Shop At Tescos...?

[mlawson]

Tescos in China

Stop these turtles from a inhumane and trajic death.

Sign the petition...

And try not to shop at tescos...

 

[OohFeeshy]

I wonder how many of the people who are 'outraged' have ever been to China.... Very few indeed, I'll bet....

 

[CFC]

Did anyone else have a flick through the rest of the site and come across the page about fish which goes on to say how cruel and barbaric keeping fish is?

http/www.aapn.org/fishing.html

i recomend caution when supporting any animal rights movement, saving some turtles in China today could be the stepping stone towards having the aquarium hobby banned in the future.

 

[Danno]

The article was written by A. C. Highfield, the Co-Founder of Tortoise Trust. This will be only one side of the story, and seeing that it is from a super activist-like website, I wouldn't trust anything from it. I would much rather read information on this topic from the facts and from a neutrally sided article and then make my mind up from there on.

 

[andywg]

Interesting to see that the Guardian report on it points out that as Tescos expands into China it is employing less than 1 expatriate per 1,000 locals.

So, in essence, the items sold by Tescos in its Chinese stores (which aren't called Tescos, but Happy Shopper and has a completely different colour scheme, so it isn't like it is trying to create a global chain) are dictated by local market forces. The food on sale are for sale because the locals want them.

This seems to me to be people upset that a different culture has a different view on animals we like. "I don't like the way the Chinese treat animals they are going to eat, I shall moan at a UK company selling them in accordance with local custom and laws".

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Lol, it sounds just like Wal-mart.

I agree with CFC though, i think animal rights are obviously important, but don't let yourself get too dragged into that whole animal rights movement thing, as there are a great deal of extremists who really have no real sense of reality, they seem to get their kicks out of exagerating many cases of animal cruelty, vandilising people's property and terrorising anyone who doesn't agree with everything they say etc.


I don't shop at Tesco's anyway, i do occasionally shop at supermarkets, but i try to avoid them in general and rather spend my money on the local shops in my town. Supermarkets are wiping out the diversity in towns (they are also bad for local eccomnomies) and in the countryside too as they wipe out farm after farm when the farmers don't want to support and supply the supermarkets, and supermarkets are not exactly places run with a great sense of morality in mind either way.

 

[andywg]

I don't shop at Tesco's anyway, i do occasionally shop at supermarkets, but i try to avoid them in general and rather spend my money on the local shops in my town. Supermarkets are wiping out the diversity in towns

I hate the above term and the brother of it "Supermarkets are destroying the high street".

The only reason town centres are suffering is because they are an outdated concept in the current era. I for one do not have the time to go shopping 3-5 times a week, which means one large shop. I do not want to buy all my veg and then have to wander to another shop carrying said veg just to buy my bread, followed by a third shop for meat. I certainly don't want to do all this and then rely on public transport (As most town centres are anti-car now) to get my shopping home.

The reason why the high streets and small shops fail is because they do not offer what the consumer wants. It's as simple as that. I am also not aware of all that many 24 hour shops on high streets either.

Supermarkets are not destroying anything, the decision by the vast majority of the country to shop in them is, which (as I inferred earlier) indicates that supermarkets are delivering a service the public wants more than the smaller shops of a high street.

Perhaps we should bemoan the fact that the internal combustion engine has massively affected the use of horses to transport steel?

 

[Betta5]

I don't shop at Tesco's anyway, i do occasionally shop at supermarkets, but i try to avoid them in general and rather spend my money on the local shops in my town. Supermarkets are wiping out the diversity in towns

I hate the above term and the brother of it "Supermarkets are destroying the high street".

The only reason town centres are suffering is because they are an outdated concept in the current era. I for one do not have the time to go shopping 3-5 times a week, which means one large shop. I do not want to buy all my veg and then have to wander to another shop carrying said veg just to buy my bread, followed by a third shop for meat. I certainly don't want to do all this and then rely on public transport (As most town centres are anti-car now) to get my shopping home.

The reason why the high streets and small shops fail is because they do not offer what the consumer wants. It's as simple as that. I am also not aware of all that many 24 hour shops on high streets either.

Supermarkets are not destroying anything, the decision by the vast majority of the country to shop in them is, which (as I inferred earlier) indicates that supermarkets are delivering a service the public wants more than the smaller shops of a high street.

Perhaps we should bemoan the fact that the internal combustion engine has massively affected the use of horses to transport steel?

I agree, if they can deliver what we need then we will use them, and its easier and faster to go to 1 shop and get home. People with young children arnt going to want to drag them around 10 different shops.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I hate the above term and the brother of it "Supermarkets are destroying the high street".

The only reason town centres are suffering is because they are an outdated concept in the current era. I for one do not have the time to go shopping 3-5 times a week, which means one large shop. I do not want to buy all my veg and then have to wander to another shop carrying said veg just to buy my bread, followed by a third shop for meat. I certainly don't want to do all this and then rely on public transport (As most town centres are anti-car now) to get my shopping home.

The reason why the high streets and small shops fail is because they do not offer what the consumer wants. It's as simple as that. I am also not aware of all that many 24 hour shops on high streets either.

Supermarkets are not destroying anything, the decision by the vast majority of the country to shop in them is, which (as I inferred earlier) indicates that supermarkets are delivering a service the public wants more than the smaller shops of a high street.

Perhaps we should bemoan the fact that the internal combustion engine has massively affected the use of horses to transport steel?

I disagree. How about the following points;

a. Supermarkets are bad for local ecomonies- they come into a town, build a whopping great big supermarket, employ people for absolutely bog standard minimum wage, and offer only mostly unquallified and mind numbingly boring work. All of the money the supermarket makes from the town will never be spent back on the town though.

b. Supermarkets are bad for diversity- Aren't you sick of travelling across the whole country, only to find that every single town you go through has exactly the same shops? Every town has a Tesco's, Asda, Morrinsons etc... These huge ugly buildings wipe out the individuality and culture of our towns and cities...

c. Supermarkets are destroying our farms and landscapes- Supermarkets have got unbelievibly powerful in this day an age. They prevent new shops even starting up, because how can anyone compete with such multi billion pond buisnesses? The farms are either forced to sell their products for bod standard prices and reduce the quality of life/welfare of their livestock in the process, or go out of buisness. Tesco's buys chickens for 13p each, how can any farmer who wants to give their animals a decent quality of life afford to do it on that little money?
It is a fact that the supermarkets are forcing farms out of buisness for many reasons, none of them "fair" reasons either depending on how you view the problem...


d. And are you really making your own decisions? Supermarkets have spent over the decades spent vast sums of money on psychological consumer research to make the consumer unconciously buy stuff. How often do you go down to the supermarket wanting to buy some particular things, only to walk out with more than what you originally planned to get?




The lazy (not meaning to offend BTW) attitude to "I can't be bothered to go to 2-3 different shops on the same street to buy my food" will come at your own and others cost as supermarkets continue to increase in power. Surely its better for your health/fitness that you walk a few minutes enjoying your local town while doing your shopping buying locally sourced goods (which are obviously environmentally better to buy and are of a better quality since the the greens are not picked months before they are ripe and the meat doesn't come from brazil or china where the animals are raised in bad conditions)?


Etc...


If you are interested in this sort of subject debate, i strongly advise that you read "SHOPPED" by Joanna Blythman, your rosy veiw of the healthily competitive and helping consumer view of supermarkets will be changed as your eye's are opened to the bigger picture of what is going on with this whole problem...The book is full of eye opening chilling facts, it is an excellently documented book and is there for you to make your own mind up about supermarkets.




Edit: I thought you may interested in some news articles on supermarkets;


"My wage isn't enough to buy myself clothes, to buy my children clothes and to buy different types of food";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/3020329.stm



"The giants of Britain's high streets are spending hundreds of millions of pounds going green, and millions more telling us - the customers - about their plans.

But what are their real motives?"


"These big public listed companies are not driven by ethics or the environment," he says. "They're driven by profit and bringing a return back to the shareholders.

"Are these companies going to save the world? I don't think so." ;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6245892.stm



"Dairy farmer 'forced' to sell up";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6432781.stm


"Actress calls for worker rights";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6391835.stm



" Supermarket concerns are voiced

Grocers, farmers and environmentalists have been making their case against the power of the big four supermarkets at a hearing in Edinburgh.";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5314492.stm


" Farmers embark on prices strike

Around 3,500 British farmers are taking part a three-day strike in protest at the low prices paid by retailers for their goods, organisers have said.";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4398614.stm


" Is Tesco too big?

The people at Tesco think big. The company's hypermarkets are big, its share of the UK market is big, and its profits are big.

So big, in fact, that Tesco has unveiled record annual profits on Tuesday of £2.03bn ($3.83bn).";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4422065.stm


"Price cuts raise retail pressure

The UK's two largest supermarket chains have launched new price-cutting drives, putting further pressure on rivals and stores on the High Street.;


http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4408369.stm


"It will be bad news for suppliers in terms that the price cuts will inevitably trickle downwards and basically our members will be stuck between a rock and a hard place."


Etc...I could go on, but there are hundreds of articles like this everywhere. If you tell me there's no problem with what supermarkets are doing, then i think you must still have you eye's shut.

 

[Gill]

good read -
where I Live i have the following within:
5-10 Min Walk.
Arena Tesco - largest in Europe
Sainsburys
Aldi
Somerfield
FarmFoods
CostCutters
Large Nisa
Matalan
TKMaxx
Range
PizzaHut
KFC
Burger king
MaccyD's
PowerHouse
SCS
Instore
MFI
Dreams
JJB
Select
Maplins
PetsAtHome
Comet
ToppsTiles
Lunn Poly
Carphone Warehouse
Phones For You
Game
Clinton Cards
Next
Borders
Starbucks
Subway
Boots - open till Midnight for Meds
Most of the Major Banks


by Car within 10mins
Same as Above but
Add another 3 24hour Tesco's and a Metro
Add 2 24 hour Asda's
Add Morrisons
Add 2 Somerfields
Add Another 2 Large Aldis


the only time i visit the City Centre is to pay the Mortgage once a month. and to buy my tea from the chinese herbalist. but even thats opened up in tesco now.

We used to shop around for our fruit and veg. But tesco are Carrying all the asian fruit and veg we used to spend time looking for. Even mums Asain Icecream. so we don't bother as its the same price.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

the only time i visit the City Centre is to pay the Mortgage once a month. and to buy my tea from the chinese herbalist. but even thats opened up in tesco now.

We used to shop around for our fruit and veg. But tesco are Carrying all the asian fruit and veg we used to spend time looking for. Even mums Asain Icecream. so we don't bother as its the same price.

Same price, but are you getting the same quality? What about the environmental factor, the welfare of the farm animals, the culture and indviduality of your community (which sounds non-existant by the sounds of the long list of mega shops you listed), the local economy and house/land prices of your local area, the jobs available to the young and old in your local area, its appearance, your health etc?


I used to go to my local green grocers to buy my fruit and veg, but eventually the local morrisons in town killed it off. Now, i am forced to go to my local supermarket if i want the same fruit and veg in my town- once these small family shops are killed off by supermarkets, they never return (can you call that a good thing? Before i was able to choose not to go to a supermarket for fruit and veg, now the local Morrisons is all i have, whether i like it or not). I am now made to opt for the poor quality over-packaged tastless fruit and veg from my local supermarket.

I am someone who is very concerned about the environment in this troubled day and age. I don't want to eat tasteless fruit and lettuce, which is tasteless because it is picked weeks or months before it is ripe, and has travelled all over the country and even to other countries in the packaging process (making it very unenvironmentally friendly due to the transport emissions etc), which is bought by the supermarket dirt cheap but knocked up in price so the supermarket is making massive profits off me etc.

I don't want to buy eat meat like beef from my supermarket which is bland and watery with a texture of butter, the beef is bright red from not being hung/matured properly and is wastefully produced with much of the animal wasted and thrown away and packed in useless unenvironmentally friendly polystyrene containers and cling film and pumped full of water to make the meat look plumper, and which is in no way fresh nor of good proper quality, and with no guarentee that the animal in question was ever given any decent quality of life etc.


What i want is locally sourced foods like fruit and veg, which taste good because it was picked when it was ripe and i do not have it on my conscience that the fruit and veg has travelled across half the world being packaged or grown in third world countries where the people have few workers rights and treated carelessly by the supermarkets and only viewed as a cheap source of labour.
I don't want to have to choose between granny smith apples and more granny smith apples (when there are hundreds and hundreds of native apple varieties in this country alone), which are sour, watery and tastless, i don't want my apples covered in wax to make them look prettier to the consumer and i don't want strawberries that bounce when i drop them because they have all been bred to endure the long transportation and packaging process, with no emphasis on taste and quality. I don't want my fruit and veg covered in pesticides nor do i want my meat to raised in battery farms and slaughtered in less than humane manners in huge commercial slaughterhouses.


I want to preserve my countryside, my town, and help my community. I want OUR farmers to get a fair deal and not to be treated like crap by the supermarkets (with so many farmers committing suicide from the pressure they face now days in every direction), i want food that tastes good and is of good quality, and i want variety in food. I want to chat with my very qualified and nice butchers in my local butcher shop, and not to some spotty teenage guy in a supermarket who is miserable and doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. I want animals to get a good quality of life in this country and i want our environment and its amazing diversity of wildlife to be preserved and saved.

Etc...

If all this means that i have to pay a little extra for much better food and products, and that i have to walk a little bit instead of sit in my car in traffic, getting stressed trying to find a damned packing space on a simmering saturday afternoon, then i am more than happy to do it.

We live in a very convienient age with low prices, which we are all becomming accustomed to, what at what price does this come? ... ... ...

 

[CAC]

It is true, the large supermarkets will, and already have wiped out parts of local communitys. Take for example books. You may not think it but the books that tesco, sainsburys etc sell are all generic, low priced, popular books, and as they buy more and more, their prices increasingly drop leaving specialised book stores, which are privately owned and found (or used to be found) in many villages out-competed, and with them goes all the obscure books they sell too...The top publishers and writers will be all thats left, and smaller, more expensive books will be produced less and less...And thats only one department of tesco (who seem to be the biggest), nevermind other things like wine (smaller vineyards will find it hard to sell their mineute, in comparison, quantitys of wine) and even things like verietys of tomatos etc.

 

[andywg]

Quite a lot typed out while I was away, so I'll have to split my reply:

a. Supermarkets are bad for local ecomonies- they come into a town, build a whopping great big supermarket, employ people for absolutely bog standard minimum wage, and offer only mostly unquallified and mind numbingly boring work. All of the money the supermarket makes from the town will never be spent back on the town though.

Only for local vendors, which makes up a small number of the employees in any town. For most people they save a large amount in both time and money. I just don't have the time to waste half a day at the weekend to walk around trying to find my food in different shops. I can still remember the chors of going around the fruit shop, then the freeer shop, then the bakers etc with my mum. To hell with that.

And suppose the minimum wage work wasn't there. Where would these people who can't get better jobs go and work? I doubt many of them would become shop owners, and I can't see a local shop or two needing anywhere near the staff that Tescos employ.

b. Supermarkets are bad for diversity- Aren't you sick of travelling across the whole country, only to find that every single town you go through has exactly the same shops? Every town has a Tesco's, Asda, Morrinsons etc... These huge ugly buildings wipe out the individuality and culture of our towns and cities...

No I am not sick, it means I can get food I want wherever I am. I also know that a small local food shop is very unlikely to have the huge choice of fruit and veg at my local tescos. In my entire time growing up going to a local fruit and veg stall I never once encountered dragon fruit or star fruit.

And if a town's only marked feature is its grocery stores then it is a nothing town already. I can guarantee that Southend where I live now is vastly different to Colchester (nearest twon to my village growing up) despite them both having a long list of supermarkets.

c. Supermarkets are destroying our farms and landscapes- Supermarkets have got unbelievibly powerful in this day an age. They prevent new shops even starting up, because how can anyone compete with such multi billion pond buisnesses? The farms are either forced to sell their products for bod standard prices and reduce the quality of life/welfare of their livestock in the process, or go out of buisness. Tesco's buys chickens for 13p each, how can any farmer who wants to give their animals a decent quality of life afford to do it on that little money?
It is a fact that the supermarkets are forcing farms out of buisness for many reasons, none of them "fair" reasons either depending on how you view the problem...

Wrong, they are forcing the smaller farms out of business. If all farmers were making a loss then Tescos would have to pay more. What is evidence here is the market effects of larges scale capitalism. People want food cheap, so whoever can buy the food the cheapest (and thus sell it cheapest) will get the most customers. Those that got largest quickest now dominate the market. The supermarkets are just the front end.

d. And are you really making your own decisions? Supermarkets have spent over the decades spent vast sums of money on psychological consumer research to make the consumer unconciously buy stuff. How often do you go down to the supermarket wanting to buy some particular things, only to walk out with more than what you originally planned to get?

I do walk out with more, but then I use it. for example, I go in wanting some milk and bread and then buy some pineapples, lemons and bananas. I wouldn't have had any of this fruit if I had just nipped to the bakery and waited for the milkman to deliver three pints of gold top. I do not unconciously buy stuff though. I look at what it is and the price and decide whether I really want it or not, and frequently put thingsw down. I only come across these things when I am browsing the store to see if there is anything I want. If I am in "man-shop" mode then I get what I want and head straight out.

The lazy (not meaning to offend BTW) attitude to "I can't be bothered to go to 2-3 different shops on the same street to buy my food" will come at your own and others cost as supermarkets continue to increase in power.

Why is it lazy to not want to spend your few hours of spare time a week shopping?

Surely its better for your health/fitness that you walk a few minutes enjoying your local town while doing your shopping buying locally sourced goods

It's even better for me to go to the gym, which I have time to do because I am not trapsing around the local high street looking for food. Also, how do I park my car in the town centre (these shops are rarely in out of town areas with large parking)? I need too much food for a week to carry it home on the bus (and don't want to waste time waiting for the crammed dirty machine).

(which are obviously environmentally better to buy and are of a better quality since the the greens are not picked months before they are ripe and the meat doesn't come from brazil or china where the animals are raised in bad conditions)?

Obviosly? I think not. New Zealand prooduced evidence to show that the high energy farming techniques in Britain make it lower in global emmisions to buy lamb from New Zealand (despite the shipping emissions) than to buy local lamb. Buying green is not always as simple as it seems.

I do, however, tend to buy my meat from tescos selecting the most local produce I can find (always choosing England over the other home nations wherever I can) but this is because I like my money to go more locally.

If you are interested in this sort of subject debate, i strongly advise that you read "SHOPPED" by Joanna Blythman, your rosy veiw of the healthily competitive and helping consumer view of supermarkets will be changed as your eye's are opened to the bigger picture of what is going on with this whole problem...The book is full of eye opening chilling facts, it is an excellently documented book and is there for you to make your own mind up about supermarkets.

No, the book is there to make you agree with the authors views on them. Perhaps you shoudl look at the bigger picture. the days of having time to wander around choosing food are gone, along witht he days of mother staying at home and father working to get the money in. food is now cheaper than it ever has been as a percentage of our wages. This is due to supermarkets making it cheaper and driving down costs. I don't care if they make some profit, and I to be brutally honest I don't care if someone who worked in an outdated method has lost their job, that is progress. You might not like it, but the fact that so many people in poll after poll like the idea of supermarkets shows that you are in the minority.

I have my concerns over the productions methods of animals, but I lay this at the farmers and consumers as much as at the supermarkets. If all farmers prodcued only free range (and didn't distort its meaning) and all consumers purchased free range then the supermarkets would pay some more and only buy free range.

 

[andywg]

Second part:

Edit: I thought you may interested in some news articles on supermarkets;


"My wage isn't enough to buy myself clothes, to buy my children clothes and to buy different types of food";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/real_story/3020329.stm

Yet she still gets above the minimum working wage in Kenya, so in reality she is doing better than others in her country. If Tesco didn't buy from her company she would receive even less, perhaps nothing. there are two ways to look at every story.

"The giants of Britain's high streets are spending hundreds of millions of pounds going green, and millions more telling us - the customers - about their plans.

But what are their real motives?"


"These big public listed companies are not driven by ethics or the environment," he says. "They're driven by profit and bringing a return back to the shareholders.

"Are these companies going to save the world? I don't think so." ;

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6245892.stm

But they are doing it. The green lobby hates big businesses. Even if all the businesses did save the world, FotE would sit there bemoaning that they put us in the position originally. Until we are all living in caves as hunter gatherers then the Luddites like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth will never be happy. It is always interesting to ntoe that those most vociferous in their support for these things are people born rich and as such do not have to worry about building their lives, or they just live off the state on the back of hard workers.

"Dairy farmer 'forced' to sell up";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6432781.stm

And as such someone will buy the farm, so some people must see some future, it's just that it is in larger companies with the eceonomy of scale allowing profit from lower prices. Interestingly enough the government is fprcing this to happen in the legal profession with regards to legal aid. No one seems to be screaming out about the poor legal aid solicitors who will become redundant and lose their businesses (and they will probably not have anything to sell on, either).

"Actress calls for worker rights";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6391835.stm

Aaah, a rich person calling for us all to spend more money to help others but without dipping into her own pockets once again. while the workers do probably deserve more money, one must remember that South Africa is a mostly impoverished country. I used to work with some South Africans and they said that on fairly basic England wages they return home and feel rich as the cost of living is so much lower. Now I don't believe that the low amount is enough, but it always sounds worse when converted into sterling. What is the average wage for South Africans?

" Supermarket concerns are voiced

Grocers, farmers and environmentalists have been making their case against the power of the big four supermarkets at a hearing in Edinburgh.";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5314492.stm

Environmentalists despise anything about modern living, as I said above, these luddites want us living in caves never leaving our local areas for fear of polluting the world. The farmers and grocers are going to be the smaller ones who cannot compete with the larger producers who make money out of selling to supermarkets

" Farmers embark on prices strike

Around 3,500 British farmers are taking part a three-day strike in protest at the low prices paid by retailers for their goods, organisers have said.";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4398614.stm

And here we have better action, if the producers think the price is too low, they have to band together, but the fact that the prices remain low most likely means some people are making money. Again, this is capitalsim; some people make money and have success by adapting and conforming to the market, others don't.

" Is Tesco too big?

The people at Tesco think big. The company's hypermarkets are big, its share of the UK market is big, and its profits are big.

So big, in fact, that Tesco has unveiled record annual profits on Tuesday of �2.03bn ($3.83bn).";

http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4422065.stm

And it got big by offering what the consumer wants. What so many people forget is that Tesco survive on consumer spending. The small shop dries up because people can get mopre variety at cheaper prices and more convenience in Tescos.

"Price cuts raise retail pressure

The UK's two largest supermarket chains have launched new price-cutting drives, putting further pressure on rivals and stores on the High Street.;


http/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4408369.stm

The law of free market trading; cut prices, get the consumer in and then keep them by making them enjoy their experience. If the supermarket shopping experience really was so terrible then people wouldn't take to them and leave the High Street so happily.

Etc...I could go on, but there are hundreds of articles like this everywhere. If you tell me there's no problem with what supermarkets are doing, then i think you must still have you eye's shut.

There are some issues with what supermarkets do with regards to buying from producers that are not the most ethical, but ultimately money talks, and consumers have voted time and time again that they want cheap food and don't care where it comes from. Look at how many people still buy battery farm eggs. There has been no shortage of scandals about the treatment of the animals, but the consumer doesn't care.

However, what you (and many others) fail to understand is that the general public wants a large supermarket. They want the ease of shopping inone place at low prices. Have you not considered that it is you that has your eyes shut to what the public actually wants?

 

[andywg]

Part Three:

the only time i visit the City Centre is to pay the Mortgage once a month. and to buy my tea from the chinese herbalist. but even thats opened up in tesco now.

We used to shop around for our fruit and veg. But tesco are Carrying all the asian fruit and veg we used to spend time looking for. Even mums Asain Icecream. so we don't bother as its the same price.

Same price, but are you getting the same quality? What about the environmental factor, the welfare of the farm animals, the culture and indviduality of your community (which sounds non-existant by the sounds of the long list of mega shops you listed), the local economy and house/land prices of your local area, the jobs available to the young and old in your local area, its appearance, your health etc?

Quality is somewhat subjective, if someone really cares more about the quality than the price then they will shop where the best quality is. Most people don't so they shop at the cheapest. Welfare of animals is a concern but it is not just the responsibility of supermarkets and the culture and identity of a town is so much more than what shops it has. Surely you can see that. Just because Bob & Sons Butchers is closed does not suddenly make an idyllic small town in the Yorkshire Dales identical to Birmingham. I am lost at your connection between house prices and supermarket presence and superm arkets provide one large point of employment for lower skilled people (somewhat essential in this time of reduced manufacturing in the UK). I see far more old and young people employed in shops like my local Tescos than most other shops. Would a small fishmonger really want to employ an ex office worker part time for a couple of years? before retirement.

And are you really claiming at the end that shopping at a supermarket is bad for your health?

I used to go to my local green grocers to buy my fruit and veg, but eventually the local morrisons in town killed it off. Now, i am forced to go to my local supermarket if i want the same fruit and veg in my town- once these small family shops are killed off by supermarkets, they never return (can you call that a good thing? Before i was able to choose not to go to a supermarket for fruit and veg, now the local Morrisons is all i have, whether i like it or not). I am now made to opt for the poor quality over-packaged tastless fruit and veg from my local supermarket.

This is due to the fact that you are very much in the minority. Should everyone else have to spend more time and money to visit different shops and buy at higher prices just because you and a few others want to?

I am someone who is very concerned about the environment in this troubled day and age. I don't want to eat tasteless fruit and lettuce, which is tasteless because it is picked weeks or months before it is ripe, and has travelled all over the country and even to other countries in the packaging process (making it very unenvironmentally friendly due to the transport emissions etc), which is bought by the supermarket dirt cheap but knocked up in price so the supermarket is making massive profits off me etc.

There is far more to the global environment than the total distance travelled between production and consumption. Remember my point about New Zealand Lamb.

I don't want to buy eat meat like beef from my supermarket which is bland and watery with a texture of butter, the beef is bright red from not being hung/matured properly and is wastefully produced with much of the animal wasted and thrown away and packed in useless unenvironmentally friendly polystyrene containers and cling film and pumped full of water to make the meat look plumper, and which is in no way fresh nor of good proper quality, and with no guarentee that the animal in question was ever given any decent quality of life etc.

You can get better meats if you want, but you have to look around for the specialists. They are few and far between because so few people really value quality over quantity. The packaging is a concern that needs to be addressed. As to whether the meat is fresh, I wouldl contend that point. do you have any figures to show the time between slaughter and the meat appearing in the supermarket? I would bet it is as quick as possible to prevent storage charges.

What i want is locally sourced foods like fruit and veg, which taste good because it was picked when it was ripe and i do not have it on my conscience that the fruit and veg has travelled across half the world being packaged or grown in third world countries where the people have few workers rights and treated carelessly by the supermarkets and only viewed as a cheap source of labour.

So, in essence you also want to make third world workers redundant and give them even more poverty, as without the first world using them for cheap labour there are not that many oppurtunities for money to flow in and help the countries slowly develop. Also remember that the supermarkets don't directly employ the workers.

Furthermore, a large part of the fruit and veg on sale at my local Tescos is East Anglian sourced, so I can buy locally, though the farmers over here employ foreign workers and use them as cheap labour.