Dear Ms Johnstone
I am inspired and moved to write to you on reading of your efforts to curb the encroachment of supermarkets on our communities [Issue 205]. So many attempts to do this have failed in Westminster and Holyrood – may yours be more successful.
I don't want to live in a nameless community. In Broughton (Edinburgh), where I live and work, I get to know most of the small shopkeepers. There is a community spirit as if among friends. It flows into caring about our neighbourhood, for one another, taking pride in our streets, our way of life, values that matter. If I see litter dumped outside one of these smallholdings I feel offended as much as if it were dumped outside my own home. I feel for the shopkeeper. I cannot 'feel' for a corporation run by nameless individuals who neither live nor breathe in my area. If someone dumps something outside Tesco's, I'm sorry, but it's not my problem and why should I care?
The endless rhetoric and lawsuits brought by Tesco's and other big chains – to 'prove' how they 'benefit the community', are 'green', are 'helping the homeless', or whatever whitewash they come up with – will not change the basic damage that they do: destroying the fabric, internal and external, of our local communities. I am sure they do much good, but that does not detract from the harm they cause, usually irreversible.
Have you ever driven through one of those middle-American towns? A McDonald's, a Walmart, a few other chains, a garage, and that's it. A blip on the countryside. Nobody cares. It has no personality. People don't take a pride in it. What is there to take a pride in? All you can see is the monoliths owned by wealthy bureaucrats with government influence, living far away somewhere in some metropolis.
The land use objection is one that must be handled and amended. The local paper says it is to avoid planners 'having to choose between different retailers and so be accused of bias'. In medical terms, that would be rather bad triage based on need. A sole trader, or a trader with two other outlets in the same city, deserves priority over a national corporation with no personal, individual stake living in that community. Local businesses are role models for others to emulate and aspire to. Unlike major corporations, they are not there to control people's buying habits.
Good luck
Chris Docker
(Hart Street)