dear don shenker

Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, the charity, said: “Tesco’s plans acknowledge that consumers themselves want supermarkets to tackle the cheap price of alcohol to reduce alcohol-related harm."

Source

Dear Don Shenker,

The message that you are trying to promote, that shoppers want to pay more money for the products that they buy, is ridiculous. One only needs to look at the rise of Tesco as a dominant player in the retail market to realise that this is, at best, a misguided assessment of the situation. And I'm being generous when I say that.

As a consumer I would not like to pay more for the items I purchase on the say-so of a government funded pressure group (*Note to Nick Clegg* - we could save over half a million quid a year by cutting out the payments to this shower of shit). The idea that I want to pay more for a drink is batshit crazy. It's ridiculous. It's fucking lunatic.

Which is why you and your co-conspirators will be out there for every media opportunity repeating this lie as much as possible. As anyone who studies the art of opinion manipulation knows if you tell the same lie over and over again then people might start believing it. If enough people are fooled into thinking that everyone supports this idea it creates a feeling of 'safety in numbers'. Except you and I both know that it's built on a lie. Your lie.

Pubs have been forced to raise their prices by, among other wonderful things the previous government instigated, changes to the alcohol duty. As many of them are independent they do not have the bulk purchasing power of the large supermarkets. As the pub prices have been forced up customers have turned to cheaper sources for their alcohol. Which is why Tesco and the other retailers have seen a marked rise in their alcohol sales. If the price of alcohol from these sources becomes more expensive people will look to other sources. Such as brewing their own. Or abroad. Or the black market.

The majority of alcohol consumption is not 'harmful' (what constitutes harmful these days? I notice that the amount keeps on being lowered), the majority of consumers do drink responsibly, and yet you want to financially hurt the majority by raising the price of drinking. The real losers will be the pubs, not the supermarkets, as people will have even less money to spend which is probably the same assessment that lead to Sir Terry Leahy support your vindictive campaign.

Consumers do not want to pay more for the things that they buy just as turkeys don't vote for Christmas. They might support raising prices for other consumers who are not them, but for themselves? No. And, Don, you know this but you continue to repeat your message which is why I think you are a total cunt.




Go fuck yourself



manwiddicombe