Supermarkets are ignoring customers

From: D Birch, Smithy Lane, Cookridge, Leeds.

THERE is a lot being said at this time about the way supermarkets are conducting their business and not giving value for money as they all claim they do, ie, smaller amounts in the packs for the normal price, two for one and items in threes (Sir Ken Morrison, Yorkshire Post, June 15).

I even brought the old half pound pack of butter, which had been in grams. It was smaller and turned out to be half a pound, priced the same as usual. A lot of these “bargains” finish up in the bin, because the goods don’t last.

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Fruit and vegetables appear to be frozen at source, which when put on the shelf look all right but last, if you are lucky, three or four days and then you find them discoloured inside and going rotten, which is what freezing does to a lot of fruit and vegetables.

I even bought a pack of three garlic cloves recently from Tesco. Would you believe they came from China? I hadn’t looked at the grower’s name and country and it never entered my head to do so. Do they really have to go so far away to save a few pounds for themselves, as the price I expected to pay was normal. There was no benefit for the consumer.

The CEO of Tesco was on the Andrew Marr show on June 10. He evidently came up through the ranks and seemed a nice sort of bloke and talked about the changes Tesco was making in their stores etc.

I think he needs to get talking to his buyers and not to the customers to find out just how much they know about the food products they buy and what happens to it in every detail of growth, packing, transportation etc.

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We should not have to be buying food at the prices they charge, just to finish up throwing it in the bin. We wouldn’t have to do it if they did their jobs properly and think about the customer, that keeps their company in business.

All we ask for is that we pay for goods at present day values.

From: G H Hellewell, Ridgeway, Guiseley, Leeds.

I WISH to endorse Sir Kenneth Morrison’s comments made at the supermarket’s AGM (Yorkshire Post, June 15).

I certainly agree that they are neglecting their core businesses both in new ventures and in their supermarkets. In the desire to extend and uprate their ranges, the Guiseley store has been upgraded with hundreds of new lines and concentration on the fancy, cooled greengrocery counter and fresh ready-made meals, with higher prices, of course.

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Scores of older lines which we have purchased since the store opened have gradually disappeared and at each visit we become more disgruntled.

Of course, when we think of other countries we should not grumble at the thousands of items before us and the scores of different breads, foreign, rare vegetables etc are superfluous to the routine customers, especially the elderly.

Several of the older items can still be obtained at the Yeadon store and we have started to use other stores too, but not everyone can travel out of town easily.

Natural world needs saving

From: Kathryn Owen, Meanwood, Leeds.

WHILE filling up my car with petrol last week, I happened to see a poster about how Shell are intending to drill for oil in the Arctic. Haven’t we done enough damage to our natural environment already?

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When I look out of my kitchen window, I wonder why there are no butterflies on my buddleia, no bees buzzing around the lavender and no hedgehogs under my shed.

There will be very little fruit on my apple tree as the latest freaky cold weather finished off all the blossom.

When I took my family to see the puffins at Bempton Cliffs last summer, an RSPB rep told me numbers had declined by two-thirds since the year 2000 as rising sea temperatures had also reduced the numbers of sand eels – the puffins’ main food supply.

Surely there must be another way of getting by without having to rely on yet more destruction of another of the world’s most beautiful and abundant natural species?

London lunacy to be avoided

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From: Coun Frank McManus (Labour, Todmorden Town Council), Longfield Road, Todmorden.

THE West Yorkshire Local Transport Plan Partnership (WYLTP) this month invites comments on its proposals which are available from libraries and council offices. I have responded with praise for its many excellences, but with strong disagreement over High Speed Rail by 2030.

My fear is that it follows without criticism the coalition Government’s reliance on the very economic system which led to the current crisis and depression, rather than opting for self-sufficiency in the manufacturing industry, and an auxiliary interest-free Brit pound currency.

The pace of commerce needs slowing, and money which has lost all physical meaning superseding as its driving force. We are told “rail facilitates a more mobile population which is required to support economic growth” – this without regard to who benefits from any growth achieved.

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We are far from the day when Aneurin Bevan made bold in Parliament to call it “a monstrous proposition” that people should be shifted in pursuit of work, rather than industry be brought to them.

Any prospect of replicating around Leeds the “London lunacy” with scores of 12- coach trains snaking in from all around every weekday morning and out every evening, having disgorged a million or so people to spend the day talking, phoning and e-mailing one another, isn’t good enough and should be replaced – along with the above mentioned coalition of course.

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