Dubstepforum.com

Genevieve wrote: I know and if the locals want to keep Tesco out, they would not go shopping there and Tesco would go out of business. So no need for destructive violence.

wubstep wrote:93% of local people opposed it, squatted the site for months, squatted opposite it for years. Shop opened Friday, been brewing, massive demo outside every day & night.

Genevieve wrote:Sad how people are willing to hurt people's careers, income and property because they don't like a certain chain store. This isn't going to make any difference to Tesco's. What it will do is set some people back and lose their jobs if it permanently closes down.

particle-jim wrote:"and then there was the war with Denmark"

Police under pressure to explain Tesco raid

Police in Bristol were under pressure to produce evidence backing their decision to storm a squat opposite a newly opened Tesco store that resulted in a seven-hour riot.

Eight officers were injured in the city's bohemian Stokes Croft neighbourhood in the early hours of Friday, after an anti-Tesco protest escalated into a bloody battle with police.

The spark for the riot, the most serious outbreak of disorder in Bristol since the St Pauls riots in 1980, was a police raid on "Telepathic Heights", a squat opposite Tesco Express on Cheltenham Road, apparently based on officers' belief that a petrol bomb attack on the store was imminent.

Many of the residents were vehemently opposed to the opening of the Tesco store, believing that it threatened existing shops and risked wrecking the character of the area. Campaigners are now threatening to escalate direct action against Tesco stores across Britain.

Unease was growing yesterday over the police decision to storm the three-storey squat in an operation with dogs, riot vans, a helicopter and 160 officers. Forces from neighbouring areas were drafted in as the violence escalated.

Kerry McCarthy, the MP for Bristol East, said: "What I can't understand is why, if the police wanted to arrest four people, they need dogs and more than 10 riot vans? If you come in with such a show of strength into a peaceful area of Bristol where the majority of people were sitting on the road with bongos and bicycles, of course it's going to spark antagonism.

"It would be interesting to see exactly what intelligence the police were acting upon that required such a fierce response. I have met with the chief constable and voiced my concerns."

Sam Barnard, 21, a student who was in Stokes Croft during the riots, said: "The police handling of the situation was overly aggressive and totally unclear. Police made the case of petrol bombs in a bid to evict the squatters but no one has been charged, and we are yet to see any evidence that petrol bombs even existed."

The store was closed yesterday as forensic science investigators scoured the area in search of evidence. Tesco insists that it will re-open, but a protest against the police handling of the situation is scheduled to take place there this Thursday, a week after the riot.

Tesco could face further demonstrations around Britain after campaigners suggested that the Stokes Croft riot had brought renewed energy to the anti-Tesco movement. "Ordinary people are deciding what's wrong with our High Street and are choosing not to stand for it anymore," said Stacy Thomas of UKUncut, which was not involved with the Bristol riot.

A spokesman from Avon and Somerset police said its decision was "entirely justified" but that any allegations of police handling would be investigated. An officer from the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it was not aware of any complaints.

The squat's occupants denied any connection with activists campaigning against the supermarket giant. Paddy, an occupant of Telepathic Heights for the past fortnight, said: "We had nothing to do with the riot. The people living in here are homeless. We get our food from the food bank. How are we supposed to afford petrol to make petrol bombs?"

It's time Tesco haters stocked up on facts

It is fashionable among the Left-liberal intelligentsia to view supermarkets as some sort of uncouth offence against decency, fit only for the proles who subsist on multipacks of turkey twizzlers. Instead of driving off to shop at rapacious retail beasts we should be pottering down the high street, exchanging mid-morning pleasantries with our butcher, baker and candlestick maker.
So when, on Friday, a group of layabouts in Stokes Croft in Bristol decided to riot in protest at the opening of an 18th Tesco store in the city, there were frissons of excitement elsewhere. Violence might not be so easy to support, but how wonderful that someone is standing up against the supermarket juggernaut. As one writer put it in the Guardian on Saturday: "The damage caused to Tesco's property last night is relatively insignificant compared to the damage Tesco has been able to inflict."
Like most such fashions, this latest is built on a combination of hypocrisy and idiocy. Because you can bet your shopping bill on the fact that, at the very dinner parties when the anti-supermarket pieties are trotted out, almost everything has been bought from one of the chains.
Given that one in every seven pounds spent in the UK is spent in Tesco alone, it barely needs restating that supermarkets are the retailer of choice of almost everyone. Well over 90 per cent of us, in fact, use supermarkets regularly. We do so because they offer what we want: quality, value, range and convenience. And the better they get at it, the more custom we give them, and the bigger their profits.
So when Tesco announces record profits of £3.8 billion, as it did last week, that's something to be celebrated, not scorned. Its growing profits are a badge not of shame, as some idiots claim, but of pride – built on more of us choosing to shop there, and spending more, because we value what and how it is selling.

When Tesco or any supermarket opens a new store, it stands or falls by customer demand. The retail sector is brutally competitive: 94 per cent of us have access to at least three brands of supermarket within a 15-minute journey of where we live, and customers use, on average, three different supermarkets a month. As huge businesses, supermarkets spread their costs over massive volumes and so take a minimal margin on each item. So although the operating profit margin of big suppliers such as Proctor and Gamble, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline was found in a 2007 study to be 20 per cent, 13 per cent and 32 per cent respectively, the margin of the big four supermarkets was only between 2.2 and 6.2 per cent. That's one reason why, despite their massive profits, we spend a smaller proportion of our income on food than any other EU country.
But the facts are irrelevant to UK Uncut, an anti-capitalist protest group that has sprung up over the past year and which is heavily involved in protests against Tesco (along, in the Bristol protests, with the gloriously named but astonishingly silly Peoples Republic of Stokes Croft).
UK Uncut claims to be peaceful, involved only with sit-ins and orderly demonstrations at businesses it targets such as TopShop, Boots and Vodafone. But many of its activists seem, by a remarkable coincidence, to have been at the scene of a number of the riots and public order disturbances in recent months. Its beef is tax avoidance, arguing that the businesses it targets are culpable because they structure their affairs to minimise tax liabilities. In other words, they structure their affairs entirely legally, in accordance with tax rules, and avoid paying what would in effect be additional voluntary tax.
Were it not for what seems inevitably to accompany its activities, UK Uncut would be laughable. The Institute for Economic Affairs recently published a report that rips apart its contradictory, ill-informed, juvenile arguments. Indeed, in an unintentional self-parody of the group's deep-seated ignorance, UK Uncut staged a sit-in at Fortnum & Mason during last month's anti-cuts march, "over the tax dodge of over 40 million by its owners Whittington Investments which have a 54 per cent stake in Associated British Foods who produce Ryvita, Kingsmill and others and own Primark. ABF have dodged over £40 million in tax".
Ignore the illiteracy of UK Uncut's press release – is it Whittington Investments or ABF which have supposedly dodged £40 million in tax? – and the fact that it provided not a word of evidence for its claim. Rather, focus on the fact that ABF, Wittington Investments and Fortnum & Mason are all owned by the Garfield Weston Foundation, the 14th largest charitable foundation in the world. Not exactly the unacceptable face of capitalism.
Now it has its sights set on Tesco. Its website informs us that "Tesco control 30 per cent of the UK grocery market and have over 2,000 stores in the UK". There is no explanation as to why this is objectionable. It just is, it seems. But then it details Tesco's real crime: "In 2010 they made a profit of £3.4 billion, yet they will still go to great lengths to avoid paying tax." The swines! Tesco have the nerve to employ accountants to structure their affairs to comply with the law and pay every penny of the tax they owe.

dubmatters wrote:Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... facts.html

wubstep wrote:Telegraph article was hilarious.

dubmatters wrote:I was expecting a furious response from you guys..

uk uncut sounds like some sort of anti-circumcision organisation.

wubstep wrote:1 week tomorrow, protest/street party planned. At midnight it becomes Friday, street parties are legal anyway right?

I'm game. Then off to Frenchtek in the morning, zinnng.