Priorities Party Launches Tesco Boycott

www.prioritiesparty.com queries@prioritiesparty.com

Easy for me

- no Tescos within reach
- avoid all supermarkets like the plague.

Got this by email today. Tesco doesn't publish its Irish profits - I wonder why...

Anyway. It's worth a discussion.

Be careful of this. The big retailers are quick to litigate.

I try to avoid Tesco as much as possible. I get sick of looking at where their veg comes from. They have more air miles than Paris Hilton.

I also recall that they clothing arm was implicated in a scandal recently where they found that workers were being paid wages below the voluntary standards the retailers have signed up to. This applied equally to Pennys and Top Shop. I won't be shopping in those shops either.

I think Eddie Hobbs and Micheal Martin should now admit that the abolishing of the Groceries Order has been a dismal failure despite what the lobbyists told them to tell us.

If the market is failing then the Government is entitled to tinker. It is not like these big supermarkets provide more jobs anyway.

In the meantime, I will be doing my shopping elsewhere.

is 43% really a fair comparison?

Is this a joke party?

eg

"No opposition parties should receive the same payment scales as the party in power."

"To a certain extent, political parties should fund their own TDs' and councillors' expenses."

"Many government ministers are in charge of portfolios for which they are not qualified."

"Both The Priorities Party and the Irish people say 'No more!' to a 'bread and circuses' dictatorship parading as democracy."

"we should have a situation in which there are VAT repayments for all or none."

There's lots more.

By the by, Tesco paid out €2m in wages in my local town last year, and the UK is actually a different country, like Italy or Spain.

seinfeld wrote:

Is this a joke party?

Sadly not.

seinfeld wrote:

By the by, Tesco paid out €2m in wages in my local town last year, and the UK is actually a different country, like Italy or Spain.

What we need is a Carrefour to whoop Tesco ass.

cookiemonster wrote:

What we need is a Carrefour to whoop Tesco ass.

I wish Carrefour had bought Quinnsworth in the first place, Tesco is so common.

There's some investment show on in the RDS this week at which you can invest in a Tesco in Budapest.

http://www.tesco.hu/

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

What we need is a Carrefour to whoop Tesco ass.

I wish Carrefour had bought Quinnsworth in the first place, Tesco is so common.

They do smashing deals on electrical goods. I saw Maurice Pratt mentioned somewhere recently. He never really went anywhere after Quinnsworth, did he.

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

What we need is a Carrefour to whoop Tesco ass.

I wish Carrefour had bought Quinnsworth in the first place, Tesco is so common.

They do smashing deals on electrical goods. I saw Maurice Pratt mentioned somewhere recently. He never really went anywhere after Quinnsworth, did he.

Nope, C&C rose pretty much as quickly as it fell because it followed a stupid strategy of putting all its apples in one basket on a highly specultive bet on Magners in the UK. They should've kept Ballygowan, Tayto, Club etc. as a hedge against failure.

A report came out recently saying that all the supermarkets charge pretty much the same for everything.

My suggestion is that we should randomly boycott one of them ( I suppose Tescos would do) until it lowers its prices. When it does, we move on to the next, and so on....

The Priorities Party was dissolved on Monday night at a special meeting. Expect - I hope - to hear more from Florence Craven. I think she's the real powerhouse behind the party. Very capable and intelligent.

Kate P wrote:

The Priorities Party was dissolved on Monday night at a special meeting. Expect - I hope - to hear more from Florence Craven. I think she's the real powerhouse behind the party. Very capable and intelligent.

Im sure Tesco's share price went through the roof on hearing this massive threat to its well being is no more.

cactus flower wrote:

A report came out recently saying that all the supermarkets charge pretty much the same for everything.

My suggestion is that we should randomly boycott one of them ( I suppose Tescos would do) until it lowers its prices. When it does, we move on to the next, and so on....

However, if tesco lower their prices as a result of the boycott, then other supermarkets will follow suit for competitiveness sake.

Knowing Tesco, if a number of people boycott them and they see a fall in prices they'll up the prices they charge to who is left to make up the shortfall. And knowing that there is a band of Irish society who are morons they'll pay the prices too. 

None of this makes any sense except in the broadest terms. Not all food is the same, not all food should cost the same and I don't mind paying for quality food but I do not like being ripped off.

What does ripped off mean? It means where I'm paying above the odds so that the supermarket can cream a higher profit and possibly squeeze the producers so hard they're singing falsetto.

Price is not the only variable. We expect choice and quality and access to products that are environmentally sound, ethically produced and/or locally sourced.

If I go to Tesco I can get fairly traded and/or organic sugar, flour, tea, coffee, chocolate, bananas. I can't get them in my local shop. If I go to Tesco, I can get Ecover wash-up liquid, Solas bulbs (now that they've got their act together). I can get a good selection of Flahavans cereals (Hi8 is very popular here), Glenisk yoghurts and Tesco milk and butter (which are made by Avonmore/Premier but cost a fraction of the price).

My concern is not that Tesco lower their prices, but that they can account for the prices they charge and that I know that neither I nor the producer are getting screwed. And that's much harder to achieve than any random, smash-and-grab boycott.

More and more people are already beginning to shop in Lidl for alot of their goods. It was demonstrated in a survey only this week. The more people who do, the more likely it is that Tesco et al will reduce their prices. Whilst it might be true that Tesco charges alot more here than in the UK, it is also true that Dunnes and Superquinn don't exactly undercut Tesco to any great degree. We have started shopping regularly enough in Lidl for our basics and continue to buy our meat from our local butcher and our veg from the local fruit and veg shop.

Average cut of lamb in supermarket is 10 E per Kilo, a lamb comes into 300E gross in the supermarket. Producers get about 90 E per lamb at the moment. Production cost is about 90E per lamb.

Work it out for yourself.

Average producer in Ireland needs 5.10 per kilo to make 20E per ewe net margin - almost a euro a kilo more than we're getting at the moment. So lamb producers are on a break-even level.

Supermarkets are not - and they're asking farmers to produce more cheaply.

The retail price of lamb went up by 8% last year - but the farmer didn't get an increase at all.

There's very little in the world that's cheaper now than it was ten years ago -

Fertiliser up by 70%, tractor diesel by 100%, beef and lamb production costs up by 28%.

Producers and consumers get screwed in that scenario.

I know this is a tough argument - and I see it from both sides as a producer and a consumer. We all want more for less everyday but that's not a sustainable way to live. I can't be taken seriously if I say that lamb isn't dear enough in the shops, while Joe Duffy is sending busloads of people to get their shopping 35% cheaper in the North.

If they cut their prices, they won't take a cut in their margins. That prize squeeze goes down the line because they are in the position of power. It's the same logic as buying a cheap t-shirt in Penneys. We might be getting a bargain, but if it's cheap everyone down the line is getting screwed, and the persn at the bottom gets screwed the most. That's not fair.

So Kate - how can producers regain the initative? - there is no point into trying to explain the morality of the situation to consumers.

Edo wrote:

So Kate - how can producers regain the initative? - there is no point into trying to explain the morality of the situation to consumers.

Well that's where the trusty Irish Farmers Organisation come in. They see a problem like this in the market, Fine Gael came up with lots of them a few years ago (when they developed the rip-off idea, before Eddie Hobbs stole it). They organise the farmers and they develop a plan of action.

Oh wait no, I'm thinking of a proper farming lobby. The IFA will ignore the very real problems that Irish farmers face and will focus instead on what Mandy or the Brazilians are up to.

905 wrote:

Edo wrote:

So Kate - how can producers regain the initative? - there is no point into trying to explain the morality of the situation to consumers.

Well that's where the trusty Irish Farmers Organisation come in. They see a problem like this in the market, Fine Gael came up with lots of them a few years ago (when they developed the rip-off idea, before Eddie Hobbs stole it). They organise the farmers and they develop a plan of action.

Oh wait no, I'm thinking of a proper farming lobby. The IFA will ignore the very real problems that Irish farmers face and will focus instead on what Mandy or the Brazilians are up to.

exactly - its much easier to turn around and blame others, the WTO, the brazilians, the EU, The supermarkets etc etc , instead of taking a hard look at themselves and the total lack of any plan, any common unity on the many issues that need to be faced, most of which are in their own proverbial backyard and in their own hands if they had the wit to look for them.

The IFA are a joke - a lobby for welfare assistance for an agricultural system that is totally wrong over 95% of their members.

Marks and Spencers share price went down 25 per cent today because they've lost 5 per cent sales in the UK. People dont have the money and at the bottom of the ladder are eating less / worse.

I think the problem people are on about in Ireland is that our food is 30 per cent above the EU average isnt it?

This report you mentioned Cactus, did it include companies like Lidl?

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/ireland/article3760704.ece

Not sure which report you mean 905 - this one which says our prices are rising fastest I'm sure includes a proper sample including Lidl.