Tough at the top

Our dependency on big corporate organisations for our essentials – food and energy – needs to be carefully considered as we trip off to the local supermarket and shell petrol station. Have they got us over a barrel, or is their still room to fight back. Government – all parties – are complicit and compete in showing loyalty to the market and the powerful. It isn’t doing New Labour much good now though, having rubbished unions and rubbed shoulders and more with the wealthy.
The biggest predatory giant in the supermarket business, Tesco, has come in from criticism from many quarters and now, according to a report in the Observer (29/6/2008), others are joining in. Tesco has extended its sphere of operation abroad, and in the U.S. has come to the notice of Barack Obama. It’s encouraging to read that his criticism is to do with Tesco’s attempts to remove union rights from its employees. Given Obama’s tendency to sound as far right as his Republican rivals as he did at AIPAC, his intervention is to be welcome.


Tesco has a reputation in the UK for the aggressive way it conducts itself, grabbing land not for the purposes of building yet more new stores, but to stop its competitors acquiring it. Did I read something about Tesco being refused permission to get involved in a proposed eco-town and then trying to take over the whole enterprise? What can’t money do? Take a look at this.

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