I went to the public meeting in Leiston last night, to listen to Tesco telling the town why it was so great, to just relax, that everywhere’s a little nervous the first time, that honestly, it would still respect it in the morning and anyway baby, if it didn’t then it would just tell everywhere else it had anyway.
Tesco's idea of outstanding natural beauty. No fat people slumped over their trolley or a plastic bag blowing around anywhere in sight.
Tesco opened the batting and set the comedy bar pretty high right at the start. “Dead-end jobs at Tesco?” their spokeswoman exclaimed. “My career has been fantastic!” It was going to be a long night.
Tesco rolled some extremely iffy statistics out next. Salaries would be between £3,000 p.a. and £40,000 p.a. No indication of where most of them would be, and it was pretty clear you were supposed to think “ah, ok, then the average is about £18,500, mid-way between the two.” Is it though? No-one was saying.
If they got planning permission, the new Tesco store would be “not big in terms of a supermarket.” Tesco said this again and again. It may not be, but we aren’t talking about a big town here. In fact, the new Tesco as Tesco want it will be double the size of the existing Co-Op supermarket PLUS every other retailer in the town. The childish “but that’s not very big” Tesco kept trotting-out missed the point to the point of imbecility. They wanted 20,000 square feet. That’s a football pitch of space, chopped in half down the long side. It sounds pretty big to me.
“Supermarkets are windows of town centres,” was up next, an enigmatic statement verging on the inscrutable. Then Tesco trotted out something everyone could agree with. “There’s £318 of petrol wasted per family each year, driving to Tesco in Martlesham. One million miles. £164,000 in this town per year. “ Well yes, I’d solidly agree that 1p spent driving to Tesco is wasted.
Anyway they said, referring to their independently commissioned telephone survey, 40% of what’s spent by people in Leiston is spent elsewhere. So why not spend it in Tesco in Leiston, ran the argument, profoundly missing the point that the new Tesco, if there is one, isn’t going to be in Leiston at all, but perched right on the edge of it, nearest to the turning to Sizewell if it could be called near anywhere.
Why couldn’t people go to Saxmundham if they wanted to shop at Tesco, someone asked? Erm, the Samundham to Leiston road is “not brilliant” snapped back Tesco’s “planning consultant.” He was quite interesting, or rather the ambiguity of his role was interesting in itself. It was never made clear whether he was an independent who had been hired by Tesco to help out with their planning or on salary paid for by Tesco. He clarified by saying “I’m not Tesco,” which suggests he’s an independent.
The difference is important. When I was a consultant for clients in similar positions, on one of the global tours we did after a massive research project, for example, I made it very clear to everyone who would listen that I wasn’t the client and their company had nothing to do with me. What I certainly didn’t do was argue their case for them, as this character did. I was asked to more than once and each time I said that I wasn’t doing it, not least because it would make a mockery of hiring an independent and devalue all the research. And stuff my career as an objective, unbiased consultant into the bargain.
Tesco’s consultant seemed to see his role differently. After trotting out the tired old platitude of “sustainable economic growth” which didn’t bring the hollow laughter it might have done after 2007, he named Nichols’s Butchers and Platt’s greengrocers and played what he clearly thought was going to get the trump cards out early. “People won’t desert them if they’re so good,” he smarmed, clearly never having seen or heard Platt’s punchbag that used to hang in the back of the shop and also clearly not counting on going down the alley at the side of the shop any time soon. Naturally, that didn’t explain why Tesco adverts always focus on price instead of service, but never mind.
That one having gone down like the Hindenberg, Tesco’s ambiguous consultant pledged to extend the 165 bus route and to contribute, as he put it, to the town centre. Maybe Leiston would like a Town Centre Manager, he thought, if they had a town centre left after Tesco opened up and if of course, anyone could be hired to do the job on a salary he wasn’t in a position to specify. Or maybe everyone would prefer “improved street furniture”?
Then the consultant reached for the real Alice Through the Looking Glass script, reeling out retail “facts” that sounded like Lewis Carrol on a day he’d particularly punished the laudanum bottle.
Tesco have proved that when they open independents only have oh, about 10% reduction in their turnover. A smaller (Tesco) store would compete more directly with the existing stores in Leiston. And anyway, 31% of the people in Leiston want a big Tesco, according to the independent survey.
The Lay Off Leiston spokesman said directly that the independent survey, or rather the maths behind it, was incompetent nonsense and if you added the figures up properly it wasn’t 31% at, but 18% of the 600-odd people in the survey who wanted a big Tesco. Less than one in five who wanted it then, rather than Tesco’s best claim of two out of three who didn’t. He went further, stating that according to Tesco’s figures only 5% of people in their survey said the thing they didn’t like about Leiston was its lack of a big supermarket.
Again, when I was up on a public podium and someone said the stats behind what I was saying were rubbish I knew I was going to win the point for two reasons. One, I had the microphone. Two, because I’d gone over all the stats again and again until I could absolutely guarantee I knew a lot more about what they said and didn’t say than anyone else in the room. As a consultant, I thought that was my job. So it was interesting to see but not hear that when the Tesco figures were challenged, when the anti-Tesco speakers said the Tesco survey wasn’t even added-up correctly, Tesco’s planning consultant said precisely nothing.
Nothing at all. He either knew the stats were flaky or he didn’t. There isn’t another way out of that. And he certainly didn’t challenge the assertion that the survey maths were totally wrong, which was odd.
Then the Lay Off Leiston speaker really put the boot in. What about the Parliamentary Committ that said Tesco used predatory pricing to destroy local opposition? What about no national price list? What about the 40% off coupons Tesco had given in one store to wipe-out local shops, that was in the High Street Britain report? No comment from Tesco.
What about the fact that the proposed Tesco was going to be not just double the footprint of the never-exactly-crowded Co-Op supermarket, but that size plus the square footage of every other food shop in Leiston? Well, said Ms Tesco with the fantastic career, that doesn’t make it a big store. Which was true, in the same way it didn’t make Leiston a big town either.
So where, asked Lay Off Leiston, where are all the extra customers going to come from, if the new Tesco isn’t going to eviscerate the town?
Ah, said the planning consultant, as if as a planning consultant this was any of his business, Tesco are going to provide jobs. And help people avoid a 40 mile round-trip to Martlesham Tesco. And the 10% figure was wrong anyway. Shops wouldn’t lose 10% of their turnover. Tesco estimated the Co-Op would lose 35% of its turnover. What percentage of their business everyone else in Leiston would lose clearly wasn’t worth mentioning. But in any case, “the additional traffic would be insignificant” said Tesco, so it wasn’t as if the tiny road into the town from the west would be clogged solid or anything.
The central claim seemed to be that this huge new shop would at the same time be practically empty and simultaneously need as much floorspace as the rest of Leiston put together.
Well, said Tesco’s planning consultant, they might build six new business units, “for service industries.” Drawing on Leiston’s manufacturing heritage he slid out what he clearly thought was another trump card. “For people who make things,” he continued. “They wouldn’t be for retail.” Perish the thought.
The fact that Leiston’s large-scale manufacturing heritage died in its sleep about the same time Maggie’s Brave Boys recaptured Goose Green was irrelevant, as was the fact that there isn’t exactly a shortage of vacant non-retail business space in Leiston these days.
Tesco didn’t even bother arguing that while they might well create jobs if the new store was ever built at the same time more jobs would be lost because of it. As Lay Off Leiston kept saying, Tesco’s job creation didn’t offset the nett job losses their store would cause. Again, the planning consultant didn’t even bother arguing the point.
So far as he saw it, he didn’t need to. He’s seen “300 letters” he claimed, all of them supporting the opening of Tesco, and all of them were from people in the town, unlike the ones against Tesco he’d noticed. Oddly, he didn’t say how many other letters there were as well as what we might as well call his, making the statistic meaningless.
Someone helpfully pointed-out from the crowd that when there was a plan to build houses where Tesco wanted their store planing permission was turned down on the grounds the land was contaminated. Thanks to the Garret engine works most of Leiston was, added another Spartacus. Well, we’re not talking about houses, said Tesco. The ground might well be contaminated but it was good enough for food retailing. And anyway, “that needs to be remediated,” whatever that means. For good measure he chucked in, “this is an enabling development.” No-one even bothered to ask what this gibberish meant.
Local suppliers wouldn’t be affected, said Tesco, except um, the distribution centre will be in Peterborough. So local food if it was bought at all would go to Peterborough, about two hours drive away, then come back again instead of being put in the back of someone’s van and dropped off while they did their other shopping. The Tesco planner hit new heights of absurdity now. “Distribution centres are to expand local supplier’s businesses” he wailed. Any idea that maybe Tesco’s distribution centre was to distribute Tesco’s supplies had obviously never been explained to him.
It was like watching a fight between grossly mis-matched boxers. “Beccles…” he gasped, “in Beccles they welcomed us. Well,” he faltered, ” they didn’t welcome us, but…”
Then he explained that Tesco won’t be selling any clothes or white goods, or opening a cafe, which put a bit of a dent in the idea the consultant had been trying to plant that the retail offering in the town would be expanded, broadened and make Leiston a better, fuller, more convenient place to live. Suffolk Coastal had in fact applied a planning condition that specifically said no cafe and to be blunt, we’re not that worried about Tesco’s half-baked cafe anyway, unless people want food made by people who just don’t care.
But the best was saved almost until last. “What about Tesco’s ethical rating?” asked another voice in the crowd. Ethical ratings have been around as an idea since the 1980s and there is a good website explaining the idea here. People judge companies on a range of ethical criteria from whether they use organic products to whether or not they sell weapons to the Taliban and most points in between.
“I don’t know what an ethical rating is,” said Tesco’s planning consultant. He didn’t say “our” or “Tesco’s” ethical rating. The difference seemed to sum up his employers neatly.
Never mind, someone from the crowd usefully helped out. The Co-Op’s was 1, Waitrose’s was 2, Asda was 8 and Tesco was 7, a voice said. I don’t know where those figures came from, but the supermarket part of Gooshing’s website put M&S at number 2.
Luckily at this point the completely unbiased Town Council spokesman intervened to explain that Suffolk Coastal would be making a decision on the matter on 5th July and helpfully added that the debate wasn’t about whether or not people liked Tesco. It was about the technical detail of the planning application. Which didn’t really explain why Tesco wasted their money asking people in thier survey whether they liked Tesco. Or why there was a public meeting at all.
With a final attempt to save face Tesco were allowed to get the last word in, claiming the new store represented significant investment in the town. Except of course, that’s just one of the problems. It isn’t in the town at all.
Outside at half past nine on a July evening a wall of black rain clouds was streaked across the sky and a gusty powerful wind was blowing up. But it took some time to shift the smell of incompetence, rubbish statistics, ignorance, dogma and the sour smell of a done deal.
