I’ve just heard that Tesco may be taking over wholesaler Booker, which includes Budgens, for £3.7bn, in the face of fierce opposition. Count me in that opposition, because I cannot shop in Tesco. Soon I may not even be able to shop in Budgens, just down the road. Damn. Because I feel I must stick to some priciples, and I’m still enraged with Shirley Porter, the heiress to the Tesco fortune, who was responsible for the “homes for votes” scandal when she was leader of Westminster council. Remember her? You should. Why should I add one penny more to her immense fortune?
And aren’t there enough Tescos already? How come these massive outfits are allowed to take over smaller outfits, whether the smaller ones want them to or not? Remember Kraft’s takeover of Cadbury in 2010? Afterwards, the chocolate bars shrank, the Somersdale factory closed, goodbye to 500 jobs, and the company stopped working with Fairtrade and changed from “a force for social good to the worst example of brutal corporate capitalism”, as the Independent put it.
Isn’t there meant to be a monopolies watchdog? The Competitions and Markets Authority? What’s it watching while all these colossal takeovers are going on? The telly? I hope they saw Follow the Money, in which a huge and wicked bank took over a small and idealistic one, murdering and brutally assaulting anyone who impeded them. I suppose that was a particularly hostile takeover.
Not that your average gigantic takeover involves murder, unless you include killing off thousands of jobs and independent businesses, but why force yourself upon something that doesn’t want you? I know the answer, really. It’s just shareholders wanting fatter wallets. The more they have, the more they want, and the more they get, and no one seems able to stop them. Are there no rules?
“There are some,” says Fielding. “But throw in a few billion, and there aren’t any.” Money is winning, bombs are flying about. It’s Easter, festival of renewal and rebirth. Jesus, a Jewish socialist revolutionary, would be very disappointed to find that the ruthless, murderous and greedy have inherited the earth. And so am I.
