to be furious that tesco want to open a store in looe, cornwall?

[morecoffeepleaseholdthecake]

Just seen this on the news. There are currently no big supermarkets in this lovely cornish town, so Tesco want to build one on the outskirts.

They say, people already do their weekly shop in big supermarkets in other towns, so there is a demand for it.

If this goes ahead, that means this beautiful place will end up with countless empty shops when the local businesses close. They will then be filled with cash converter shops, crappy take aways and endless charity shops.

I think this is absolutely tragic. If somewhere is lucky enough to have got to 2012 without a big supermarket killing taking over the town it should be celebrated!

Hear, hear onetoomany!

I don't get the tesco bashing tbh. They're a business, and like all businesses they try to turn a profit. By doing well they're giving thousands of people a stable career, and seem to be a fairly decent company to work for (have a few friends on the options program). Aside from that, they're giving many consumers exactly what they want- that's why some posters have four stores within a two mile radius. That might seem excessive, but they wouldn't be open now if they weren't sustainable to run. If the residents of Looe don't want to shop there, they can vote with their feet and spend their money elsewhere. I doubt it'll happen though.

Again, look at Launceston; it has that huge Tesco, Lidls and Aldi I think, but the shops in the town centre like the butcher are still there. Tesco also provides job opportunities for lots of the sixth formers at Launceston College.

My home (when in UK) is in the Tamar Valley; I could use the new Tesco at Callington, but expect it will be a mix of Waitrose and shops in Tavi as usual.

Ariel - Tavi isn't inconsequential at all!!!

i live in a tiny rural holidayish town and i am pleased i don't have to drive a one hour round trip to my nearest tesco now we have one.

Plus i was fortunate enough to have a car! Not many people here could afford the butchers and the fancy bread shops on the high street. The store has created work, nothing has closed, despite everyone bricking it. More people can get to this store, which employs local people, and i should imagine that many now don't have to have the home delivery service. The only empty shops we have were posh ones trying to tap into the second home owners, and the big % we have here of wealthier than average customers.
I know Looe and as long as they aren't putting it on the harbour front i don't see the problem.

Sorry, for not responding, been working. So to.clarify, I am not a snob (made my day that did though!) And I also am not the grow my own veg type either! I do live in cornwall but not in looe.

My op was about Tesco opening up where so far there were no other supermarkets. I would have felt the same if it had been any other town. I speak as someone who used to live in a town with 3 Tescos. We have a big supply of supermarkets where we currently live also.

I am not against Tesco. I am just a bit about the need for them to be everywhere.

My SIL lives in a small tourist town similar to looe but not in cornwall. She ran a small town centre business selling toys, books and craft things. Had run the business successfully for a number of years.business dropped when an Asda moved into the outskirts. She closed it down a year later and is still repaying the debt years later. Her two staff now work at Asda, the shop is a cash for gold store, a lot of the toys she used to sell are in Asda (they cost about the same as she charged BTW) and the small businesses that used to stock unique toys and crafts in her store now rely on a market a few towns away.

I'm certainly not saying looe is too good for a.supermarket. my concern is that its almost a done deal! There had been no mention of any sort of cash injection to the local community for local play areas or improvements of any kind.

I shop in local stores and once a week at a supermarket. I am by no means rich or well off, we are living within our means (on a £50 a week budget for food and fuel).

It seems opinion is divided, so I obviously was being a bit unreasonable!

Where I live some people campaigned against a tesco express arguing it would affect local convenience stores. It has opened and I use it. The local convenience stores are limping on, but tbh they are just not very good. The one nearest to the Tesco Express is like a blast from the past - full of stuff like tinned hotdogs, very few broadsheets and always sell out by about 10am and stuffed full of sweets and alcohol.

The Tesco Express is always well used because it actually has things that people like me want to buy. So I can pop in there and get decent enough bread and soup for lunch for example.

If Tesco are meeting a need, people will shop there - and so why shouldn't Tesco get to have a shop there?

Morecoffee, I do get your point. Where I live, further west in Cornwall, where we have plenty of supermarkets already, Sainsbury's want to get in on the action as well, just to keep up with their competitors. They did some "market research" which indicated that there was an apparent need for one in the town, because they looked at the name and the addresses of people using their nectar cards and concluded that people from down here made special 30 mile trips to shop in Sainsbury's elsewhere. Never mind that these people were just popping in the store on the way back from work (because that's where loads of people in Cornwall have their jobs), or when they were up there shopping in the "posh" shops.

It's this kind of disingenuous manipulation of facts to try and make out they are providing an essential service which piss people off.

Though unlike Tesco's in Looe, Sainsbury's here are at least putting a cash injection into the town.

Ariel, Sainsbury's is a business. Opening a new shop costs them a massive amount of money, they don't do it unless they are pretty certain they're going to make a decent profit. The idea that they do it just for pettiness or something is really mad - how do you think they would stay in business if they behaved like that??

I know it's a business. I didn't think it was a charity, and there is certainly no suggestion that I thought it would be out of pettiness. That's an odd take on things.

I just question the need for three giant supermarkets, as well as the three Co Ops and a Lidl on a half mile strip of road in a town of 16,000 people.

If you've read the thread, I have been contributing to it and have certainly not been howling about all supermarkets being evil.

I was referring to your comment that they were opening the shop "just to keep up with their competitors" which seems like a petty reason to me. I just think it's very unlikely for a business to throw away hundreds of thousands of pounds on something that's unlikely to be a success. Their "market research" will have been very extensive and solid.

Again, thank you for being the voice of reason here and for enlightening me about something you clearly know an awful lot about. I am sorry if the phrase you've quoted from me is less than rational and reasoned and may sound petty to you.

I repeat my statement that very few people in this town (not Looe, in case you missed that bit), judging by the response there has been, see the need to three giant supermarkets on a half mile strip of road, and the suspicion is that the town council approved the application because of the sums of money involved, not because they thought a town of 16,000 was in dire need of another supermarket. This does not make me irrational, and as I said, during this thread I have been one of the posers who have agreed that holiday places should not be pickled in a time warp just so they are more agreeable to tourists.

BTW, it's going to cost considerably more than "hundreds of thousands of pounds", but that's just a small point.

Slightly unfortunate typo in the second paragraph. Oh well.

I had to laugh at the typo I wouldn't even have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out!

Sorry if I can across as snippy, I think I have a bit of an attitude about this having lived in Bristol where people were rabidly irrational about supermarkets.

came across

Ah yes. The Tesco riots. I take it you didn't take part?

Nope.

What onetoomany said.

I live in the East Cornwall at the arse end of the universe and have no car. A trip to the supermarket takes a four hour round trip involving two buses and a ferry each way. If we want to spend more than half an hour in the shop the whole bloody enterprise takes six hours.

Fortunately the bus trip is exceedingly pretty so it's not too much of an ordeal...unless the weather is foul.

Was looking on YouTube the other day and saw pieces people had made showing the devatated town centres in places like Camborne and Redruth...thriving town centres in Cornwall need protecting!

Where my parents live in Herts there is already a Sainsburys (recently undergone huge expansion with massive disruption to the town centre for a year) and a Waitrose in the town centre, a Morrisons in a residential area, a Tesco superstore just outside town, and Tesco still want to build another place in the town centre! There is a lot of opposition. They have already acquired the site and are dangling the promise of a new swimming pool for the town as bait...

devastated I mean

Please, understand there are two sides to this debate.

For middle class well off MNs a few more miles in the car or a few more pence on the high street, plus paying to park the car is neither her nor there.

For my DMIL the bus to and from Penzance Tescos was heaven.

For my wheel chair bound mum her new local Tescos is bliss. She finds car travel painful (the longer she sits in the car the worse her knee).

They used to be an hour away from a big shop of any kind. She says you go in there new Tescos and keep seeing people with huge grins. They have waited 40+ years for a decent supermarket.

It's very smug of us to be anti supermarket, we all use them.

Supermarkets don't kill town centres without help from town councils, business rates, rents, parking charges, lack of parking spaces, the Internet and out of town shopping centres both large and small.

I think the small retail parks with M&S, matlan, Next, boots etc that ate springing up all over are my main reason for not bothering with a local, very nasty to park, town centre.

I know for a fact that both the vastly overpriced quaint seaside shops of Salcombe and the Morrissons in Kingsbrigde are rammed with tourists in the summer, so place for both imo

Good posts, startail.

With respect, Camborne and Redruth are not devastated because of supermarkets. They are devastated (if indeed they are) because they were based on mining and now there's no mining the places aren't pretty enough to attact tourists. There is an enormous amount of money being pumped into Camborne, Redruth and Pool, some would say to the detriment of other places.

And it is Cornwall Council's fucking outrageous and inflexible position on car parking which is doing more than anything to kill off town centre trade .

Lieins, you're right about camborne and redruth, these are 2 small towns very close together, practically joined now. Between them they have 3 Tescos, 2 Iceland, lidl, aldi, morrisons!!! Plus all the other surrounding towns also boast a Tesco and or sainsburys, Asda, morrisons etc. Like I say, I am not against supermarkets, I just question the need for them everywhere!

I drive to a supermarket once a week. The rest of the time I shop locally as I have no car. Before we had a car (12months ago) I did one online shop a week. I never paid delivery charge as I used who h ever supermarket offered free delivery at the time). I really don't think a town has to have a supermarket to be complete!

Cailin, supermarkets have been known to buy up land in areas, just to prevent others from doing so.