Supermarkets in Shetland - prices, ethics and experiences

[breeksy]

You don't have to be pro-local shopkeepers to be anti-Tesco - thats two different issues.

 

There are reasons to be anti-Tesco that aren't related to local trade.

[Fjool]

Short-term benefit though; much of the cost from a supermarket shop has been externalised. Either physically (someone else pays), or temporally (we pay, but later).

 

If you ever wondered why the cost of fuel is going up; it's partly because these kind of business practices exist. When food is grown locally, the transport burden is reduced, fuel costs are reduced.

 

Also, companies like Tesco work very hard to avoid paying the taxes that they should. The money they avoid paying in tax then has to come out of our pockets.

 

These are only two quick examples but the fact remains: The savings are a lie; the real costs have been hidden. One might not personally pay as much on a weekly shopping trip, but someone, somewhere, sometime has to.

 

Edit: Breeksy got in there while I was writing. I agree with what Breeksy says.

[fratelli]

One might not personally pay as much on a weekly shopping trip, but someone, somewhere, sometime has to.

 

I accept that there are many reasons to be anti - Tesco but to Mrs Average like me, with a budget stretched to capacity and kids to feed, my only interest is will it be cheaper than anywhere else? If yes, then I'm 100% for it and I'll be there with bells on....

 

I can accept that business practices like this can have a detrimental effect of national economy but I'm afraid on a selfish note the ethics of it all are not my department. I'm not a politician, I'm a parent trying to run a home. I hate to say this but.... Every little helps!

[Roachmill]

We will be offered the same national advertised promotions as the rest of the UK.....promise.

Promise? No offence intended but pray tell how you know for sure. There's many a time I've seen offers that "apply only to mainland UK". You an employee?

[PJ of Hildisvik]

At least when Tescos opens, you won't need a Bio Hazard suit on to go shopping, like you need to go round co-op at the moment. If the state of that shop gets any worse , Health and Safety would have a field day.

Iknow the staff are under pressure at the moment, but some body needs to go round with a mop and bucket before some one catches some nasty little BUG.

[Mcdilly-Willy]

The management of the co-op is a joke. Yeah, yeah their busy - so what?!

Get more staff, train them well, have every single checkout open etc.

 

I agree with fratelli completely, I couldnt give two hoots about the "local shop", I do care about my wallet however...

 

You tell 'em Salmon!

 

One might not personally pay as much on a weekly shopping trip, but someone, somewhere, sometime has to.

 

Yeah as long as its not me...

[Malcolm]

With Queues that are 10-15 deep, closed checkouts, a management structure that is a joke plus the place is a bio-hazard and they couldnt give a toss about disabled shoppers (I heard someone ask where the disabled toilets were as there wasn't a sign showing it he was told by a "couldntbearsed" Manager that they were having a refit in xxx weeks and the new signs etc would go up then) the whole place is a bloody shambles!

 

Roll on Tesco I say!

[Njugle]

I accept that there are many reasons to be anti - Tesco but to Mrs Average like me, with a budget stretched to capacity and kids to feed, my only interest is will it be cheaper than anywhere else? If yes, then I'm 100% for it and I'll be there with bells on....

 

Crucial point. Go for special offers and guaranteed it usually will be cheaper but otherwise don't just assume that it's all cheaper, cos it won't be.

 

And watch out for special offers that only exist in-store, like the price hike/reduction scam.

[Infiltrator]

Another protester for Tesco's opening day I see - funny how folk like this seem to only post their own personal viewpoint rather than printing a balanced view to let folk make their own choices. He seems to have overlooked the reality of the situation - AA Gill put the issue into a better perspective.

 

Intensive farming is a way of modern life - you want something different then you'll need to curb the population growth.

 

p.s. Salmon in cages, hmm, maybe Mr Dobson should spend his time protesting for better Salmon welfare rights around the farms surrounding Shetland.

 

http://www.shetland-news.co.uk/letters_07_2008/Foul%20protest.htm

 

This is part of of AA Gill’s article in the Sunday Times on Jan 27 2008

 

“As part of the concerted Channel 4 crusade against murder most fowl, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver have been using a lot of TV time and clout to stop intensive chicken farming. Now, normally I’m all for improving flavour, freshness, goodness and the sexual allure of livestock, but this isn’t about the quality of chicken, it’s about the quality of chicken’s lives, and frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn dish of boiled wattles about the lives of chickens. Giving them a hay bale, a square yard of grass and an hour a day in the chilly drizzle is a bit like putting a bridge table on death row.

 

If you care about the quality of chickens’ lives, their happiness, there’s only one thing you can morally do: don’t eat them.

 

Animals are bred into humiliating, unnatural shapes and idiotic imbecility in strange, unnatural habitats, and then die for dinner. Get over it or eat grass. The only thing you should campaign about is whether they’re improved eating. This zoomorphic sentimentality, this Beatrix Pot-au-feu of food, is as dysfunctional and disassociated from the reality of field and table as medical foodies who think that all breakfast is either poison or a cure for cancer.

 

But it goes with the bosky, cute, Waltons-style sets that Hugh and Jamie make out they live in: gastro-arcadia, where everything is innocent, happy and immortal. It won’t do. Livestock engineering is about human engineering: there are 60m of us. Let’s say 50m want to eat chicken once a week, and you want the chickens to have a square metre of grass to play in. And they take a minimum of five weeks to get fat enough to eat. Well, that’s 25m chickens living on a square metre each, totalling an area roughly the size of Wales. A better use of the principality, we may agree, but it’s not exactly practical. For a start, it’ll be knee-deep in crap by Easter – and, of course, it won’t happen. What might happen is they just make chicken a lot more expensive. That won’t bother Jamie or Hugh or me much; we make a bob or two. But it might make a difference to people who depend on cheap, reliable food: the young, the old and invalids. We have intensive farming for a reason: not just simply for laziness, or because farmers like to work indoors, but because we are an intensive population.

 

Expensive food will send us back to the 19th century, and the national cuisine will be porridge and bark for the poor, who will get rickets. Chickens and rabbits are the cheapest, quickest and most efficient converters of protein. If you take them out of poor people’s diets, you have to replace them with something. It used to be fish – herring mostly. There is one fishing boat left in Great Yarmouth: start forming a queue now.

What this maudlin, sanctimonious bout of petting-zoo food rights leads to is simply exporting the moral problem. We ban the manufacture of veal, but not the consumption of it. So it is made in Holland, and we drive it back in lorries. We improved pigs’ rights, so our pork comes from Poland. Intensive chickens will be reared by the hungrier nations of the EU, and we will buy them back. And if you aim to make food contented, bespoke and rare, well, that’s just fine and dandy, but, please, will you tell the rest of us what parts of the world you’re planning on ethically starving to death.

[bayhaa]

With Queues that are 10-15 deep, closed checkouts, a management structure that is a joke plus the place is a bio-hazard and they couldnt give a toss about disabled shoppers (I heard someone ask where the disabled toilets were as there wasn't a sign showing it he was told by a "couldntbearsed" Manager that they were having a refit in xxx weeks and the new signs etc would go up then) the whole place is a bloody shambles!

 

Roll on Tesco I say!

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

here! here!

[ArabiaTerra]

Infiltrator, I totally agree. The same goes for organically grown food. Fine if you can afford it, but organic farming produces less food per sq/m than conventional farming and with the population forecast to hit 9 billion by 2050, we need 50% more food worldwide. Organic may taste better, but it won't feed the world.

[Njugle]

Not only that but it was a damn fine and entertaining read. Cheers infiltrator/Gill (not sure where the quote ends). "Gastro-arcadia" is a superb expression, as is "petting-zoo food". Damn near made my day that.

[Evil Inky]

Infiltrator, I totally agree. The same goes for organically grown food. Fine if you can afford it, but organic farming produces less food per sq/m than conventional farming and with the population forecast to hit 9 billion by 2050, we need 50% more food worldwide. Organic may taste better, but it won't feed the world.

 

Ah, but vegetarianism might. A vegetarian requires less than half the land area to grow their food than someone with a conventional diet. See here.

[Infiltrator]

I've often wondered what would have happened in the first world war, when the foot soldiers had spent weeks in the trenches and the night before the final push, the cook decided to knock them up a special nut roast instead of bully beef

[Fjool]

^ 'Gas attack' would have had a different meaning all together?

 

/fetches coat