Colin Jordan’s letter published in the ‘Nidderdale Herald’, 9^th June 2006.

We Must Support Our Local Traders

Current disclosures of supermarket expansion to the detriment of local shops must surely prompt us to review and strengthen our appreciation of our own, and make us determined to protect them by our patronage.

In Pateley Bridge we are fortunate indeed still to have a substantial range of local shops providing not only most if not all of our everyday  needs, but doing so with the added benefit of a personal touch and friendly greeting.  Their type of helpfulness is largely absent in the impersonal atmosphere of the sprawling cement and tarmacadam emporiums on the borders of Nidderdale with their tiresome traffic of trolley and bustling batteries of checkouts.

For the extra they give, our own shops richly deserve our habitual support in our own true interests.  If some of their prices are somewhat higher, the extra is well spent for the extra we get in being so much more pleasantly supplied so much nearer home, whereas with the supermarket prices one realistically has to add the high price of petrol entailed in the travelling plus the value of the extra time spent in doing so, along with the extent to which their collectivisation is costly to the quality of life.  Supermarket ‘cheapness’ is thus very much an illusion monetarily, though the giants do indeed provide a detrimental cheapening of the habits of society and a highly effective community corrosion.

The gravity of the menace to local shops from the giants of mass marketing and herd feeding is indicated by details of their current rate of expansion.  Tesco, the head octopus, with a current pre-tax profit of £2.18 billion for its plutocrats, already has 1,819 stores across the UK, and controls nearly a third of UK grocery sales, and has now 146 new planning applications lodged for a further 90 new supermarkets and the extension of 56 existing stores.  Sainsbury has current applications to build or extend 61 stores, and Asda 51.

Over the past decade almost 30,000 independent retailers have been driven our of business by these seekers of domination.

In the face of this menace all those who cherish Nidderdale and its heritage, which includes its admirable local shops need to resolve now always to buy locally wherever possible instead of funding the supermarkets intent on crushing the local trader and monopolising Britain’s food supplies.

Colin Jordan, Harrogate