Despite having failed with their previous application, the preserving devils at Tesco are pushing ahead with their bid for a new store on Springvale Road in Crookes.
The knee-jerk reaction would be to oppose another store for Tesco, who take one pound in every seven spent in Britain, simply on principle. Monopolies rarely benefit anyone but the company in question.
As in most of these cases, the real opposition is based on local factors. As a resident of Springvale Road, I’ve got two Co-ops, a Nice, a Netto, numerous newsagents and independent grocers and off-licences within a five minute walk.
If I could be bothered, I’d be able to spend a good hour walking back home, buying some apples there, some wine here and some pasta over there. I don’t, because even with the selection of shops I can’t be arsed to spend that long in them, but I’m hardly spoilt for that pinnacle of the high street, ‘consumer choice’. Adding a Tesco would just give me another option I don’t really need.
As a cyclist – not a haughty, superior one mind, but still a cyclist – I’d rather not have to weave round articulated Tesco delivery trucks in addition to those absurdly green double-decker school buses every morning on an already busy junction.
You may as well just close the road for ten minutes for all the disruption they’d cause, and having the ripest fruit and latest papers in there simply wouldn’t be worth the hassle.
Understandably, local shops like Bennies and the Dram Shop are leading opposition to the store. But as students, our principled stand can only take us so far.
Because deep down, almost all of us know we’d use the store. Whatever points are raised against it, once it is built the convenience becomes an overriding temptation. It will be cheaper than many of the independent shops and likely open longer.
Whether it for that early morning milk or midnight craving, a Tesco there could be as much a focal point for students as it’s sister store on West Street already does for those living in the city.
That’s the beauty of the market: stores make themselves first a convenience, and then a necessity. So if they insist, and despite vocal objections from the Liberal-Democrat Council, Tesco get their store in Crookes then I couldn’t promise that my values would prevent me using it. Just don’t get in the way of my bike.