| |
Giants are muscling their way into our high streets
• IT seems everyone uses supermarkets, for various reasons: lower prices or the range of goods under one roof.
A point in their favour is the high standard of cleanliness, a salutary example to some local shops. For car owners, the car parks must be a welcome advantage.
But surely most of us also enjoy our clusters of neighbourhood – often family-run – shops, so convenient to those in a hurry or with limited mobility and with a friendly familiarity lacking in giant stores.
So I object to the fairly recent invasion by supermarket mini-branches into our older shopping centres, where they must be reducing the numbers of customers in small grocery shops.
The huge profits made by the parent companies enable these to establish themselves in prime sites undeterred by high rentals, and sometimes stay open for longer hours. Surely the giants’ profits are big enough already without threatening the viability of local shops.
These mini-stores do not have all the advantages of their main branches, as prices are sometimes unexpectedly higher. I have frequently been astonished by how much higher prices in even the large supermarkets are for fruit and vegetables.
At Sainsbury in Liverpool Road prices for fruit and veg are frequently nearly double those in Chapel Market, only 100 yards away (and historic Chapel Market is more fun anyway). Many supermarkets are now so large that searching for particular items has become arduous. Will you find tomato paste with the tinned veg or alongside the pasta? Why isn’t cream among the other dairy products such as milk and butter? Is sugar a staple item like salt or a cake-making ingredient? Why isn’t there some kind of index to see which aisle it’s in?
Why is there no protected space to leave your own trolley or basket, which you must trundle around along with the store one? Why is there no shelf below the counter where you can place a personal item such as a handbag while you struggle to stuff your purchases into bags and deal with paying for them?
Some of my objections are ecological. Although some supermarkets are gradually improving, there is still too much packaging – plastic-wrapped cucumbers and aubergines, and boxes of goods which could be in cellophane bags, or in boxes unnecessarily large for their contents. Could they not instruct checkout staff to ask whether a customer needs a new bag rather than pushing a bag forward automatically?
Who picks, washes or packs the fruit and veg? Are they all paid at least the minimum wage? Do they have, and are they informed about, normal workers’ rights – holidays, sick and maternity leave? Is price the sole criterion when purchasing foreign rather than British goods, or those expensive in terms of food miles? What measures do they take to avoid wastage of food approaching its sell-by date?
ANGELA SINCLAIR
Secretary, Islington
Pensioners’ Forum, N5
|
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
