Why I love Tesco
An excellent article, at of all places, The Grauniad.
Choice quoatations:
In 1919, after serving with the RAF during the first world war, 21-year-old Jack Cohen invested his £30 demob money in surplus food stocks and a stall in the East End of London. … The idea that Tesco has always been a corner-shop-crushing colossus is a lie, one perpetuated by bitter, third-rate businessmen who would dearly love to have achieved a quarter of what Cohen did but lacked the ability and luck to pull it off, and who now seek to clothe their envy and hypocrisy in the rhetoric of care for the community.
And let me please declare that I, for one, wasn’t put on this earth to make life easy for British farmers … The EU has done enough to feather their nests; I don’t need to add to their nest eggs when I go shopping.
Whenever I hear the word “family” used as a moral absolute, I immediately reach for my amyl nitrate and my whistle. Families are only as good or as bad as the individual family in question; seeing the word used as shorthand for all that is good and pure is ridiculous.
I have no fear of the modern world, a fear that runs like mad mercury through those who celebrate small shops. But it is the modern world which has given so many of us the right to follow our hearts, live our dreams and hold fast to our freedom.
We should be celebrating the wonderful diversity that the supermarkets offer us. We can eat fruit at any time of the year (whilst increasing the incomes of people across the world). I can get good quality beef for a reasonable price - something previous generations could only dream of. Guinea fowl, pheasent, poussin and other delicacies are available, prepared with cooking instructions at low prices. This surely lowers the barrier to eating a wider range of food for the slightly adventurous person lacking in confidence.
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December 19th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Hmmm, if this was about something in the past I’d say you’re tainted by nostalgia, I wonder what a comparable reference is with “rosy” thinking in the current day?
The “quality” of the meat sold in supermarkets is highly under question. Maybe “good” is an acceptable quantifier in comparison in some outdated basis but by todays standards supermarket meat is poorly stored, poorly sourced and not “kept” for long enough to maintain a sufficient quality of taste. We also eat fruits at any time of the year at the expense of a large carbon footprint or, again, at the expense of taste and/or lifespan of those produce.
I have bought veg from supermarkets that doesn’t last 5 days before going limp and unusable despite the best of storage I can give, comparable items from a local veg shop keep for longer, if only it was as convenient to shop from them for this particular part of my weekly shop I know I’d not hesitate.
I too don’t see the hatred for supermarkets, but that does not mean there is no criticism to be levelled at them…and somehow you’ve managed to pick two of the main ones in reference to why supermarkets are supposedly wonderful. There is no excuse for “lack of confidence” to evolve into laziness over standards, but then there is really no excuse for supermarkets to be dealing with food, at least in terms of the meat they sell, the way they do.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Ah, I knew someone would bring up the carbon footprint argument, but considering the amount per item is miniscule, (less than 1p per pack of beans as costed by Stern I believe) I think I’ll eat it (if its good enough quality).
And surely, the best thing to do to combat the effects of climate change is to increase the standards of living of the poorest, and this does that (although free trade and refusing to give in to economic nationalism would do so even more).
Good meat - well, I don’t buy the ‘value’ stuff, but the general Tesco stock is pretty good. I’d say its good value for money, if you want something else, go somewhere else. Most people obviously like what is sold.
If you’ve bought poor quality produce, well, vote with your feet. I tend to walk to the nearest shop to buy food on a more than weekly basis - that’s either Tesco’s at home, or Sainsbury’s at work, so I don’t come across that (and their apples keep for an age and a half).
Of course there’s valid criticism, I don’t think your ones are valid as general criticisms though. To you, the value is not sufficient, but to others it is. You cannot decide on the values which other people make their decisions upon, value is subjective and each person makes their own decision.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
The best thing to combat climate change, according to the experts, is to limit emissions. Helping the living conditions of the poorest does nothing for this. I definitely understand there is a balance here but putting less emphasis on foreign goods where there are perfectly acceptable home grown goods should certainly be a priority. I’m certainly not, however, saying cut the developing world out of the economic loop.
As for the meat, this really isn’t anything to do with subjectivity. The facts are that (like admittedly plenty of butchers our there, so finding the best quality and therefore value is not easy, which is one of my points about why supermarkets can’t be bad too) meat in supermarkets come from poorly reared animals. Take a look at http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/food_heroes/directory_meats.shtml for more information and if you can try and find “Kill it, Cook it, Eat it” for an informative look at the stark differenced between good meat and supermarket meat.
This isn’t a case of my value vs your value, it’s about one factual quality vs another. I accept quite happily that this isn’t evil, and that if people want to buy poorer quality meat from more “factory” farmed methods then that is their choice as it stands, but it is, none the less, a mark against the supermarkets since the option is there to buy shit from butchers as well.
January 2nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
Lee - there’s two things - limiting climate change and limiting the effects of climate change.
I want to focus on the effects. If the best way to combat the effects is to combat the actual climate change then so be it, lets do it, however, many of the schemes to limit emissions appear to me to reduce the standard of living and to drive people into more poverty. Not something we want surely?