Moonbat is raging against Tesco’s plans to put a store in Machynlleth. I know the town well and was there again in January of this year. It remains pretty much as I remember it from my teenage years. Monbiot worries about the effect on the local shops of a superstore:
It wants to build a store of 27,000 square feet on the edge of the town centre. This is twice the size of all our grocery stores put together, and bigger than our tiny settlement – 2,100 souls – can support. Tesco will prosper here only if other shops close and customers come from miles away.
Therein lies the effect experienced by others across the country. The superstore provides what people want at a price they want to pay and local shops simply cannot compete. Well, that’s the theory, but what if, as Monbiot claims, local people don’t want it?
In north Bristol about twenty years ago this debate raged as Tesco wanted to build a superstore on Kellaway Avenue on the site of some local green space. Local people wanted to keep the green space and fought a long battle to keep it that way. Tesco eventually got the go-ahead from Nichols Ridley and local opposition was swept aside. Now the Tesco store is there and seems to be doing okay. And that, frankly, is the heart of the matter. It seems that despite what opposition is initially posed, people do go to these stores and they do buy the products and they do justify Tesco’s decision to go for it. If local people really objected, the store would fail, wouldn’t it? Ain’t that the rub? Likely as not, George’s neighbours will say they agree with him and then promptly nip off to Tesco’s to get their weekly groceries.
I suspect the same will apply in Machynlleth as happened in Kellaway Avenue – despite my underlying sympathy with Monbiot’s position. The town is pretty, quaint and unspoiled and the loss of the local High Street will be a crying shame. A Tesco store will, undoubtedly, be a carbuncle much like their other stores throughout the country, but you can bet your bottom dollar, it will be full to bursting on a Saturday morning…
And, I’m sure, Mark Wadsworth will have a view on this one 
You are precisely right.
My underlying sympathy, too, is with Monbiot’s position – probably because I live in a rural community, and hate cities. The Tescos of this world have the power to squeeze their suppliers, including farmers, and when people shop with at Tesco – as they do – village shops are forced to close, and long established businesses in towns feel see their business suffer.
But Monbiot ignores one thing in his article. Local people WILL make the decision about the Tesco in Machynlleth. They all get a vote. It is with their feet. They can close it down. Monbiot doesn’t need to write articles in the Guardian, or try to use planning law. He needs to mobilise the people of the community with arguments.
But he knows he will lose. He knows people will shop at Tesco. I know that, because I live in a rural community, and I know what rural people do.
Sad to say, I do it myself. The other day, my wife and I passed through a town with a new Tesco. I proposed that we drop in, despite the fact that I feel about as friendly toward Tesco as Mr. Monbiot. Why? I knew that the Tesco would have a bathroom (which at that point was pretty important to me) – I knew it would be open (because every large Tesco is open in the evening) – and I also knew that it would have a decent range of products, and there were one or two things we needed.
Sad.
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Attacks on Tesco are effectively attacks on the people who shop there. A shop is really a reflection of its customers. So if Tesco is terrible, by implication, so must be its customers. Its disguised snobbery.
You are also right, the new Tesco in Machynlleth (if it comes) will be busy, probably full of the type of people George Monbiot wouldn’t invite to dinner. But he still claims to speak on their behalf. He doesn’t want to buy microwave meals, oven chips, oven ready pizzas and cheap cola and beer, so sees no need for anyone else to have the opportunity to do so.
I make no bones about it – I dislike Tesco and the people who shop there. In the town where I live I very rarely go there as fortunately there are other options. I vote with my feet and wallet. If the people of Machynlleth do the same the new Tesco will die. Simple as that. Its called capitalism.
I rarely use Tesco – in the UK, I tend to use Sainsburys and in France, Super U. The underlying problem here that Monbiot does, indeed, recognise is that while people might say “no” now, once built, they will cheerfully help it thrive.
It’s a conundrum, as the loss of the local high street will be a loss of the rich variety of small businesses that make up the heart of a small market town. Mach will be the poorer for it. But – likely as not, it is want people want. It also means that we end up with homogenised towns that are bland and characterless.
It’s always lineball on this one, isn’t it? People shop but at what a cost.
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I do have a view. It’s called free market capitalism. I personally like towns with e.g. a Tesco, a Superdrug, a B&Q and an HMV on the high street. In terms of number of products, retail jobs and parking spaces per geographical area, that gives you, the shopper, a far greater choice than all the little shops (see also ‘monopolistic competition’).
But never forget the rules on economies and diseconomies of scale. Near a Tesco, B&Q etc you will always get cafes, second hand appliance/repair shops, hairdressers, dry cleaners, estate agents and so on, industries where there are little or no economies of scale; a bit like the little fish that swim in the wake of sharks.
PS, if ‘local people’ wanted the green space (as well they might – it’s all a trade-off), why didn’t they just club together and buy it?
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Not being directly involved, I cannot say. I would guess, though, that they could not afford that option.
I loathe Tescos and much of what they sell. Being a libertarian, I am totally for business setting up wherever the market says it can. The people who shop at Tescos make me sick, and I have to agree with Wadsworth; local shops in the UK are normally dreadful. The staff in them are unmotivated, the choice of stock is limited and thanks to that lack of motivation, they will not lift a finger to order in what you want. Tescos is banned in my house normally. We use our local butcher, get our bread from our local health shop, but due to the sociographic nature of the place we live in, no small shop has everything that we need (if anything… its all iceland and frozen monster slop down here), and Tesco is the only supermarket around that fills the gaps. The nearest Watrose is eighty miles away. There is not even a single wine seller locally, the nearest being fifty miles away. Local shops are a good idea, but if they will not cater to what people want, then they must fall by the wayside. The alternative is to have a ‘bonne solution francaise’ where, for example, pharmaceutical products can only be sold in Pharmacies… BY LAW. To a libertarian this is anathema of course. Monbiot, being a hard core socialist and general nutcase / magical thinker has not got a clue about how the real world works, hence is hatred for Tescos and wish to prop up the unsustainable and unforgivably bad local stores. I mourn for the Britain of old, but if it is unsustainable or just sucks, then it SHOULD die, and of course, in the case of supermarkets, if people really didn’t like them they would shun them. On the other hand, with everyone having over 50% of ‘their money’ stolen by the government, the pressure to buy cheap is so great, it can override the distaste for supermarkets.
What’s wrong here isn’t Tesco, its planning law. In the article the county council claim they can’t keep denying Tesco because Tesco can keep appealing. If Tesco eventually wins and claims costs against the council they claim they will be bankrupt.
Its hard to see how the building of a superstore anywhere is anyone’s business but the local populations’. If they instruct their local politicians to object to the building and there is a clear majority that should be the end of it.
It is diferent for something like a mobile phone mast. Mobile operators have a legal obligation as part of their licence to provide service to 95% of the population(off the top of my head) and therefore need some process to have local decisions reviewed.
This smacks of another case of big business colluding with fat cat national politicians.
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