get in Tesco: the quality meals to take home, the fine cheeses, cereals that aren’t manufactured by Kellogg’s and Nestle, Tyrell’s crisps, excellent meats and so on. But even their ready meals are beyond what I’d be willing to pay: €8.99 for spinach and ricotta tortellini (600g), €9.99 for pesto baked chicken, and €7.25 for lasagna. Maybe they’re extraordinary ready meals and worth every cent, but I can’t afford to find out.They do stock some very exceptional products. On my fact-finding mission, I treated myself to a bag of high-quality ground coffee. Paddy and Scott’s coffee, even though it cost €5.67 for 227g, is really special and worth every cent.  “Great With Friends”, one of their slightly gimmicky “Time of Day” brands is extraordinary: chocolate and caramel flavours without too much sweetness or vanilla.

I’d recommend it to anyone who loves or even hates coffee. In conclusion on Donnybrook Fair: a great place for the occasional treat and a more pleasant layout than most garishly lit supermarkets, but cheap eat it is not. Have you shopped in Donybrook Fair? Is it an occasional treat, your main supermarket, or a vacuum cleaner for rich, overindulgent wallets?TRADE SALE - Major Brands, General Public Auctions of Surplus, Clearance and Liquidation Stock Sep 01, 2016 10:30 BST Important information & T&C's for this SaleEarlier this summer, the Guardian asked families in seven cities, including Dublin, to do a comparable grocery shop and send in their receipts. Dublin, the smallest city to feature, was more expensive than London, Berlin, New York and Paris, and only very slightly cheaper than Sydney. Toronto was the most expensive city, and even there, a basket of goods cost just under 20 per cent more than it did here. The reason Dublin was included in the mix was not because of its “mega-size” but because it allowed the newspaper to directly compare the prices of identical products in Tesco outlets in two jurisdictions.

It found what it described as “some shocking differences”. Eggs in Tesco in Dublin cost 44 per cent more than in London, Irish onions were 51 per cent dearer and broccoli cost 201 per cent more here than there. A packet of Finish dishwasher tablets could be bought for half the price in the UK. Almost across the board, things cost more in the Republic. The Guardian and its British readers may well have been shocked by the wild price discrepancies, but Irish consumers won’t be too surprised. We have grown wearily accustomed to paying much more for our groceries than our counterparts across the water or in Northern Ireland. , buying 30 items that would be commonly found in most Irish shopping trolleys. We will choose a mix of branded and own-brand options, and, apart from a few minimal differences as a result of imperial versus metric packaging, our baskets are identical. All told, we spend €132.64 in the Republic and €112.02 in the North, a difference of more than 20 per cent.

Some of the price differentials seem inexplicable. A kilogram of loose broccoli sells for €3.15 in the Republic, but just €1.75 in the UK, while a similar volume of carrots are €1.49, and just 94 cent in the UK. Six litres of milk cost just over €5 in the Republic, while close to six litres in the UK – they still use imperial measures there – can be bought for €3.75. Tesco has repeatedly been asked to explain the price differences, but it always struggles. It usually says overheads are higher in the Republic, but then refuses to reveal its profit margins here, claiming the information is “commercially sensitive”. We contacted the retailer again to see if it could shed any more light on the issue. It blamed higher labour costs, energy costs and levies on certain products such as wine, and it suggested that the timing of price promotions differs in each market, and said “on some items of fresh produce, meats and other household items, Tesco Ireland is cheaper than the UK”.

Of course, Tesco is not alone in expecting Irish shoppers to pay more. Aldi has performed strongly in the Irish market over the past two years, winning thousands of new customers each month. But there are many examples of Aldi shoppers here paying more than consumers in the UK. Sometimes the differences are staggering. Among last week’s Special Buys in the Republic were a vacuum cleaner for €129.99, a steam mop for €34.99, a leather reclining chair with a footstool for €179.99 and a storage pouffe for €19.99. A lawnmower would have set you back €89.99, and – had you decided all five items were essential to your life – you would have splashed out a total of€454.95. All the same items were selling as part of Aldi’s special buys in the UK – the only difference was the price. The pouffe cost £9.99 (€12.49), the leather chair just £99.99 (€125). The steam mop would have set you back €24.99 (€31.25), and the vacuum cleaner – the only one of the five products that was dearer in the UK – cost £109.99 (€137.52).

The lawnmower cost €59.99 (€75). All told, a shopper leaving an Aldi with the five items in Britain would have spent a euro equivalent of €381.26 – almost €75 less than an Aldi shopper in Ireland. We got in touch with Aldi to find out why these items cost so much more in the Republic than across the Irish Sea. Like Tesco, the German discounter defended the price differences by saying the gaps between the Republic and the UK were “not specific to Aldi”. It pointed to “several external factors that will lead to a variation between retail prices, including transportation, VAT and excise, labour, commercial rents and energy charges.” Other grocery retailers who do business in both jurisdictions stand similarly accused. Almost a year ago, the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine published a report on the sector, and recommended that major retailers be prevented from using the Republic as a secret “honey pot” and that they be forced to reveal how much money they make here.

Any chances of that happening, at least in the short-term, were dashed with the publication of the long-awaited Competition and Consumer Protection Bill. While consumers were promised a “watchdog with real teeth” by the Minister for Jobs, Richard Bruton, very little seems to have changed for the grocery sector. Ahead of the Bill being published, there was much talk of a code of practice, either statutory or voluntary. This has been ruled out in favour of a system of regulations, backed by legislation. The will be no grocery ombudsman, no code of contact forcing retailers to behave, and the Bill contains no mention of the profits being made by multinational retailers. They can continue to fold these profits into global accounts, making it impossible for Irish consumers to get a clear picture of what is going on across the sector. Last week the Oireachtas committee chairman, Andrew Doyle, expressed concern about the price differentials that continue to exist between retailers in the UK and here, and he cast doubt on retailers routine claims that higher overheads in the Republic were to blame.

“Some costs are higher in the Republic, for sure,” he says. “But there are other costs which are lower. Groceries come into every home in the country every week, and I would have thought it was possible to develop some mechanism which would allow us to do a proper comparison between the two jurisdictions. It is frustrating, because we wanted something that would highlight the profits being made by grocery retailers in this State but that has not yet happened.” The chief executive of the Consumer Association of Ireland, Dermott Jewell, is angered by the discrepancies. “Price differences like this are depressing, and it is hard not to get angry when you see that we are still paying way over the odds when compared to our nearest neighbour,” he says. “There are other players in the market, certainly, but as the Aldi prices in Ireland and the UK suggest, not even the German discounters are immune from making us pay more.” He believes the lack of transparency is the problem.