WE WERE very pleased when Tesco built a new store in Hove, 100 yards from our house. The company image was one of care for its customers. Since then, it has proved a very poor neighbour. It started when noisy construction work was carried out at anti-social hours; now it continues with Tesco refusing to change parking policy to assist businesses in our local high street that are in no way in competition with it. Tatty signs are tacked up on its side of the local church wall and there is no control over shopping trolleys. Complaints are ignored.

The company is taking its eye off the minutiae and needs to have better regard for local communities.

Michael Furniss, Hove, East Sussex

Not for me

I AM convinced that the rise of Tesco is not good for the consumer. The sheer weight of numbers of its outlets can only have been achieved by pushing other shops out and thus our choice is reduced and Tesco’s influence on its suppliers enhanced. I have heard tales from farmers of the arrogant manner in which Tesco treats its suppliers. It is certainly not my supermarket of choice.

Clare Nash, clare.nash@zen.co.uk

Token gesture

IMAGES of the company store of yesteryear come to mind when workers were paid for their labour in tokens, which could be spent only in the store.

Why worry about the euro when the Tesco token could be on the horizon?

Ken Wilkins,
kw007c4497@blueyonder.co.uk

Market star

TESCO’S dominance has been achieved through efficiency, service, the availability of a vast range of goods and generally giving the public what it wants at a fair price. It is far from a monopoly and as it diversifies, it should keep the OFT and Competition Commission apparatchiks at arm’s length. Perhaps its greatest accomplishment is the effect it has had on a complacent Marks & Spencer — shaken from years of torpor.

Tesco is a fine example of what the market and capitalist system are about, which is why it has attracted such bile from the media and from the Left.