ASDA Hyson Green Expansion

Given the HUGE campaign to stop the original development, we could ask all the local residents leaving Asda with their shopping whether they still have the 'Homes not Hypermarkets' posters that they all had in their windows a decade ago, and use them to print a new slogan on the otherside, eg 'well I only shop their occasionally cos it's there now so I might as well, and the local greengrocers is only open 7am to 7pm and only sells fruit and veg and ... ...!'

...but seriously folks, anything to hit back at Asda's corporate crap - whilst actively calling on support for all the independent traders in the area - gets my vote.


Perhaps we could revive the non-shopping worship of ASDA's Spy In The Sky
* Shopping is the ritual
* The supermarket is the cathedral
* Shoppers are the congregation
* Products are the icons of desire

See photos of Nottingham ASDA event at  http://www.mydadsstripclub.com

as a anarchist & former supermarket worker I look to recent uprisings in Argentina & other areas of the world & say yep I was sick of selling shit made by slaves. Though I think we should takeover the supermarkets that run by our labour, sell quality fairly & make the buildings sustainable before thinking of any expansion. I know even managers at stores hate the way top brass work sometimes.
We know you are trying to make us laugh & really just resent our greedy owners & mostly agree with what your doing.

Robin hood & the Church of shopping are great & some people do seem to enjoy buying crap,
though we need a true revolution soon before the planet bursts
www.iww.org.uk

The Asda store is already a huge blight on our neighbourhood, and there is no reason to allow it to expand further.

We already have to put up with all the extra traffic it puts on the roads around here (both cars and lorries), and to walk past yet another giant corporate building, right in the heart of our residential area - extremely busy by day, and a ghost town by night.

No doubt Asda will cite "job creation" as a benefit, but the fact is that nobody in their right mind would take a job at such a place out of anything but sheer desperation. What quality of life does employment there offer a person, to assist their in wellbeing and happiness? Is it not simply crass exploitation of those who are unable to sustain themselves by anything other than taking an awful job for an awful wage?

Walmart (owners of Asda) are notorious for their anti-union activities - even stooping so low as to offer workers bribes not to unionise, and like so many megacorps, for deliberately maintaining an atomised, powerless workforce that can do virtually nothing to challenge or change working conditions. Workers are completely at the mercy of Walmart and their continual drive to increase profits by cutting corners wherever possible.

Using their buying power, food producers and growers have no choice but to sell at a price that barely makes it worth their while, but again they are powerless to challenge this. Yet instead of farmers growing food to support their local communities, they're producing cash crops for strangers in a far off land, because they've been tricked into signing on the dotted line, and are now being pushed further away from the ability to support themselves.

Asda's "low price" goods come at a very high price - exploitation of workers, from field to factory to shelf.

Of course, exploitation of the environment is also a major part of Asda's activities.

Overpackaged goods, produced unsustainably using huge quantities of fossil fuels - chemical fertilisers and pesticides, which literally wipe out natural soil fertility for increased short-term growth yield, leaving barren wastelands in their wake. The more of these oil-based chemical fertilisers we use, the more we have to use to continue to be able to grow anything on the land they have been used on. How will we eat when the oil runs out, and much of the world has permanently ruined soil that cannot support any crops?

Large areas of land are cleared to make way for cash crops and grazing land, destroying biodiversity and trashing ecosystems worldwide.

These goods are then transported halfway around the world, from wherever it's cheapest to bulk buy from, again using huge amounts of fossil fuels in the process.

All of these processes are dependent on oil, which is going to run out in our lifetimes. I'm making no exaggeration when I say that we are literally going to starve when this happens, though of course people in the rich West won't be the worst affected - it'll be those cash crop farmers who've devastated their land and can no longer grow anything, either to sell, or to feed themselves and their communities with.

Then there's the overpriced (and of course overpackaged) organic goods. It's rarely mentioned that if we didn't have supermarkets everywhere, there'd be plenty of land available for people to locally grow their own organic food, using sustainable practises that don't wreck the environment or exploit workers in the process.

How much is used in the way of resources (oil, gas, electricity etc.) every single day just to sell us food that we should be producing ourselves, within our communities? This may not be "the way of the world" yet, but if we are to survive imminent climate chaos and resource depletion problems - which are without a doubt the biggest threats humanity has ever faced - it is rapidly going to have to become the way we feed ourselves, assuming we want to survive.

The entire business of supermarkets (well, really, the entire system of globalised capitalism of which supermarkets are a significant part) is an unsustainable ethical and environmental nightmare, which exists solely on time and resources that are being stolen from future generations and sold wholesale down the river for a quick profit now.

You want to talk about expanding this temple of everything that is wrong with the world? It would be more appropriate to talk of how we are going to close it down in time to regain the means and the ability to feed and support ourselves and our local communities directly. Or perhaps to discuss what we are going to use that huge building for in ten or so years once the oil is seriously beginning to run out and it's no longer practical, let alone profitable, to feed ourselves in this completely insane way.

In short, why should this giant megacorp be allowed to invade our neighbourhood and (now thanks to Labour's new corporate-friendly planning laws) do whatever it likes? Turning our local community into a clone of everywhere else in the country, wrecking the planet, exploiting workers worldwide, leeching from the local economy and shipping the spoils off to Walmart in the USA?

Supermarkets aren't just unnecessary - they are literally suicidal, humanicidal and ecocidal.

How about instead of allowing them to expand their operation, we take steps to shut them down? That'll be just a drop in the ocean for the kind of effort that's going to be needed to turn this catastrophe around and prevent disasters of a yet-unimaginable scale from happening.

Low prices are only low prices until the debt collector comes calling, and we're already surviving on borrowed time. It may "only" be the expansion of an existing supermarket in Nottingham - but on matters of human and environmental survival, thinking globally and acting locally are what is needed, and even given that, we're still going to need truckloads of luck.

Please don't bow to corporate pressure when our community and ultimately our very existence is at stake.