General

Asda is owned by Walmart. I think that answers your question.

I guess the good thing is that we seem to have a lot of discounts on online shopping this weekend, so I've managed to do most of my Christmas shopping! Yay!

(even though I don't understand how Black Friday is even a thing in the UK. I'm guessing it's the American equivalent of our Boxing Day sales but they've tried to introduce it over here to give shopping a boost and get people to start their Christmas shopping early?)

There's discounts this weekend on sites like Amazon, House of Fraser, John Lewis (who are price-matching everyone). There's also lots of plus size websites with reductions this weekend, for anyone looking for a Christmas party dress. Have a look on ASOS Curve

I managed to pick up some gunpla, some arduino parts, and a new soldering station.

Seems like the United States is spreading its consumer oriented culture onto the rest of the world. So I guess we can all collectively blame Obama for this

Black Friday is simply the day after the American Thanksgiving where retailers change their books from red to black. Black is good in the retail sense as it means they are turning positive profits. It marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping days, and in Canada we only started getting Black Friday sales in 2012 because the Canadian retailers were whining that all the money was being spent across the border in the States and not up here. So the government changed the rules and let the American companies like Wal-Mart advertise Black Friday sales here. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Obama and you Americans need to stop blaming him for every thing. You put him in office for another four years and this is his second term.