Safeway has introduced a self-scanning shopping system into 24 stores since March last year and hopes to double this by April 1997.Customers use a hand-held machine to scan in their purchases themselves by using the bar codes. And in another instance, a man was jailed for 28 days after he admitted slapping a woman shopper in a Safeway store.Asda is not the only supermarket to make pioneering use of technology. In one case, a man required 27 stitches after a violent argument at a supermarket in Nottingham. So whereas a Monday-morning shop could take 20 minutes, on Friday evening it might be judged to last an hour.Asda says trials at the branch have been so effective at cutting waiting times that the system is to be introduced at other stores. Queuing at the checkout is still said to be the number one customer gripe and supermarkets have vied to reduce the frustration of waiting in line.Incidents of “trolley rage” began to be reported last year when uptight shoppers began fighting as they queued to pay for their goods. It monitors shoppers by a hidden sensor as they come into the store. The data is then relayed to the customer services desk giving managers up to 15 minutes’ notice of when and how many tills to open at a time.The computer works out the average shopping time, which takes into account how busy the individual store is at different stages of the week and forecasts when customers will arrive at the tills to pay for their purchases.

As a result long delays can be anticipated and prevented.The technology is becoming the latest weapon in the fierce supermarket wars which have already seen aggressive price- cutting and consumer offers.Asda has been using a new computer system at its Roehampton branch, in south-west London, made by the American company Fastlane. GLENDA COOPER

Supermarkets are hoping to put the brakes on “trolley rage” by implementing technology that cuts down on queues at checkouts.
Asda has successfully tested software which forecasts when customers will arrive at the tills to pay for their purchases. Only then can a smaller tanker, the Star Bergen, move in to take off some 30,000 tonnes of oil to allow the Sea Empress to enter the Haven. The transfer of oil, however, can only be done in calmer weather and will take at least two days.Another possibility was to tow the tanker out to deep sea, but Walter Welch, director of marine services at the Chamber of Shipping, dismissed the idea. “You would have to take it several hundred miles away from shore to ensure there was no pollution and the ship might break up in that time.”. Hundreds of people are involvedco-ordinated by the port authority.The current salvage plan is to attach lines from the tanker to a fleet of 10 tugs in order to keep it steady.

Three have been successful and tug operators yesterday reported a “good day”.Equipment will then be lifted on board and oil can be pumped from tank to tank to correct its list. The ship is too deep in the water to enter the port and is listing heavily so salvage workers tried to steady her by letting in water; but that failed.Meanwhile, salvage experts have been lifted on three times and off twice as the risk of the ship going out of control, running aground and breaking up rises and falls with the waves.The rescue involves three salvage firms (including world-leaders Smit Tak), the Government’s Marine Pollution Control Unit, the port authority and the Coastguard RAF and Navy rescue helicopters are on stand-by. So far, some 43 oil-covered birds have been picked up in the area.Oil could be seen haemorrhaging slightly from the tanker yesterday, which still has more than 100,000 of oil on board, and an aircraft continued to spray the sea with chemical dispersants.Although an estimated that 250 tonnes of oil have been removed from the surrounding beaches, inshore fishermen, are anxious that their livelihood from shellfish, including crabs, lobsters and whelks, may already have been badly damaged.They will discuss their future today with a marine insurance assessor, who visited the Shetlands after the tanker Braer ran aground in 1993.An ecological disaster in Britain’s only coastal national park may be averted if the salvage operation can be completed successfully.There have been criticisms of the approach but Michael Hyslop, general manager of Milford Haven Port Authority reacted angrily to suggestions that the operation had been botched.”If you’ve got a better plan please let us know,” he said.At first, the rescuers had hoped to keep the supertanker afloat close to where she ran aground last Thursday night. One of only seven known British populations of the green rockpool starfish was thought to have been wiped out by crude oil in West Angle Bay, on one of the two headlands either side of the Milford Haven port.Experts warned that it could be several days before the full impact of the spillage on local birdlife is known. REBECCA FOWLER

and NICHOLAS SCHOON
Salvage experts were optimistic last night that they could save the stricken supertanker Sea Empress as gales continued to hamper their efforts to prevent a pollution disaster along some of Britain’s most stunning coastline.As 21 men from the Anglo-Dutch salvage team boarded the tanker and prepared to work through the night to save the 147,000-tonne vessel, the Secretary of State for Transport, Sir George Young, told MPs that it was too soon to assess the impact of oil spillage since the tanker ran aground near the entrance to Milford Haven harbour on the Pembrokeshire coast.Sir George said an investigation into the “regrettable incident” had been initiated by the independent Marine Accident Investigation Branch and their report would be published.However, a rare starfish has already fallen victim of the pollution. When the air went off the ventilators switched to their own emergency supplies and it was only when these ran out that the ventilator alarms signalled the air supply was used up.The case continues today..

“I wouldn’t do nothing like that, I know what it could do.”He added that he believed if the air supply was switched off an alarm would automatically ring in the control room This, the jury heard, had not happened. Maintenance staff found the supplies had been manually switched off.When Mr McGrory was interviewed some three weeks later he denied being responsible telling police. But there were not enough nurses for the emergency task and help had to be summoned from other floors.On the 12th floor yet another baby in intensive care had to be ventilated with air bags until the supply was restored more than 15 minutes later. Three intensive care babies in the same ward also had to be manually ventilated, said Mr Dennis.On the ninth floor in another paediatric intensive care unit six out of the eight babies being cared for had to be manually ventilated. When the alarms went off “anxious nurses discovered the air supply had simply stopped”.Fortunately there were enough nurses on duty to manually ventilate the patients using air bags. Mr Stewart should have been on maintenance duty that night but he paid more attention to the party and drinking there and this provided Mr McGrory with “the incentive and opportunity to do what he did”, Mr Dennis claimed.He told the jury of the desperate efforts of nurses to help seriously- ill adults and babies when the ventilator alarms rang almost simultaneously in three intensive care wards at 1.30am.A first-floor ward was full to capacity with 13 intensive care patients – 11 of them on ventilators to regulate their breathing. He had failed to find a new job by Christmas that year when he turned up uninvited at the party given by finance staff.He drank heavily at the party.

Among other people there was a man called Russell Stewart who had worked with Mr McGrory. He had worked at the hospital for nine years before being made redundant in spring 1994. He was found the following morning.Mr Dennis alleged that Mr McGrory’s motive had been to cause nuisance and annoyance regardless of the “obvious and serious risk to life”. Mr Dennis said it could have resulted in serious harm or death to patients. That no one died was a tribute to the efforts of the nursing staff on duty at night four days before Christmas in 1994.Mr McGrory, 34, a former plumber and maintenance worker at the hospital, of Shirley, Croydon, south London, denies causing a public nuisance by switching off and isolating the electricity to various items of plant and machinery in the 30-storey tower block that holds 17 of Guy’s wards.Mr Dennis said he was caught because he became trapped on the 30th floor of the tower block by security grilles and could not reach lifts to make his get-away. After drinking heavily at a Christmas party at the hospital, Anthony McGrory used his intimate knowledge of the hospital’s maintenance structure to go from floor to floor switching off vital life-saving equipment, Mark Dennis, for the prosecution, said.
This controlled the air supply, the water supply and the supply of medical air to the intensive care units for both adults and babies. Patients’ lives were put at risk when vital life-support systems were shut down at Guy’s Hospital in south London by a former maintenance worker disgruntled at being made redundant, an Old Bailey jury was told yesterday.