who pays for the 2 for 1 offers?

When you go shopping in a supermarket, and fall upon those “two for the price of one” offers, I’m sure you are delighted at the bounty of Tesco et al. But think again. Big supermarkets are appalling for suppliers to deal with, and due to their purchasing power, there are very few other markets. Read…

Tesco is no champion of the poor

“Forget the eulogies to Sir Terry Leahy. The legacy of Leahyism has been damage to our towns, countryside and environment, and the promotion of a much poorer diet that we’ll all pay for” Excellent piece by Alex Renton from the Guardian.

Tescowatch (an occasional series)

George Monbiot writes in today’s Guardian. I have been writing about it for years. But it’s only now, when I’m caught in the middle of it, that the full force of this injustice hits me. Like everyone else here I feel powerless, unstrung as I watch disaster unfolding in slow motion. There’s a similar battle…

Tescowatch (an occasional series)

Tesco hides figures after missing target to reduce plastic bag usage Britain’s biggest supermarket chain has published misleading figures giving the impression that it had met an industry target to halve the use of plastic bags. From The Times.

do people buy this stuff?

I went to Asda – I hate it, but I needed some fizzy water and some shampoo, and some wafer thin meat for the cats.  I shouldn’t go round the aisles, really; it just makes me cross, and astonished. I can understand people buying a cake – hell, I’ve done it myself.  I can understand…

duck soup

I boiled up the duck carcass – Pete was a hero and stripped it down afterwards; it’s a job I hate. A surprising amount of meat came off it.  And there was, of course, a lot of duck stock. I had deliberately cooked extra veg with the duck on Monday (carrot and leek in vegetable…

indian vegetarian meal

[no photo – sorry] Pete brought a huge bunch of coriander home from the Indian supermarket on Saturday.  We had some with a vegetable tagine, some with sour pork with rhubarb, but there was still a reasonable wodge left. We have lots of spuds to eat too, as the rain got through the shed roof…

Tesco: Nothing will stop them …

“Tesco has been accused of using underhand tactics after it used a local retailer to “front” a planning application for a massive supermarket development. The application for an 80,000 square foot store in Barnstaple, Devon, was submitted in the name of local retailer Brian Ford’s, despite Tesco having acquired the independent retailer a year earlier….

the endless sausage

This is actually perlmonger‘s lunch: I loathe raw tomatoes, don’t care for strong cheddar (that’s unpasteurised organic there), and I’m not that fond of kabanos. But I do always bite the end off his sossidge [fnaar].

Tesco to monitor millions of consumers around the world.

As perlmonger said, “they don’t already?” .. well they do, but they are extending this to more than 60m worldwide customers. And they will continue to sell this data “in anonymous form” to the likes of Coca Cola and Unilver. More from The Times here.