TESCO ....... YOU CAN'T FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME !

It is with no real surprise and I must confess a degree of satisfaction that I hear that Tesco the supermarket giant is facing serious marketing and financial difficulties. Their former C.E.O believes that they have lost the trust of the public.....you don't say.

My antipathy for large supermarket chains in general and Tesco in particular goes back a long way and stems in the main from their treatment, not only of shoppers, such as myself but the many farmers, growers and suppliers in general whom this retail juggernaut has been ripping off for years.

Let me tell you how it works.

Tesco approaches a supplier, a lettuce grower say, or a dairy farmer and offers to buy his product, a price is agreed providing the supermarket with exclusive rights to his product, let us say a articular brand of clotted cream or a rather delicious sort of salad, and all seems well, at first. A little further down the line when the supplier has severed all his other outlets the Tesco bully boys offer the supplier this ultimatum, either he lowers his price to rock bottom or they pull out of the deal and leave him high and dry.

What can the supplier do? It takes time to set up a new contract and in the meantime he is pouring his milk down the drain , he has overheads to meet ,wages to pay etc. These days profit margins for farmers and growers and many businesses are already at rock bottom, so he either tells them to take a hike and goes bust at once, or sells his product to them at a loss and watches his business die a slow and painful death.

This is not an occasional occurrence, this is the way that Tesco and their like do business all the time and it is scandalous. They do this so that they can offer lower and lower prices to the shopper without taking any loss in profit themselves, and if their supplier goes bust? What the hell there are thousands of others out there waiting to be robbed blind!

You could say they the consumer is just as responsible as the supermarket for they have, until recently been happy to buy the lower priced goods and ask no questions.

As the number of suppliers dwindled and the supply of produce began to dry up these despicable rogues took their dirty business elsewhere, and this is how it came about that we ended up eating horse meat and other unpleasant stuff a year or so ago. And it was around about this time that the paying public decided that enough was enough.

We had swallowed “money saving offers” which turned out to be nothing of the sort, we put up with slogans like “prices held” when what was really happening was that the amount we were getting became less and less for the same price. Con after rotten con was perpetrated upon an already beleaguered shopping public, desperately trying to cope with the recession.

In their arrogance they believed that they could continue to do so for ever, but it was a horse burger too far.

A couple of weeks before the meat scandal broke the Tesco supermarket I used was heaving, I wrote several blogs about the difficulties faced by a person using a wheelchair or a mobility scooter. Just one week after the horse mince hit the fan I could drive around the place and scarcely meet a soul, it was amazing, and what was even more amazing was the fact that it continued to be so.

It was not long before the supermarket bosses began to bleat like sheep in an abattoir.

Over the years I have used these Mega Stores less than most, but as small shops closed under the pressure of unfair competition it was a matter of “Hobson's Choice”. I had been purchasing all my fresh meat on line from an organic butcher in Grimsby for years ,and as much fresh food as possible from Farmers markets, however there was no choice but to use the big stores for much of my weekly shop. Now here is the rub, the big stores tell us that they offer the shopper a massive choice when in fact we have no choice at all. We have to buy what they decide to sell as there is no where else to go, and that is the truth.

I am sorry for the staff at those stores which are to close, but their plight is as a drop in the ocean when ones understands the terrible inroads these greedy giants have made in to the Farming community and the forced bankruptcy of thousands of small, and not so small manufacturers, leaving us dependant upon foreign suppliers of what is very often a sub standard product.

Here is a small example of this. In the U.S.A there are huge dairy farms which produce milk which is so unwholesome that the sale of the dreadful stuff has been banned by the Authorities over there, and quite right too. However, this toxic rubbish is now being dried and use by large super market chains in their “own brand” products. I kid you not!

When the owner of this ghastly place, where incidentally the cattle are kept in appalling conditions was asked to sample his own product on a T.V show he out right refused to do so!!!

Well of course the sale of this stuff to the British public should not be allowed but such is the power of the giant supermarket chains that those who's business it is to stop the sale of the stuff have, for reasons best known to themselves failed to do so. Worse still is the fact that people have been kept in ignorance of the fact that this unsafe product is being used in the cheaper own brands produced by supermarket chains. Disgraceful, yes, criminal, no but is most certainly should be.

How many unsuspecting parents on tight budgets have fed the stuff to their children? Look at it in those terms and it is a crime against humanity and all in the name of profit.

Tesco is not alone in its shady dealings, way back in the seventies the ultra respectable M and S was being criticised for putting clothing manufacturers out of business using the same rotten tactics as Tesco and many other chain super markets, Morrisons being one of the worst offenders.

Now we are told that they have been fiddling the books as well, is there no depth to which they will not sink.

If a man in the street tries to sell you a dodgy watch the police arrest him in double quick time, yet the Law allows the Supermarket Giants license to rip off the public whole sale, as it were, its disproportionate.

One thing is certain it is time that the people who pay the piper that's you and me folks,should at last be able to call the tune.