Who's to blame over town's trade?

LETTER: So now the shop keepers in Ellesmere are complaining that the arrival of Tesco has damaged their businesses and caused job losses. This is not true.

The workers at Tesco do not stand in the high street and kidnap customers and force them to buy Tesco products.

The free choice of the public allows them to shop where they want to shop. They obviously choose to shop in Tesco. So it is the public that are damaging the small businesses because they do not want or need them.

We live in a world of free markets. The consumer is king, and if they choose to shop in the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury then so be it.

They have decided that they no longer want to tramp from the greengrocer to the butcher, then on to the grocer and newsagent hauling more and more packages with them as they go from warm to cold to warm moving from one shop to the next.

They want the convenience of everything in one place, so they go to a supermarket.

Same with the post office. Who cares if they are closing? I don't. I buy my car tax on-line. I do not need postal orders — you know, those funny things the post office sells that cost more than the object that they are used to pay for.

If I need other currency I get it from a hole in the wall in the country that I am visiting, it is cheaper and I get it as I need it.

I do not write letters on bits of paper, then shove them into other bits of paper, and then stick other bits of paper, that I would have to purchase, on to them only to have to tramp to a red box on the street corner, shove all these bits of paper into this box and hope that a man in uniform will come and collect my bits of paper and deliver them to the address that I have written on the front.

He will not come, of course, because he has decided not to work as a way of protesting against progress, just like those whingers complaining about Tesco.

I send emails like this letter to the Star. I pay all my bills by direct debit or online banking. I buy all my clothes in online shops.

If my shopping habits cause the demise of small over expensive shops, then so be it. Turn them all into bistros, resaurants, pubs and housing. Turn the high streets into pedestrian zones with tables and chairs, trees, and roundabouts for the kids to play on. Move with the times and enjoy life, stop harking on about how things used to be and look to how they will be.

That is what Tesco did.

When I did a Saturday job in Tesco as a schoolboy over 40 years ago it was a little corner shop with all its goods still in boxes stacked on the floor.

Look at it now.

I would say it is doing something right, probably giving the public what it wants.

Alwyn Cox

Oswestry