FoE online petition against Tesco lobbying of new competition planning test
Friends of the Earth on line petition:
Use link on the bottom line.
Growth at what price?
The relentless growth of Tesco has crushed small businesses and local shops. And it has turned many of our communities into Tescotowns.
In response, the Competition Commission has recommended a new competition test for town planning.
This would stop supermarkets opening new stores in places where they already control the majority of the local market.
Bully boy tactics
But the new test is in danger because of the fierce lobbying of Tesco.
They want to scrap the test and risk the future of vibrant, environmentally-friendly communities and town centres.
What can I do?
Demand the Government stands up to Tesco.
Email the Minister for Planning
OS21
IS A GROUP DEDICATED TO PROMOTING THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OF OSWESTRY IN THE
21ST CENTURY
January 28th, 2010 at 1:14 am
Friends of the Earth have a good track record on campaign lobbying. So get on and support this effort to stand up to bullying in the retail playground.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Is Tesco a British owned company? I want to see successful British companies, and I am fed up of companies like Cadbury/ HP etc being sold off to foreign countries. If Tesco is British owned ,should we be cramping their style/ thwarting their plans? I do not say I am right on this , I do not know whether Tesco is foreign or part foreign owned, I just want people to have a less emotive, more thought out response to Supermarket expansion plans. In France great outdoor markets co-exist and compliment supermarkets in towns.
I am also concerned about rail networks and possibly sections of our motorways being sold to foreign investors., Their interest would probabaly be to charge us tolls. I think we ought to be more worried about foreign countries owning our water utilities than supermarket expansion. Could we not consider making town centres the places for cultural, historical interest, free drop in lectures on all kinds of subjects, and local shopping experiences combined with craft demonstrarions and join in sessions and making a levy on successful supermarkets in the area to support these . Bring a cinema, more art venues, a museum, a table tennis and snoooker hall,a ballroom dance palace to Os. We might get more vsitors to the centre then! We need a leisure complex, leisure of all kinds , not just sport in Os more than we need another supermarket. Perhaps we could require any new supermarket in Os , if given the go ahead, to be an innovator in design efficiency/ solar heating/ contribute to an Oswestry power grid?
Sorry to tumble out so many ideas!
January 28th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Don’t think it matters whether Tesco is British, part British, foreign or Martian. The point is that they are lobbying for further retail development in areas that already have strong Tesco presence, and are saturated by the supermarket presence of all supermarket retailers. Which is fine if you want a Communist style monopoly of food sourcing, production and consumption and everything from clothes to computers sold by one outlet, but not very good if you want towns to be communities, jobs to have skills, people to have livelihoods and entrepreneurial chances, food to represent quality, customers to be offered choice and the locality to be celebrated and economically viable.
£1 spent with a local supplier was worth £1.76 to the local economy but only 36p if it was spent with a chain. http://www.neweconomics.org/
Why send cash spent in the town to foreign bank accounts set up to avoid tax when it could circulate within the town and benefit the town as a whole?
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/tesco/Tesco-uses-offshore–havens.3819680.jp
Cinema - yes. We don’t need a supermarket subsidised one to get one though, nor do we need a five screen cinema the like of which Wrexham could not fill or support. Digital cinema is the way forward and far more flexible and appropriate. Wem has just opened one without having to hand over it’s economy to yet another supermarket chain.
Culture - Art gallery and museum. All very well, but the arse is dropping out of funding for such projects faster than a brick down an empty well at the moment. And quite honestly, how many people in Oswestry ever enter the Qube to see a show?
Dance Hall - Oswestry had a rather fine Victorian one, which I think was situated where the old Momentum wines place was and K C Jones garage now stands on Oswald Road which was demolished in the 60’s. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone!
And if anyone can pay the rent and business rates on a snooker hall and tennis table spot and still make money then good luck to them!
We are fortunate in having a rather good, large, modern, useable library though, with the facilities for some of the other things you describe.
I agree that a town centre should offer varied attraction for inhabitants and visitors alike, but a market town consisting of heavily subsidised Culture and Leisure locations and without independent shops or a functioning market due to over supply of in or out of town supermarket retail ceases to be an economically viable entity any more.