Sunday 7 August 2011

Article in The Guardian's Weekend magazine



On the power of the Big Four supermarkets, and local campaigns aimed at bringing them down to earth. There's a sizeable chunk about Frome:
"...We want the land in question redeveloped, and we'd be all right with a modest-sized foodstore, but we believe that a huge supermarket that also sold books, CDs, clothes, toys and all the other staples of modern big-box retailing would be very bad news indeed. Among its other wonders, our town has a brilliant record shop and book shop, a fabulous independent toy shop and a lot of locally run cafes. We'd rather it stayed like that.
"...While all this has been going on, I have been introduced to a fizzing culture of protest and a ragged army of people, from anarchists to those partly worried about local house prices. What unites us is simple enough: the conviction that if we're not careful, we will sleepwalk into a future where the Big Four represent the only choice we have."
The whole thing is here.

6 comments:

  1. The most telling parts are -

    " The first Tesco planning application was issued in 1996, only to be withdrawn. The company then hatched a deal with high-ups from North Norfolk district council – kept "within a small circle of members and officers", according to a subsequent internal inquiry – to buy a different site, and a new planning application was made in 2003.

    and how the the supermarket and its supporters tried the dishonest tactic of class to deceive the voters


    Don't fall for it Frome!

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  2. I love Frome. It is so much better than the place I came from; where they built a hyper-market right in the centre of the town.

    In my opinion my town wasn't much to start with. But ASDA certainly ripped what heart it had right out of it

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  3. For those who follow what happens with Supermarkets. Today Asda announced it too was entering the local express shops game. So not content with supermarkets they now want to kill off local small shops just like Tesco. So choice will be even more limited and more profits will leave town and end up in shareholder's pockets.

    The next step for ASDA is non food stores which they'll begin setting up. Who said they did not want all of a town's shopping?

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  4. some of the larger supermarkets are lining up to buy Iceland


    How's that for reducing customers' choices?

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  5. This is how the Big 4 supermarkets behave



    http://blogs.thisismoney.co.uk/2011/08/tescopoly-how-the-supermarket-chain-is-slowly-taking-over-my-area.html

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  6. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/corporations-killing-british-high-street-105525073.html

    ReplyDelete