Anyone who has seen our Facebook page, our Twitter Tweets and our regular pages here will know we support the local High Street. We are all for the small businesses, the hidden gems and the one offs that you will only find tucked away from the big names in the malls, the retail parks and so on.
When I saw the news that Tescos want to open another massive store in Fratton, so close to several other "giants of the retail world", I thought "There are only so many people in Portsmouth, and they all have limited supplies of money, so, what affect will this new store have on our city? The sad answer is, it will be another nail in the coffin of the High Street, another cloned superstore selling stuff exactly the same as all the other cloned superstores, just with a different coloured label, and a penny or so less than its nearest rival, (until all its rivals have been destroyed, and then they will have a monopoly on our food and drink. Watch the prices then!)
The only way I can think of stopping this is by:
A/ Getting behind the local shops, and "Buying Locally"
B/ Contact the council/ your councillor and tell them we have enough supermarkets thank you very much!
C/ organise a petition? I was too late for that, so please find Andrew Manning and his wife Sue, who run Portsmouth Fruit & Flower Ltd and Portsmouth Hardware and Pets Supplies, in Eastney Road, and sign their petition.
Unless we tell them to stop, this will keep happening.
Rant over.
